Research & Reflections

fulbright Taiwan online journal

Research & Reflections

fulbright Taiwan online journal

Tag: English

Opportunities and Challenges in Implementing Digital Equity Initiatives in Remote Areas in Taiwan

Chientzu Candace Chou 周健慈 November 23, 2016

Project Background    This year has marked a new milestone in my academic career by becoming a Fulbright Senior Scholar and embarked on a new research on promoting digital equity in Taiwan. I had the privilege to work with researchers in three host universities at National Sun Yat-sen University and Cheng Hsiu University of Science and Technology in Kaohsiung and Fu Jen University in Taipei.         The topic of my project is “Promoting Digital Equity through the E-Tutor Program.” The E-Tutor Program is a nation-wide program implemented by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan, aiming to bridge the educational divide among students in the urban and rural schools. This program was implemented in 1996. The model is to recruit university student tutors to work with students in remote areas by means of video-conferencing through one-to-one learning. On average there are 1,000 e-tutors from 20 universities and 1,000 e-tutees from 95 K-12 schools and educational agents participating in the E-Tutor Program annually.     I am interested in learning various models to bridge the educational divide around the globe. The E-Tutor Program has a great reputation and that’s why I was interested in learning more about what this program has achieved

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The Invisible Hand of Great Power Politics: China and United States Fight for Economic Supremacy in Asia

Grant Nordby 羅若彬 November 23, 2016

   It is widely accepted that the future of the world will rest in the hands of Chinese and U.S. world leaders. Both President Obama and President Xi have, on numerous occasions, voiced this sentiment. In 2013, in a joint press conference with Obama in California, President Xi said, “A sound China-U.S. cooperation can serve as the ballast for global stability and the propeller for world peace.”1  Their choice to cooperate (or not) will shape every global issue from nuclear weapons and terrorism to trade and technology.  This is the first great confrontation between great powers with profoundly different world views since the Cold War, and yet there is greater cooperation and negotiation between the two sides than that which existed between the United States and Soviet Union.        We have already seen how the complex relationship between the U.S. and China has shaped the internal economic workings of the two countries.  It is estimated that China now employs nearly one million Americans, and it is likely that America employs many more Chinese; furthermore, investment and foreign capital flows benefit both economies.2   Domestically, the impact of trade relations has already been shown and its benefits and drawbacks

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Beijing’s Formidable Strategy in the South China Sea

Nancy Chunjuan Wei 衛純娟 November 23, 2016

      The U.S. rebalance to Asia has yet to alter the desired outcome for U.S. allies and partners in the South China Sea (SCS): Checking Beijing’s advances in territorial claims. Instead, despite a few successful maneuvers, most of the strategies adopted by the Philippines and Vietnam have backfired. China has seized every opportunity to advance its claims in response to its neighbors’ perceived provocations and operational incompetence. Let us consider some examples of how SCS competitors act, react, and interact in the strategic pursuit of their own self-interests.

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I Am Who I Think I Am: On Finding My Identity in Taiwan

Yin-Han Karissa Chen 陳盈涵 November 23, 2016

    “Where are you from?” is a question almost every Asian American has grown up hearing (in addition to its ruder close cousin—“What are you?”). I’ve bristled at that question, swinging from being patient and polite—“You mean where are my parents from?”—to snarky—“New Jersey.” It’s a question that rankles because it assumes foreignness and otherness, one that, in my own country, feels unfair. In America, aren’t we almost all, in some shape or form, descended from somewhere else? And yet Asian Americans are usually the ones perpetually called out for it. There was a short period of time when I would have insisted I was American, and American only. That eventually gave way to my own sense of pride in how I saw myself—as both Asian American and Chinese American—and I decided that I alone could determine what those terms meant to me.      I came to Taiwan to do research for a novel based on the experiences of post-1949 immigrants from mainland China. As a descendant of three grandparents who came from China, and one grandparent, my maternal grandmother, who was Taiwanese, I was very interested in the stories of relocation, immigration, homesickness, and assimilation of these

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Facebook, Busy Weekends, and Young Startups in the Sharing City

Jeffrey Hou侯志仁 November 23, 2016

   I arrived in Taipei in late June of 2015 to begin my sabbatical leave and my Fulbright research focusing on the “sharing city,” part of a phenomenon that is going on worldwide. From Europe to Asia, activities such as food sharing, co-working, and all forms of commoning are redefining social relationships in cities as well as how urban spaces can be used, activated, and transformed. Specifically, I am interested in how these activities are organized and by whom, as well as the broader implications for city–making.     This time around, my research approach was quite simple. I happen to know quite a few colleagues in Taipei who are working on those projects and have many connections to other individuals and groups. With a handful of initial tips, I started to contact and interview a few people who then introduced me to a few more. Those contacts then suggested even more connections and leads.     Facebook also serves as an important research tool for me. Taiwan apparently has one of the highest rates of Facebook usage in Asia. Facebook, or, as Taiwanese prefer to call it, FB, is indispensable nowadays not only for staying connected with distant friends but also

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Twenty-five States and Seventy-two Community Colleges in 7 Months!

Dao-kwei Wu 吳道揆 November 7, 2016

    “I HAVE LOTS OF MONEY!” It was the second time that I said this to the saleslady at Vitamin World. I had never said this before in my entire life. I had to say it because she insisted on paying for the vitamins I selected, and she wanted to give me cash for dinner after she found out that my credit card was over the limit (and I am a foreigner travelling in her country). Also, at a famous BBQ restaurant in Dayton, Ohio, a waitress offered me 16 different side dishes for free after I curiously asked about them. She said that she knew that I was a foreigner travelling in her country and that she was happy to let me enjoy the great taste of all of the different sides. I encountered many of these types of people during my Fulbright research trip from Sept. 2015 to April 2016. Their kindness, their considerateness, their hospitality, and their supportiveness made me feel that many Americans are angels! And personally, I consider myself a lifetime friend of Americans!        On this trip to 25 states and 72 community colleges, I have found out that many of

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A Unique Edition of Shishuo Xinyu

Evan Nicoll Johnson 倪意文 November 7, 2016

     My research is primarily concerned with texts produced and circulated in the early medieval period from roughly the second to the seventh centuries CE, or the period from the late Han dynasty through the beginning of the Tang dynasty. Warfare and political turmoil typically characterize the era in between these two powerful dynasties. Considered a complicated and unstable time, this time period also witnessed a period of great innovation in terms of literature, historiography, and scholarship. In the simplest terms, the quantity and variety of texts in circulation increased rapidly. Studying the way these and other texts were organized, then, is in part a way to understand how people dealt with this textual excess; the strategies that they used to cope with the ever increasing availability of accumulated textual knowledge is another important area to study. In addition, I am interested in the reception of these texts in later periods—works written to describe or evaluate the contents of these early medieval works, and what these newer texts tell us about how attitudes towards the older works shift over time. Usually it is not possible to consult editions of books that actually date from the early medieval period. Therefore,

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Taiwan’s Soft Power and Global Climate Change Initiatives

Stacy Closson 柯黛希 November 7, 2016

     Despite being constrained by non-recognition as a sovereign state by the majority of the world’s states, Taiwan seeks to be a constructive member of the international community.  The island nation only belongs to two intergovernmental organizations – World Trade Organization and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation. Nevertheless, it has found a way to contribute on key issues of global concern through its soft power. A defining feature of soft power is that it is non-coercive; the currency of soft power is culture, political values, and foreign policies.

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The Afterlife of Women Workers – Gender, Space, and Feminist Intervention in Contemporary Taiwan

Anru Lee 李安如 November 4, 2016

Kaohsiung is the second largest city in Taiwan. It is also Taiwan’s hub of heavy industry and a world-class port. The Twenty-five Ladies’ Tomb was the collective burial site of female workers who drowned during a ferry accident on their way to work at Kaohsiung’s export processing zones in 1973. Of the seventy plus passengers on board, all twenty-five who died were unmarried young women. Taiwanese culture shuns unmarried female ghosts who have no (husband’s) ancestral hall to rest in peace. This made the tomb a fearsome place. The Kaohsiung Association for the Promotion of Women’s Rights (KAPWR), a major feminist group in Kaohsiung, had for years urged the Kaohsiung City government to rename the tomb to remove the stigma of unmarried female ghost. Feminists wanted the name of the burial site to reflect the productive role of the deceased young women instead. They requested that the local government revamp the tomb site. Their calls, however, were not answered until Kaohsiung was hard hit by Taiwan’s recent deindustrialization. As a part of an effort to reinvent the city’s economy, the Mayor’s Office finally allocated money to clean up the gravesite and make it into a tourist-friendly “Memorial Park for Women

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One Year as a Teacher, Composer, and Computer Musician in Taiwan

Jacob Sudol 司徒雅各 November 4, 2016

Ever since I decided to become a composer, I’ve longed for the opportunity to spend a year abroad and immerse myself in a different culture. I believed that this experience would help me to better understand other cultures as well as my own creative voice. I am thankful that last spring I was awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholar grant to teach and research in Taiwan this academic year. I am also grateful that my home institute, Florida International University (FIU), graciously agreed to support my time abroad.      I have adapted this article from the last of a series of four blog posts on my experiences in Taiwan and Asia that New Music Box, a leading English website that focuses on new music, commissioned me to write. You can read all of the four original posts here. *      I have been regularly travelling to and learning about the new music scene in Taiwan since I met my wife Chen-Hui Jen nearly nine years ago. Over these years, I’ve been particularly struck by the myriad ways Taiwanese composers express their cultural identity in music and, as I mentioned in a post for New Music Box, by their compositions

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