The flight and the first day in Taiwan

The flight Vienna – Abu Dhabi – Taipei with China Airlines was fairly uneventful. The most exciting event was probably a delay of 1,5 hours in Vienna. There are quite many Czech and Slovak people on board travelling to Australia, Bali but also staying in Taiwan. We left Vienna at about 11 a.m. on Sunday. 15 hours, 2 sets of Chinese air-stewardesses, 3 meals and 4 movies later, we land in Taipei on Monday, 9 a.m. The weather is hot and humid as expected, but tolerable. Not even 30 degrees. I get my first proper conversation in Chinese with a lady selling the bus tickets. It’s fun and we understand each other fairly well.

The trip from the airport to campus takes about one hour by public transportation, even though one has to enter the city, go through the center and then back to the outskirts, where the NCCU campus is located. More about that some other time though. 

Fortunately for me, there are “Welcome Freshmen Days” taking place at the university right now, so there are many helpers standing around. I put on my confused and exhausted face (didn’t have to try too hard) and soon enough, one of them is taking me to the dormitory. They even have a bus going from the main campus area to the male dorms. It is quite far away and uphill. I guess they need to keep the guys isolated here – the dormitories are strictly divided and it is forbidden for a person of the opposite sex to even step inside the dormitory. As for the transportation, they haven’t switched to elevator transportation here yet, unlike my Hong Kong university.

The people at the housing office were fairly nice and I could stand back and relax, as the local student was doing all the talking. I got my room key all excited, but then the trouble started. They want to get the key back – asked me to make my own copy and then return their key. My passport was taken as hostage. Second, it is impossible to enter the halls without a student card – no problem for now, the local helper guy has his own card. I get to the room, but the key doesn’t work. It is not possible to put it inside the lock. At this point, the helper guy has to leave, so I’m left to solve things on my own. I left my luggage inside the room and closed the door with a little padlock (which anybody could break within 5 seconds), and went on to get these issues solved. 

Hence, my first serious conversation in Chinese came at the housing office. I guess we understood each other pretty well :) They acted like the broken lock is my problem and said, maybe next week someone is going to look at it. So in order to keep the room locked, I have to go buy a stronger padlock. Also need 2 keys, so that my roommate can open the door also. Then I went around the campus to look for my student card to get inside the dormitory. I asked around various offices, nobody knew where I could find it and who is responsible (seems to be quite typical here). I ended up in the office of my program. This nice young miss told me that the cards will only be handed out next week. That would be quite a problem, as I wouldn’t be able to enter the dorm till next week. In the end, she made a few phone calls and persuaded someone to give me the card already today.

In the IMICS office, I also accidentally met my classmate, Lenka, from Slovakia. She’s been here for a year studying Chinese and is now enrolling in the Master’s program. Pretty funny, I met only the second person in Taiwan and I’m already speaking Czech again. So long for forgetting my native language and speaking Chinese only. As I later found out, there are dozens of Czechoslovakian students in Taipei, forming a nice big expat community. However, I was overjoyed by meeting Lenka, who very soon became my guardian angel and helped me get a mobile phone card, transportation card, immigration paperwork and also gave me a mattress (there are none in the dorms) and hosted me for dinner. 

 Later that night, there was a party for freshmen and international students. I went to check it out – as it turned out, there were about 250 Taiwanese freshmen and 5 foreigners. The party consisted of motivational speeches, silly games and songs, theater performances in Chinese (what I understood was, there was a guy and a girl – they were dating, but the girl decided to go study in America. The guy couldn’t go, because he didn’t speak any English. The girl died on the way to America (not sure how). The girl’s mother didn’t want to tell the guy, so she was sending him letters, pretending to be her dead daughter. Well, that wasn’t too inspiring. The party also had some running around in circles, jumping, clapping hands and cha-cha dancing. Apparently, every Taiwanese student should know a bit of cha-cha before entering university. It was wonderful, I felt like I was 16 again, at my very first dancing lesson. After about 45 minutes of one – two – three – chachacha, we even got to dance in pairs!! Some of the guys didn’t know how to hold a girl’s hand.. By the end it was over, I didn’t remember it was only 4 p.m. back home in Europe and went to bed. Jet lag won’t be an issue.

Speaking of the Taiwanese freshmen, I now understand the debate about the Chinese gymnasts in the Olympics, who looked too young. Well, most of these university freshmen, who are probably around 18 or 19, looked like they were 13 or 14.