Last night we said goodbye to the capital city of Taipei and traveled via high speed rail to Taichung, the 3rd largest city in Taiwan. At one point on the train, we were traveling 150 miles per hour! It was hard to say goodbye to the new friends we made. In just a few days, I've met some great people and had a plethora of laughs. Fortunately, at least 2 of our new friends will be coming to Michigan in the fall to study. We promised to show them a good time, like they did for us.
I've had a very busy past few days. On Thursday, I was at Taipei 101 once again for a presentation at the Taiwan Stock Exchange. It was very interesting to see the differences in the Taiwan stock market compared to the NYSE and even the Tokyo Stock Exchange. For instance, there is a 7% daily limit on changes to a stock's value - meaning that a stock cannot increase or decrease by more than 7% in a single day. This is a reassuring factor that makes me interested in investing here. Also, almost 40% of Taiwan's population invest in their stock market as individual investors, which is cool because it shows how much Taiwan's people and its businesses are interconnected.
On Thursday, we also went to Franz, a porcelain company that makes vases and other artistic, yet practical, gifts. What's interesting about Franz is that they don't use traditional marketing to advertise - instead, they create value for their products by winning awards, displays at trade shows, and hosting guests such as ourselves. We got to tour many floors and see how art meets business and old meets new. Some people were designing porcelain on computers while others worked with clay to shape the molds that will be used to mass produce a product. Then we saw a small museum of the company's beautiful products, including an "Emperor" dinner table set with a value of 2,000,000 NT$!
On Friday, we went to Tamkang University in a previously unexplored area of Taipei. Here, we were treated with the utmost respect and met many more friends. The campus is beautiful, surrounded by trees and with a gorgeous garden where we saw goldfish and turtles. We played a fun "culture communication" game in which a phrase was whispered to 7 people to see how much the phrase changes. Our team did very bad, although it was all U of M Flint students! It showed that even within our own culture, communication problems are possible unless steps are taken to avoid them.
The students gave us a tour of the Tam Sui "old town", which has many historical buildings, temples and churches. There was a statue of a bearded British man who had come to the island as a missionary and built the churches. Finding the statue was a very happy moment, when all of the students decided that I looked just like him and snapped many pictures. The students were very nice and knowledgeable, and although a few of them had little experience speaking English and I have very little experience with Chinese, we got along very well. I learned a few new words, such as "how-lurr" (which means hot), and I taught a few of the students some new phrases and words, like "awesome!" We walked along a riverside pier with a beautiful view of the mountains.
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