{"id":5381,"date":"2017-07-18T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-18T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-09-12T15:32:49","modified_gmt":"2020-09-12T19:32:49","slug":"so-your-character-is-from-taiwan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victoriagracehowell.com\/staging\/6258\/so-your-character-is-from-taiwan\/","title":{"rendered":"So Your Character is From Taiwan … Featuring Astrid Kaniele"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\nIt’s time for this week’s So Your Character is … Post! This is a weekly segment where I interview lovely volunteers from around the world to give you a firsthand account of being a citizen of their respective country or having a disability. I’m hoping to encourage international diversity, break stereotypes, and give writers a crash course on how to write a character from these different places on our planet. If you haven’t checked out last week’s  So Your Character is from Japan … be sure to hop on over there and give it a read!<\/span>
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\nI actually had a friend who taught English in Taiwan for over a year, so that immediately made me curious about the country. She brought me back a Lucky Cat key chain and I know the country was once part of China. I’m so happy I found Astrid so she could tell me more about this place!<\/span>
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\nDisclaimer: The content below may be culturally shocking to some. Each of these posts are as uncensored as possible to preserve the authenticity of the cultures of each of the interviewees.<\/span>
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\nHi, I’m Astrid. I’m originally from England, UK, but I moved to Taiwan in October 2016. I’m currently living in Hsinchu (nicknamed the windy city). I write, play music, take photographs… anything creative, I love it! By day, I’m a teacher. By night, I’m working on my novel.<\/span>
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Thanks so much to Victoria for having me on her blog. As I mentioned, I’ll keep an eye on the comments, so feel free to ask any other questions and I’ll try my best to answer. <\/span>
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\nWhat do you feel is unique to your country? Landmarks? Celebrations?<\/b><\/span>
\nThere’s plenty of festivals in this country! I haven’t even been here a full year yet, so I still have so much to learn but there’s the lantern festivals around Chinese new year, there’s dragon boat festivals (definitely one I’m hitting up), ghost festivals… Honestly, they love them. Chinese New Year is a huge one. I expected it to be super busy but everything fell silent for about a week. Thank God for 7-Eleven being open all day, every day.<\/span><\/p>\n

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My favourite thing about Taiwan, though, is that you only need to take a short journey out of any city and you’ll be surrounded by nature. The landscape here is beautiful, but it’s not all greenery. The cities are really built up.<\/span>
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Tell me about your country’s environment. What are some of your favorite places?<\/b><\/span>
\nI probably got lung cancer the moment I stepped off the plane, if I’m honest. I love the smell of petrol, engine fumes and the like, so it doesn’t bother me but when you first get here, the smell of pollution is so obvious. My partner and I got so many headaches when we first got here and we put it down to that and the heat.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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\nIn Taipei, Zhongzheng district is probably my favourite. There’s really cool art installations in parks and graffiti… City living isn’t for me, but this part of the city? Yeah, I can stand it. It’s pretty cool. It has a Camden\/San Francisco vibe. <\/span>
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\nOut of the city, the Elephant hiking trail (and surrounding trails) are a nice place. Tourist, definitely, but it’s an relatively easy hike (except for the stairs) with plenty of stops on the way up and a great view of the city. Maokong mountain, though, is way better if you want to spend a whole day exploring the forest, finding waterfalls, getting lost… (which, incidentally, is what we did, but a lovely bread delivery man saw us stop at the only shop and gave us a lift back into the city! The Taiwanese are really friendly).<\/span>
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\nTell me about your country’s food. What are some of your favorite dishes?<\/b><\/span>
\nI’m a ridiculously fussy eater, so I’m not the best source for any questions on food! I eat a lot of noodles (beef noodles \u2013 yum!) and there’s a great place up the road from me that does the best chicken on Earth. <\/span>
\nStreet food is huge here and things like dumplings and stinky tofu are popular. In fact, tofu in general is widely loved here! Bubble tea and shaved ice (so good, but unimaginably cold) are also a big deal. <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nTell me about any different speech patterns in your country. Slang? Idioms? Words for things such as \u201cbiscuits\u201d instead of \u201ccookies\u201d?<\/b><\/span>
\nUnfortunately, my Mandarin hasn’t come too far. I speak convenience store Mandarin (aka, I can say thank you and understand when they’re asking if I want a bag). Here’s a great place to start learning Mandarin slang<\/a>.<\/span>
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