This morning we had a lot of time dedicated toward reflection on the last five days that we’ve spent here in Taipei. We have learned many things up until this point, and now we need to do the work of critically thinking about our observations and how they demonstrate the relationship between business and religion. Despite this being the principal point of the course, I still struggled a little to draw connections between the two. Hearing my peers’ reflections and the professors’ responses to them helped me conceptualize the idea better. My goal going forward is to take more specific notes that relate to this central question and to note and discuss examples we see even outside of class excursions. Shoutout to Jubao Breakfast restaurant, the food was delicious.
Afterwards, Malli and I met up with Prof. Chen and Prof. Young at Fong Da, a popular coffee place that has been around since 1956. Prof. Chen said that back then the family were beekeepers that sold coffee to encourage business, and they have since leaned fully into coffee. They even roast their own beans: I plan to get some once we return to Taipei at the end of the trip.
For our class excursion, we were given a tour of National Taiwan University by a group of first-year students. These students, led by Christine, were all political science majors who are part of a club whose mission is to engage with students/people from other countries. I was very excited to make even more new friends, and they did a wonderful job showing us around their sprawling campus. The palm trees on the main road, at the heart of the campus, reminded me of Palm Drive at Stanford. NTU is Prof. Chen’s alma mater, so he was able to supplement the girls’ tour with anecdotes from his time at the school. He pointed out the gate and the Fu bell as some of the oldest and prominent monuments on campus. The front gate dates all the way back to the Japanese occupation. The bell rings 21 times a day, and the superstition is that if you here all 21 rings you will fail. This reminded us of our own Bucknell superstition in which you will not graduate if you step on the seal on the quad. We visited the bookstore, where I ended up a buying some NTU merch; to support the local economy, of course. We also saw multiple athletic facilities, one of which was the arena for the upcoming squash competition for the 2025 World Games. The tour finished at the main library, which was an immense five stories tall and was not even one Christine uses (she says there is a social science specific library that she frequents more often).
After, I grabbed a Thai basil scallion pancake and a dark roasted oolong tea from some stores on the main street by the campus. We then spit off to do our solo explorations. Malli, Mikey, and I chose to take the red line all the way to the end to Tamsui so we could see the ocean. The train station was located further into the bay, but it certainly smelled like the ocean so we knew we were in the right place. We mostly just walked along the shore: there were many folks singing old songs, ritual furnaces, and of course your typical shops and food stalls. There were more stores selling woodcrafts in Tamsui, but I refrained from purchasing anything after breaking the bank at NTU. I have more questions that I will need to ask Prof. Young later about the furnaces and a temple with dragons that had glowing eyes, stay tuned.
