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Thursday, June 5th, 2025

Final Project

Personal Growth: Going into the Program ,I’m sure just like many of my classmates, I did not know a lot about Taiwan. Whether the multiple religions in practice or the scale of the countries manufacturing capability. I knew that Taiwan produces microchips but I did not know that the United States would be looking to Taiwan to re-industrialize as highlighted by our visit to AIT. It also seems that Taiwan is the place to be with companies like SCMS being the middle men for US based companies and Taiwan’s factories. Companies like Gigabyte and entire portions of cities are dedicated […]

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Wednesday, June 4th, 2025

Day 15: Cooking Class

Today as a group we attended a cooking class where me made some classic Taiwanese food. Because over the past weekend it was the dragon boat festival the main dish that we made was Zongzi. Which I could best describe as a rice empanada or dumpling. There is an interesting story as to why this dish is specific to this holiday. Our tour guide had told us before but the cooking instructor told us as well. A long time ago there was a poet who committed suicide by jumping into a river and in order for the fish to not […]

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Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025

Day 14: Studio 76 visit , Jiu fen and lantern lighting

We started the day out with a company visit to a movie studio company called Studio 76. This company helps produce movies and Tv shows in various stages of production from just the script or from the ground up. All of the media produced by this company is focused on the East Asian market. There where many nuances to this because certain countries like main land China and others have heavy censorship and the company would need to take certain actions to align with this. Not only would they do this but they would also localize somethings like the titles […]

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Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025

Day 13: Return to Taipei, Temple Visits and the 228 memorial Museum

We started the day out with a bullet train ride back to Taipei as it was the end of our time in Gaoxiong. Because we took the express train we got to experience the full speed of the bullet train. After we arrived back in Taipei we made our way to a Confucius temple. An interesting part of this temple is that there is no center god or being but rather the teachings of Confucius where spread throughout the temple. The next temple that we visited was a Daoist temple that was very well preserved. This one was pretty much […]

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Sunday, June 1st, 2025

Day 12: Lecture, hotpot lunch, Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum

We Started the day out with class time where we learned some more religion specific things about Buddhism in preparation for the day ahead to Fo Guang Shan. We also went into deeper discussion and writing into the relationship between business and religion. We read a few related articles about the economic practices of Buddhist monks/organizations as well as possible Buddhist economics that could help address current economic problems and inequality. We also went over the scale, mix and make up of religious practices throughout Taiwan. This was pretty interesting because the mix and make up has been stable over […]

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Sunday, June 1st, 2025

Day 11: Dragon and Tiger pagodas, Guan Yu statue, Mazu Temple, and the beach

We started our day out with visits to a couple different temples and attractions around the Zuoying district of Gaoxiong. The first was the Dragon and Tiger pagodas as pictured below. No matter what temple we go to you seem to learn something new every time. Here there was zig-zag bridge and apparently the reason for this is that it is believed that ghosts only can walk in straight lines so the zig-zag stops ghosts from entering the temple. The entrance and exist of the pagodas was the same as any temple. Enter through the dragon and exit through the […]

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