Tim Wakefield

NAME:   Tim Wakefield
DESTINATION:   Green Materials and a Sustainable Environment: Taiwan Immersion
COURSE:   Bachelor of Engineering

It’s hard to know where to even begin when touching on the highlights of visiting Taiwan. The utter friendliness of everyone involved with Tamkang University, the depth of the technical and cultural knowledge shared by the professors and students respectively, the amazing food, the subtle influences from Japan and China, the commonalities with other Asian cultures… I could go on and on.

Before the trip, I kept an open mind, and tempered expectations. Due to my familiarity with other parts of Asia, I was expecting a place reminiscent of Vietnam and Thailand, but I found Taiwan to be closer to Singapore, with its cleanliness, convenience, and modernity.

Travel should always broaden the mind, and visiting Taiwan absolutely did that. Due to the absolutely alien nature of the written Chinese language, one is never sure of one’s location, or even the ability to navigate the simplest of shopping trips, and reliance on the locals’ spoken English is total. These moments, however, are always helpful, in that they teach soft skills not taught in any school: the ability to communicate despite sometimes complete language barriers, overcome cultural norms and preconceptions. On one occasion whilst venturing out to forage on my own, I ordered from a menu scattered with indecipherable Mandarin characters, and relied entirely on a single word description of the dish (“pork”) from the owner’s son. The next five or so minutes of anticipation was rewarded with a delicious bowl of meat, vegetables, and rice, and a feeling of foolishness that I could have seriously expected a bad meal in a place like Taiwan.

In some ways, I left Taiwan feeling frustrated at how much better they do certain things than we do here in Australia. Their public transport was splendid, and although admittedly it’s easier to craft a network on a small island than a vast landscape like Australia, Sydney lags far, far behind Taipei, who have nearly double the population to service, but do so at a fraction of the cost. Seeing the innovation at GDI, and Dr Lawrence Lin’s rightful confidence in his manufacturing prowess, made me wish for something similar in Australia, presently devoid of almost all of that type of industry. And despite a plethora of ongoing natural disasters to grapple with, the Taiwanese constructed the world’s tallest building at the time, the magnificent Taipei 101, unique and stylish –  two words that are not readily used when describing Sydney.

One of the most interesting parts of the trip was seeing how disinterested the Taiwanese people were in the oncoming typhoon, due to arrive the day after our departure. They seemed to treat it as nothing more than a minor inconvenience, with a little excitement, as the government apparently schedules a public holiday to allow people to remain at home in safety. Amongst our group of travellers there was a sense of mild concern and perhaps even slight panic, but the Taiwanese were unphased. Compared to the hysteria that occurs whenever a cyclone hits Queensland, I found it reassuring, amusing, but also impressive.

So much can be learned from Taiwan, and the Taiwanese people. That’s not to say they’re perfect, obviously – the discovery from my Taiwanese roommate that there is a Chinese word meaning “collusion between business and government” shows that they suffer many of the same ills as us, and it was reassuring in some way to learn this. But at the very least, a lot can be taken from their use and implementation of infrastructure, which is an area Australia is sadly lacking: for example, travelling half of the island at 300km/h was truly sensational, and to think that it will probably be decades before this country catches up, supposedly one of the smartest and most developed in the world, is maddening.

On the flip side, the room for improvement here is obvious. In a different way, it is encouraging to know that, at least in my lifetime, there will be plenty of work available for engineers to upgrade and improve our environment. As one of the group pointed out, Taipei itself is filled with trees and plant life, and despite having a population significantly larger than Sydney, it never felt like it through intelligent use of space, and the well planned green spaces.

Australia can learn a lot from Taiwan. It was an absolute pleasure and a privilege to be chosen for this trip, and I am much better off as a result.