Student Reflection by Eric Li (C’28 W’28, Spanish target)
千里之行始于足下。A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. After spending two months as a mainlander in Taiwan, a statement that has the potential to stir up some drama, I can say that I’ve never regretted a single step of this thousand-mile journey.
For my freshman summer, I decided to apply to study Chinese through CET Academic Programs. For context, I am a native speaker, and speak Mandarin with my family, enough to be considered colloquially fluent. One of my goals in college, however, is to find work in Asia, and for that I need to study professional Chinese. CET is one of the many study abroad programs that has locations throughout the world, and for Chinese they offered Shanghai, Harbin, and Taipei as locations. As a mainlander, I always wanted to further understand the difference between China and Taiwan, seeing as the two countries have a bit of a rocky relationship.
Ever since coming to Penn, I had already decided that my freshman summer would be used to travel and do something I loved – in lieu of searching for a draining internship like everyone else. I treated this opportunity as a vacation in Taiwan for two months as much as it was a learning opportunity. As a FGLI student, Huntsman funding made this opportunity possible. I no longer had to put more financial strain on my parents, but rather, I could comfortably enjoy my summer abroad.
Arriving in Taiwan, CET provided me with basically everything I needed to accommodate myself to living and studying there. They provided an apartment, data plan, a TPASS (a monthly subscription that gives you unlimited access to public transportation in and around Taipei), and a local Taiwanese roommate!
We were officially students at National Taiwan University (NTU), and had our own student IDs, which also allowed us access to the entire NTU campus. For my Chinese language class, I was placed in the Advanced class, with 6 other students. Besides the CET students, we also had international students from Japan! Their first language was Japanese, and traveled here for the summer to study Chinese.
Not only was I able to experience residential life as well as being a student, but I also got to experience the work culture. CET provided every student with an optional internship component, where we would interview with a partner company, ranging from education to consulting to robotics. I originally wanted to do consulting, but my gut told me to do something a bit more unique. I chose to work with HJJ GO, a one-stop, mobile first platform that teaches Go using a proprietary AI. They are one of the most well-known companies related to Go in East Asia, in part due to Hei JiaJia (Joanne Missingham) being the brand ambassador, an Australian-Taiwanese professional Go player, actor, and celebrity. As the only native English speaker and westerner there, I helped conduct market research for their most important project at the time – hey wanted to use Go to improve cognitive development and critical thinking skills in kindergarten-aged children, and were trying to break into the US and UK early childcare market. I did some cool research for them, as well as learned the ins and outs of making a well-rounded pitch deck!
Overall, these two months of immersion have given me plenty of lessons and skills to bring back to Penn. My internship with HJJ taught me how to work under strict deadlines and how to manage quality and speed on high-stakes projects, as well as how to professionally conduct myself, especially when speaking to clients. Through living in Taiwan, I learned how to adapt to an unfamiliar environment and engage with people from a different culture/background than myself, helping me to become more inter-culturally competent. And above all, I bring back a breathtaking experience abroad to share with other students who are considering a similar program!
