Blog #1

Happy day three of the Taiwan design study abroad program in Taipei! Today was a packed day starting from 8am to returning back to the hotel by 8pm. 

Today’s itinerary: 

8am-8:30am: Hotel breakfast

9am-12pm: Shih Chien University– Lecture and introduction to design project 

12pm-1pm: Lunch with SCU students

1pm-3pm: TaiYuan road– Materials shopping 

3pm-5pm: DaDao Chen– Walking tour 

5pm-8pm: NingXia Night Market 

Starting off with the Shih Chien University visit, today was our first official day getting to know our SCU students and learning about our project details. We had the privilege of hearing from established designer, Shikai Tseng, about his design journey and philosophy. He showed us a few of his projects as well as revealed some insights and inspirations guiding him in each project. Learning about his mindset and how it has developed to this point in his career was extremely inspiring and helpful in proposing a new perspective to design. 

We were then introduced to our design prompt for the next couple of days. During our lunch break between the prompt introduction and materials shopping, our group of UW and SCU students were able to look for inspiration at the spots around campus. I really enjoyed how my group kept a lookout for inspiration and took note of certain ideas that interested them throughout the meal. For example, we were really inspired by the trash holder/collector on each of the tables for dining. 

After lunch, we made our way to TaiYuan road to shop for materials for our product. Despite initially being unclear about the direction we wanted to go in, we were very communicative while shopping which made it easy to make quick decisions. Going store to store, we quickly narrowed down which ideas were possible and which were too far out of scope. I really appreciated how vocal and opinionated each person was in the decision making process, as it really progressed our ideation process along. 

During the walking tour of DaDao Chen, we learned valuable information about the culture and history behind the beautiful street. Our tour guide was super informative and interesting to listen to and gave us recommendations for things to do after the tour around the area as well as highlights of Taipei in general.

 

As per the tour guide’s recommendation, a group of us made our way to the NingXia night market where we stopped at many different stalls to eat. Below are some pictures of the different dishes we had tonight. My favorite part of the night market was when a big group of us stopped by a fresh fruit stand and tried so many different types of fruit for the first time together. We had fresh mango, dragon fruit, wax apples, papaya, pineapple, durian, and a custard apple. Even though I had tried most of the fruit before during my previous trips to Taiwan, it was so much fun sharing different fruit for everyone else to try and enjoy. During this trip so far I’ve felt so much pride in my heritage as I’ve been able to share it with my cohort. Showing them different foods and facts that I love has been so rewarding and I’m excited to share more of my experiences with them.