According to News, the president Trump has just signed the TAIPEI Act, Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative, which is a big move for us in long term diplomatic relationship. For so many years, the relationship between Taiwan and U.S was based on Taiwan Relations Act, and there were no officials had ever visited the island during their incumbencies. After the president Trump signing the Taiwan Travel Act, high level officials between Taiwan and U.S could exchange visits.

Recently, airline companies have changed the name Taiwan into “Taiwan, province of China” on destination list for their official websites under the pressure of China. Such actions were also happened on university’s websites or the envelopes with province of China on the address for application letters. Our athletes still join international sports contests as Chinese Taipei. There is no Taiwan embassy overseas, but we have Taipei Economic and Cultural Offices. So our people could ask for help when we are abroad. I visited the office while I was in other country, and I saw Chinese women there intentionally changing their nationalities into Taiwan(ROC). Although the man with her is also doubtful, both of them still belong to “Taiwan nationals”. From that moment, I realized the difference between Taiwan and China, and I also felt sad about our international situations.

People may think the food is an easy or boring topic without any political perspectives, but actually it does relate with the way we want to show our cultures. I saw some Chinese opened their restaurants overseas under the name of Chinese cuisine but included Taiwanese foods. Maybe they just wanted to attract more customers, so I would not blame on them. One interesting thing is that Taiwanese restaurants in Japan were opened mainly by Chinese, and they cook Chinese food only without serving any Taiwanese dishes. We may drink beers occasionally, and we have Taiwan beers too. However, the Taiwan beer was actually made during Japanese colonization; so it came out as Japanese beer for the first time. After the Japanese times was over, the beer was changed to Tsingtao beer ( Chinese) and became popular in China. The Chinese government dissatisfied about the rising sales in Tsingtao beers, thinking that the small island could not represent the whole big country. Therefore, the Tsingtao beer was officially named as Taiwan beer.

One of the politicians in Taiwan suggested that we could change our country’s name into Republic of Chunghwa. So others will not consider us Chinese nationals, and we will not be halted at the airports due to Coronavirus. I hope we will figure out the acceptable name for each of us.