David Hull, Ryan Adams, Anna Hennessey, and Jonathan Lee, UCSB graduate students, were recommended by the CTS to visit Taiwan and engage in field and archival dissertation research. Hull is a graduate student in East Asian Studies, while Adams, Hennessey, and Lee pursue advanced degrees in Religious Studies. Adams was recipient of a fellowship to study at Taiwan Normal University Language Center (9/04–3/05) and award a two-week trip to Taiwan in December 2005. Hennessey also received a fellowship, which has enabled her to study at the Taiwan National University Language Center (9/05–6/06).

Hull, who benefited from two weeks of touring Taiwan along with fifty other foreigners, sponsored by a Taiwanese government program aimed at increasing tourism, writes “At the end of the trip, we were asked what Taiwan’s most appealing feature was. Some mentioned the scenery, others said that the culture was entrancing but, by far, the most popular answer was the friendliness of the people. Without fail, we, even the most demanding of us, were treated with exquisite kindness. It might be expected that those involved with the tour, the guides and escorts, would treat us well, and they did, but what was most moving was the treatment we received from people with seemingly no vested interest in our trip—the schoolgirl who offered to share an umbrella during a downpour, the man who found a camera bag and took a great deal of trouble to find its owner, the young girl who seemed too embarrassed to try her English, but thought nothing of guiding some of us through the Taipei subway. Not only did she point them in the right direction, but she followed them through two missed stops in order to get them back on the right train. More than anything, I believe that friendliness is Taiwan’s greatest natural resource.”

Lee, a 2004–2005 recipient of the Blakemore Freeman Fellowship for Advanced Chinese Language, was further supported by the Taiwan Ministry of Education Scholarship for the 2005– 2006 academic year, which he reports to have enabled him to increase his Mandarin language abilities markedly and to begin the study of Minnanese and classical Chinese training. In addition, his extended stay in Taiwan will contribute substantially to his preliminary field and archival research for his dissertation. Lee has recently published “Mazu yu Tai-wan xin yimin de Meiguohua” [Mazu and the Americanization of New Immigrants from Taiwan] in Chinese.

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