My Taiwanese friends in Israel

While visiting the Taiwanese Chinese new years party a week ago with a Taiwanese student friend from the Hebrew University - Wen, I finally had the chance to meet Ruby who I know through her Taiwanese blogging about Israel and Violet who’s an Israeli-Taiwanese girl studying Mandarin Chinese through blogging in Chinese about her life in Israel. Later on that week, Violet’s mother Wendy - a Taiwanese living here in Israel – invited Ruby, Ruby’s Israeli boyfriend, Wen and myself to have a Taiwanese style lunch at her apartment. I was naturally ecstatic.

I think all the girls were very excited to meet with each other, having long conversions in Mandarin and Taiwanese that I was mostly unable to follow. It’s been over a year since I’ve been in a situation where I’m sitting with a Taiwanese bunch, trying to keep up and figure out what they were talking about, and in a masochistic sense – I’ve missed that. Their unique faces, body gestures and speech tones, that are so different than that of the Israelis, was fascinating and heartwarming. Taiwanese life in Israel as well as Israeli culture and people were a big topic for discussion, usually not in a positive way, and I could sympathize with their difficulties. I do think there is something extremely difficult with the somewhat direct and aggressive Israeli culture to any foreigner, let alone a Taiwanese. Although the conclusion that they should maybe change to be able to "survive" through the Israeli reality makes me a bit sad, I can understand where it’s coming from. The differences in their perspective about everyday life, like education, people interaction, work ethics and many other subjects is staggering, making me re-evaluate allot of what has been drilled down to my Israeli personality since birth.

The food was absolutely gorgeous, the kind of Taiwanese cooking I could never dream of finding anywhere in Israel. Wendy has proven to be a wonderful chef, treating us with a big variety of yummy dishes – just thinking back on it makes my mouth become watery. It was accompanied with some traditional style Taiwanese green tea that was just the way I like it and good red-wine that made me blush the whole evening. There were still a few small dining costumes that I had to figure out, such as not putting the drink bottles on the food table, as they had their own place on a little side table.

I had the most amazing time and I could only hope that I’ll get to see more of my Taiwanese friends in Israel soon…

(If you can read Chinese, checkout what Ruby wrote about it)