Finally, Taiwanese TV popular culture makes it to Israel, with a wonderful effort in translating the Taiwan TV drama “Devil beside you” into Hebrew(traditional Chinese: 惡魔在身邊, Hebrew : השטן לצידך). The Asian TV drama craze in Israel began while I was still there with the wonderful Korean drama “My Lovely Sam Soon” making it into the Israeli telenovela channel schedule 3 times a day, and it’s great to see that more and more Asian …

The Taiwanese girl who’s the president of the NCKU IEAS student club, promoting international culture exchange, approached me a few weeks back and asked that I give an hour+ presentation about Israel. Without giving it much thought I agreed. Postponing everything to the last minute, I only started thinking about what to present the day of the presentation and was faced with the general problem of - what would Taiwanese students want to know about Israel? of all the things that Israel is about, where should I start? Actually, this is when this blog came in quite handy. I found out that I can actually use what I’ve been doing here, having quite a few resources about the Israel-Taiwan connection, with …

Every once in a while I find another Taiwanese perspective about Israel showing some of the personal connections the Taiwanese have towards Israel. Surprisingly, I keep meeting Taiwanese that show interest in information about Israel, even here in Tainan, usually due to their Christian beliefs, most of them telling me that they would feel like there’s almost no information available. I agree, but maybe reading-watching other people’s experience might help them them with that, and so, here are some of the Taiwanese-Israeli connections I found so far that offer some information or community regarding Israel in Mandarin/Taiwanese:

The Taiwanese perspective on Israel : Taiwan’s “World’s Number 1″ visits Israel (Mandarin TV program)
Ruby - A Taiwanese Blog about Taiwanese life …

There’s usually not much happening in Israel regarding Taiwan and Taiwanese culture. There’s the occasional photo gallery show at the university, but rarely have I seen more than that. Which is why I was surprised and thrilled to learn that the Israel Taiwan friendship organization is holding a small Taiwan food and film festival picnic event in Israel. Following are the details :   We are proud to invite you to the 2007 Taiwanese Food & Film Festival which will take place in “Park Canada” Latrun. A wide variety of mouth-watering traditional Taiwanese delicacies will be on offer for you to …

As an Israeli - this has got to be one of strangest things I encountered in southern Taiwan yet (:O). Seeds of Jesus Church of Kaohsiung in Taiwan is apparently going around Taiwan and performing the “Worship of Israel Dance”, with something that sounds like Israeli music from the 60s with Hebrew lyrics and looks a like very traditional Israeli dancing. Take this next Tainan dance, for example - “Ma tov o-ma naim shevet achim gam yachad” or “מה טוב ומה נעים שבת אחים גם יחד” - loosely translated to “how wonderful it is when brothers meet up together”. :S Or, how about the good old “Hava …

It’s interesting to meet some of the international students who just recently arrived in Tainan and hear some of the Chinese words they pick up on their first weeks here. Obviously, there’s Ni Hao. There’s the various necessities for getting food like rice, noodle and the basic words for meat. There are also the words they pick up for tea and beer. Hao Chi, or "delicious", usually follows. If it’s a guy, most chances he’ll get to know the word Shuai very fast, as Taiwanese politeness dictates that you compliment everyone, even those considered monstrosities in their home country, as handsome. All white folks, whether from Europe, Australia, South Africa or even Israel, learn the Chinese word for "American" or "Canadian", as …