BEIJING: A growing number of Taiwan professionals are choosing to move to the Chinese mainland and act as a bridge for compatriots across the Taiwan Strait, drawing on their strengths to foster mutual understanding and promote Chinese culture.
“I don’t want to remain a small fish in a pond,” said Hsueh Ying-tung, a Taiwan animation director who moved to the mainland around 2018. “The mainland is like an ocean. I want to swim out to it and experience a broader world.”
Although the island’s Democratic Progressive Party authorities have been pursuing the severance of cultural ties with the Chinese nation and restricting exchanges and communication across the Taiwan Strait, statistics show that the number of first-time visitors from Taiwan to the mainland has been rising in recent years.
According to the National Immigration Administration, in the second half of last year, the number of first-time visitors from Taiwan to the Chinese mainland increased by 32.9 percent month-on-month and 40.9 percent year-on-year.
Many who have stepped beyond the island’s “information cocoon” are working to narrow the communication gap between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. They have also come to realize that such exchanges not only broaden their horizons but also create new opportunities to promote shared Chinese cultural heritage.
Lan Li, who moved to the mainland to study in 2017, is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of History at Jinan University in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.
Lan chose the major out of a strong personal interest. However, after beginning her studies on the mainland, she realized there was a great deal of history she had never learned in Taiwan. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
