Wednesday 6 February 2008
I'd like to wish everyone a very solemn Ash Wednesday today, as well as a very happy Chinese New Year! Xinnian Kuaile!!!!
Taiwan does not have too many diplomatic allies, as countries tend to side with the bigger, richer, more powerful China. (You really can't be friends with both.) But, thanks to some careful aid programs, Taiwan does have a few friends, and Paraguay is one of the very few countries that officially recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Therefore, you see Taiwanese/Paraguayan organizations, research centers, and cultural programs everywhere. We even found a statue of "Generalismo Chiang Kai-Shek"!
In Ciudad del Este, there is a very strong Taiwanese community, it seems, and we stumbled into Chinatown (umm . . . Taiwantown?) This is a sign we used to see in Taiwan all the time: "to run business." This was so clearly brought from Taiwan and altered to fit a Spanish-speaking neighborhood ("abierto" means "open" in Spanish) that Ryan and I had to stop and have a laugh when we saw this.
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