 "Photo: Stephen Durda")
Taiwanese students are not from Thailand, they are from Taiwan, said Huan-Hsuan Tseng, president of the Taiwanese Student Association and educational psychology graduate student.
This is a common misconception and one of many points the Taiwanese Student Association tried to educate students about at the Taiwanese Culture Exhibition on the West Mall Monday.
Several cardboard displays presented facts and editorials about Taiwanese food, rituals, economy and geography.
"There are about 250 Taiwanese students at UT, so we wanted to educate the other students about these few Taiwanese students' culture," Tseng said.
Subjects discussed in the fair included the celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year, the lucrative computer chip industry and Taiwanese hand puppetry.
"In Taiwan, hand puppets are a very interesting and important part of our culture. Kids like it as well as adults. There are hand puppet shows even on TV," said Pei-Yu Wang, Web manager of the Taiwanese Student Association and a curriculum and instruction graduate student.
From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., members of the Taiwanese Student Association educated students on the West Mall before moving the fair to the University Teaching Center.
"After spending about 7 or 8 minutes at their stands in the UTC, I really wanted to travel to Taiwan. They had a lot of super awesome stuff to say," said Kelly Wileman, nursing junior.
The Taiwanese Student Association is different from the University's Taiwanese International Association and Taiwanese American Association in that its membership mainly consists of graduate and doctoral students, Tseng said.
"Our main focus is sharing research, knowledge and experiences with Taiwanese students internally within our association, so hopefully this event will expand information about Taiwan to more of the UT community," Tseng said.
For more information regarding the Taiwanese Student Association, check their Web site at http://studentorgs.utexas.edu/tsa.
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