Anyone from/fan of Taiwan here?
Just want to say: don’t forget about Taiwan. It’s obvious that on this platform, you have to be very careful talking about it. I’m an American and have learned Chinese for well over five years, and I’ve spoken Chinese with a lot of people on this platform. However, I did notice a few things. When one live streamer was taking some request for songs to play, I mentioned a couple of Chinese songs that I like (by Mainland Chinese artists) and he happily played them. However, when I asked if he wanted to play another song I loved that happened to be sung by a Taiwanese artist, he paused to look it up then suddenly said ”nope haven’t heard that” and it was dropped. When I was a bit naïve and figured it was OK to at least ask another streamer if they had been to Taiwan, or mentioned something casual about Taiwan, I would do so and they would ignore the question/comment but responded to all other ones about other subjects (all of my comments were in Chinese). I definitely wasn’t mentioning Taiwan to start any kind of drama – I genuinely lived there for three years throughout the Covid pandemic and I learned Chinese from Taiwanese people, so it’s just a part of my life experience, but I realize through trying to share that with the people on this platform, they truly are unable to freely talk about it, and they have to be careful or else they would risk having their content taken down. So I think it feels likely troubling, for people of Taiwan or people that are fans of Taiwan and know the Taiwanese people, to see how many Americans are engaging in this platform where Taiwan cannot be very acknowledged. I just want to make sure that people are not forgetting about Taiwan.