Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/02/04
By: Joseph Yeh, CNA staff reporter

Photo courtesy of William Lien

Award-winning Taiwanese novelist William Lien (連明偉) has always had an eye for overseas adventure, performing his military service by teaching Chinese in the Philippines and working odd jobs in Canada and Hawaii after that.

So when he saw an offer online a few years ago to volunteer in St. Lucia, a diplomatic ally of Taiwan, to teach table tennis, he was very much intrigued and decided to give it a try, seeing it as an opportunity for a new experience.

Beyond testing himself, however, he would also be serving as an unofficial ambassador for his country because the position was advertised by TaiwanICDF, a government-funded agency that runs the country’s foreign aid programs, as part of its volunteer program.
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