Hello everyone, my name is Jih-Wen. Yeah, I am she/ her. And I wear glasses, longish hair, and about 160 centimetres high. I am colour yellow dark skin colour. I've been living in a climate emergency for 54 years. I'm from Taiwan but I live in England. Today is 2022 September the 13th. Now is 5:34pm in the evening.
I am currently in a place called walleye up in the high mountain. And I am here doing my day one of quarantine because I've been tested positive. And where I am, I can see dark green mountain and lots of trees through the window. And it's raining outside, there's been a typhoon. It's been raining for three days quite hard, and especially towards the evening is really, really- in a way that's quite nice because it's not too hot. Taiwan can be about 40 degrees at this time. So I think we are currently probably about 28 degrees, which is very comfortable temperature.
Where I grew up, I grew up in South of Taiwan in Taiwan, which is a kind of countryside town, not a big city for sure. And I was there until I was 21 before I went to England, so the time I was growing up, it was a town that I can literally ride a bike and go everywhere I wanted to go, I can reach. We don't tend to walk too much because it's too hot. But we ride bikes and scooters. But no you can't ride scooters until you are about 15 and 16 and pass the scooter licence. Our town in south is very friendly and in comparison to the capital city Taipei, is also considered considerably cheaper to live in. It's a place lots of people would say hello to one and the other. We don't tend to close our doors. The door seems to be open all the time for other people to come in and say hello, unlike while we live in England is like you don't see people until people make an arrangement with you to say hey, I'm coming to visit. So in Thai Nyan is very different people seems to be much closer, and they seems to be able to help one and the other that you don't really need to call for help. The help is just there. But at the same time when you think about it, I remember when I turned 20 I was just kind of having enough of my parents knew where I am whenever I was without actually telling them but my where abouts seems to be able to been spotted whenever they wanted to know where I was.
I think the climate emergency in Taiwan is the development of sites for tourists. I think that is been over developed. When typhoon strikes, when the earthquake happened, I never actually thought about it until about 20 years ago, to be honest, you just kind of live in the environment. And in the earth, thinking that just happened. It isn't just happened naturally, and kind of following from what has been advocated in the past 20 years, you do realise there's a huge issues there and its global. So when I first time feel the climate change emergency was about 20 years ago, when I actually started working in the arts field. And I started working, I remembered that I attended Julie's Bicycle events and realise how important it is we actually act for it. Not just about doing it yourself, but bring people in with you to have that kind of... make any difference if you can.
Again, you know, I said that I start feel a knowledge, it was about 20 or years ago. But I also feel like everyone was just talking about it and doing it. But there wasn't really a sense of emergency until 2020, COVID, striked. When we were all in a lockdown, you feel a difference, you just feel a difference in terms of whole environment. I mean, birds claiming back their own place, naturally duck walk out on the road, you know, animal was coming out, the tree were greener, the air feel fresher, because no one was travelling, not even on the road, and you hear the natural sounds, they were much clearer. You think, well, my goodness me if we could maybe do less of that travelling or do less of the moving around? What could this world be? How do we do that? I mean, how do we actually make that happen? Can we actually do it? Is another question kind of come straight after my thoughts of thinking, wow, this is what the difference you could make.
How climate conscious people around me, not really, I don't think people feel and talk about it in Asia is a very different sense fear of climate emergency here, which is worrying.
How do I feel about the future? I think there's a both ways feeling hopeful but feeling hopeless. I think it is about when people feel that they want to do it, or when people feel that they need to do it. But feel and need is different. I think when people feel that they wants to do it is coming out from the bottom bottom of their hearts that they feel they need to do it. And therefore they may actually act with awareness and naturally doing their part. I think you need to come down from a much strategic thinking or there's a rules or some kind of regulation to make us all do it. I think small part of other people doing it is not going to make any difference.
Why is acting on climate change important to me? I feel we have a sense of responsibility for our next generation. I feel we are the one who is actually ruin the planet. I think the whole pressure is already a lot in comparison to our parents time. And our time and then I can see to our next generation is there may not be a place that they actually can live.
The helpful thing is lots of people I know are taking action in it. And that is hopeful.