My friends in England were watching it And they were like, "Ah, we saw you on the..."
And they were like, making fun of me and stuff
But, um...
Yeah, it was organized by...
You did like a thousand-yard stare
Hello and welcome to Taiwan Talk
An interview show where we focus on topics from and about Taiwan
I'm today's host, Trevor Tortomasi
and this week, I'm speaking with Adam Hopkins
Adam is a freelance journalist writing and editing for a multitude of publications
He also works at a travel agency running tours around Taiwan
which, as we know, is an industry hard-hit by the pandemic
What's it called, and how has it been affected by the pandemic so far?
Um, the agency is called MyTaiwanTour
and it
used to be
A company where we would...
Basically, foreigners would visit Taiwan
And we'd offer bespoke guided tours
Or they could customize the tours
So we'd help them craft an itinerary
So, ah, you want to go to Taroko Gorge for three days?
We'll get you a driver, we'll get you an English-speaking tour guide
Was there an exact moment you realized that the pandemic had changed the world
and especially the travel industry?
I think it's when
we stopped having customers
Okay
So because it's like a travel agency where
Our main source of income was, foreigners come in
to visit Taiwan, and they don't speak Chinese, they can't read Chinese
so we have like, a fleet of tour guides who speak English
And I think it really changed when
The border shut to non-residents
so we just basically had
There was a little while when had no customers
I was supposed to go to South Korea for the first time, to do some comedy to go on holiday
And that ended up not happening
And then I was like
Oh, if people are cancelling flights for this, then I think Taiwan's gonna be affected, and then
Lo and behold
that also happened
so we just had a lot of bored tour guides hanging around the office
When the fleet started to get smaller
What were the bare bones that they decided to keep in the travel industry?
I think we got quite lucky, cause the
I think a lot of money was actually
put into the travel industry, into Taiwan's tourism industry, just to keep it alive, cause
pre-pandemic it was such a big industry, like
millions of tours that were coming in each year
You've got somewhere like Yongkang Street, or
Jiufen or something, and it's just
packed with tour groups, packed with foreigners
So a lot of
operators were hit pretty hard
but, um
We just kind of shifted the way the business works
We changed from targeting foreigners to targeting Taiwanese people
And there was like the big incentives last year
People were getting coupons towards hotels
And it seemed to work
Yeah, like over a...
A lot of people just
Once kind of like the paranoia or the fear had gone a little bit
cause obviously, Taiwan was hit by SARS
Right
pretty badly, so especially like a lot of the slightly
older generations were
very cautious and people were wearing masks everywhere
A lot of people still wouldn't travel
Like, people this year still wouldn't actually
for like Chinese New Year, wouldn't
But I think, once people
Once the cases had been
"Ah, there's been two months without a domestic case"
and people started getting more relaxed
then the local tourism industry
actually benefited quite well, there was kind of like a resurgence
so we changed the products we offer, a little bit
to, um
target Taiwanese people and maybe give them an experience they're not used to, like
now we have like, yoga retreats
or, um
we have a spinoff called "Saiology", which is like
"sai" is like Taiwanese for "master"
and "-ology" as in, just "science"
so you like put them together and
I thought the "sci" part would be the science
No, it's
Oh, haha, you'd think... but what is "sci"?
It's just, "double science"
"The study of science"
And it's, um
So you can go and do an activity with a
Taiwanese "master" who's really
been honing his craft for years, like you can go
to Nantou, and
You can make your own bamboo toothbrush and do sustainable stuff
or you can go and make your own soy sauce
in Miaoli or somewhere, like that kind of thing
That doesn't sound so bad
Yeah, it's interesting products, but um
when you, especially when you're like an agency
you need to offer stuff that people can't do alone
cause you could, we could take you to
go to Jiufen Old Street
but like, a Taiwanese person doesn't need help doing that
Right
Do you know what I mean?
so we had to really
They've seen Spirited Away, they already get it
They've seen it, they've lived it, you know what I mean?
but um
so yeah, it was just basically trying to make a more niche kind of specialized product
but for the actual job I do, I edit our magazine and blog
which is, in English it's called "Taiwan Scene"
and I'll write English language content about visiting Taiwan
so before the pandemic happened, we'd have, like
This is our product, and here's, you can find out more information about this place
to see if you want to do it, kind of thing
But now we've had to shift to maybe target more local, like
foreigners who already live here
For example, like "Here's how you open a bank account"
or there's like more practical stuff
See, for example, when it comes time to pay taxes or something
you're scrambling online, where do I pay tax, what time do I have to pay tax
Right
Ideally we'd like to become the place
where foreigners say, "Oh, we'll go on Taiwan Scene
and this is where my information is"
cause a lot of the time people will just post a Facebook status, and hopefully their friend knows
mhmm
It's like "Hey, where can I buy this in Taipei"
and maybe someone knows
And even that doesn't seem that polished
because you'll post, "Hey, where can I get a toothbrush in Taipei"
and it'll be like, "Recommendations"
and show a map of all of Asia
"How far are you willing to travel
for oral hygiene?"
Oh man
On the topic of getting the word out
And also telling, I guess, foreigners around the world
What Taiwan's situation is like
You wrote an article for vice about
what it's like living in Taiwan during the pandemic
in a country where they handled it pretty smoothly
Well basically, I wanted to write something just cause I was
really annoyed how the UK was handling it
and just to prove that there's places which can do it properly
It just showed how...
I was boasting about the tracing system, like
Do you remember when that cruise ship came in last year?
I do remember that
and then we all got that Google map which had the hot spots on it
And it was like, this is where all the people
This is where all the tourists visited, who had COVID, potentially
They put their pandemic action plan into place
They were so well-prepared, it was...
It was just phenomenally impressive
Yeah
That kinda gave me the peace of mind, that
It might be okay here if this is happening so quickly
So apart from travel and journalism
you've also played some impressive cricket matches
What's your history with cricket?
Um...
Can you explain what cricket is
Yeah, I was gonna say
I was gonna say "for those who might not know"
but we can just say "Americans", this is a friendly space
Well, and Taiwanese as well, because, um
I usually just say, "It's baseball, but good"
And that gets a lot of mixed reactions, especially from Americans, or
I think baseball's the biggest sport in Taiwan
But no, I've been playing cricket since I was 11 years old
That's about long enough to finish one game...?
Yeah, that's the thing
You try to explain, like, "You've played for five days and it's still a draw?"
but no, "That means that both sides have really been so skillful"
No, the longest game I ever played was three days
So I heard that you played in a match that drew
attention from a global audience during the pandemic
Yeah, they organized a league here, so it was like
It was over, I think it was four weekends in March to April last year
And it was a really weird situation where
Taiwan was the only place on the planet where you could actually play
competitive cricket
and
The game has such a huge audience
particularly in the subcontinental countries
especially like India
and there's a lot of Indians in Taiwan who play cricket
and it got to the point where we televised it
In India, it got picked up by this
streaming app called Sports Tiger
which is like an Indian streaming app
and it was on YouTube for a little while
and people were just...
watching Taiwanese cricket
But like, it was super weird
Like, people were betting on it
You can bet on anything, I guess, you can bet on a corgi race
Thanks for the British "corgi angle", the Queen
Oh okay, haha
So if you just Googled it
and there was these guys who were writing like
articles for how to pick your fantasy team
And saying, "This guy's a good player"
But they don't know, they were making it up
Like I'd just find my name in these articles
I saw this whole, this video on YouTube
where this guy was doing a whole
advice for the draft in Hindi
and the only word I understood was "Adam Hopkins"
It was bizarre
The team I played for was mostly
We had an English guy, a couple of Sri Lankans
and everyone else was from India
and they were telling me, like
"Oh yeah, you're really popular"
And I was in the lead, like
"Well everyone's picking you, they're all saying you're really good"
and I was like
"Oh no"
It was horrifying
And then my mum was watching it
and my friends in England were watching it
and they were like "Ah, we saw you on the..."
and they were making fun of me and stuff
but, um...
Yeah, it was organized by...
You did like a thousand-yard stare for a moment there
where you thought back on it
In a similar thread, you've been a
pretty regular comic at Two Three Comedy
doing stand-up in a time where
it's pretty hard to gather big crowds for
for comedy in most places around the world
What kind of line do you walk when trying to make people laugh in Chinese?
Well if you're doing an English show
a lot of people will do little punchlines in Chinese
or setups or something, but
It's usually, you're making fun of your own "lack of language ability"
Mhmm
kind of thing, so like I used to have this really dumb joke
which I kind of wrote ironically, to talk about how people
foreigners are always like, "Oh, I mix up this word with this"
and I had this joke about mixing up the word for "bees" and "honey"
cause it's just the characters the other way around
and it's like
"So I went to the supermarket and I tried to buy a jar of bees"
And you've also done international comedy
for quite a few years, how long has it been?
I started doing comedy in
the summer of 2017
so I'm
three and a half years in
You're three and a half years old
Yeah, basically
and that's a baby, that's nothing
If I was, like
trying to get gigs in New York
...no
Oh, haha
But doing it in Asia, it's kind of, um...
There's less comics
and there's slightly more opportunity
And this is doing it in English, specifically?
Yes, yes definitely
The Chinese scene here is
taking off
quite well, but it's completely
I don't know as much about that, it's completely different
but doing it in English, for example
like, a year into comedy I'm in an international festival
or when I used to do it in Shanghai
there was a point where comedy was huge in English
in terms of, the reach was big
like, globally as well
international comics would fly in to headline the clubs
and we'd get to be their opening acts
Who people pay to be funny
Exactly
and you just watch them, and you're just like
"Ah, this is how it works"
So I'm really excited for
eventually, when
we'll be able to bring comics into Taiwan, like professionals
and everyone's like, "You're really funny"
and I'm like, "No, this...
this is what it is"
All right so is there anything else that you'd like to say to people living in Taiwan
foreigners, locals, and both?
Keep up the good work
The worst thing
I think the health minister even said this, the worst thing is when
if people here start getting vaccinated and people start letting their guard down
cause again, it only takes one
So something I also noticed in Taiwan is
during the pandemic, was that
The first time that they sent out that text about the cruise ship
when they
put the locations of all the people that had been infected with COVID
and were kind of around Taipei
It didn't explode
And even recently, still in Taiwan
We had the
Taoyuan cluster that was so immediately controlled
and even when they said
"Hey, this person was positive when they went to the mall
they went to Costco
they went to like three different giant places yesterday
and still it didn't spread
Especially because of the population density here
how did it not spread as much?
I think it's mostly because people are wearing masks and
Definitely
It's really coming to terms with how much wearing masks
makes a difference
It's a really good case study for, "Hey, masks work
and so does hand sanitizer", like it's just that simple
Yeah, I mean like
if I leave my house and I forgot my mask
I will go back upstairs, and I will get it, and I'll put it back on
because that's just something we do
when we go out, and the fact that we're all doing it
That's the hardest part, is getting everyone to do it
Also I never thought I would get
If you told me three years ago that in 2021
you're going to get really excited every time you hear about a new travel bubble
I wouldn't have believed you
"First of all, what's a travel bubble?"
Haha, "First of all, 'travel bubble'?"
Alright, so anything you'd like to plug?
Your work, articles, links, shows?
Yeah for sure, if you want to read stuff I've been writing
Please visit "taiwan-scene.com"
and then for shows
just come down to Two Three Comedy
I'll spell it on the screen
but thank you for that
Well, thank you Adam, for joining us today
and thanks to everyone else for watching "Taiwan Talk"
with the amazing Adam Hopkins
Until next time, I'm Trevor Tortomasi, on ICRT FM 100