Time.news – “Last week one night there was a very strong storm that I had never heard in eight years, I woke up with a start and I was convinced it was the war”: Elena is a 36-year-old Italian who lives in Taiwan since 2014 and has got used to the winds of war around the island. The tension of the last few days, however, since the visit of the speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, was announced, has hit her.
“Here we are living the usual life, nothing has changed”, assures Elena in an interview with Time.news, “we work and continue our everyday activities and friends and relatives are not too worried. The Taiwanese are brave and they are used to threats and media attention.A former Italian colleague of mine had to return home to his mother’s bedside but he wants to return because he lives well here. There are no assaults on supermarkets, just a few extra large military trucks on the streets“.
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Taiwan
Her home is in Taoyuan, in the most industrialized area of the island, an hour’s drive north of Taipei, where she resides with her Taiwanese husband Louis, a family business owner, and their two children, five-year-old Shao. and Ann of two. Elena works occasionally and in this period she is doing a rescue course at sea.
The 23 million Taiwanese have now made the call to Chinese threats even if this time, with the massive military maneuvers in the Strait, they are more scary. “The children only have a Taiwanese passport and we are also giving them foreign ones (Elena has Italian and British citizenship, ed) in case she runs away”, she reports.
“Last week the exercise was held with which twice a year an attack is simulated and we all have to stay at home for half an hour”, says Elena, “when we talk about it at home there is a bit of fear that this time there is really the possibility of a war “.
© Time.news Chinese Valentine’s Day is celebrated in Taiwan today
“Don’t worry, we’re not ready to become Chinese yet,” reassures her husband Louis. But for Elena, too, he fears that in the event of an attack by Beijing the island would not be able to resist. After all the news in Taiwan talks about nothing else and the news about tensions with China have supplanted those about the pandemic.
“Nobody understood the true meaning of this visit by Nancy Pelosi, she did not make any particular statements or announcements and then one wonders: what changes?”, Underlines Elena. “The United States promises support but there is little concreteness, in the end, Taiwan is alone in the face of Chinese power and there is the fear of losing freedom with repercussions also for economic activities “.” Louis “, he concludes,” would not want children to grow up in a world monopolized by China as is now the case in Hong Kong “.