Passing through the tunnel on the way to Taipei, the sky changed for the better, just as the tour guide had told us. The bad weather was unlucky, but it was good for us to have enough time to talk with the tour guide. I asked her about what I felt was unusual on the cruise ship. There are so many Chinese people everywhere in Japan who talk loudly in their distinguishing high tone. Their behavior is often criticized in lots of tourist spots. However, no Chinese on the ship, quite the contrary. A quiz show was held on the ship on the first night and one of the questions was to ask the number of the passengers by nationality. I don't remember the exact numbers, but the largest was Japan, second, the U.S., then Australia, Canada, Germany,,,some other countries followed like that. To my surprise, there was no Chinese! I didn't see why, and I told our tour guide about this mystery. She laid out the reason why there was no Chinese on the ship. She said Taiwan was in the midst of the presidential campaign. The government took several steps to avoid sabotage by the Chinese Communist Party and stopped granting Chinese people visas. Her comments reminded me of the instruction of the chief purser on the Diamond Princess. Even if you don't get out of the ship in Keelung, you need to undergo the immigration check. If someone was refused entry into Taiwan, the Diamond Princess itself is not allowed to berth in Keelung. The ship's company would have rejected Chinese people on this cruise.
Then, the main topic of our conversation moved onto the presidential election. I hoped that cài yīngwén will win the presidential race, but the guide looked disappointed to know that I'm for cài yīngwén.
(Vocabulary)
sabotage
〈敵対者の設備・乗り物など〉 に破壊工作を行う
…を妨害する
[名] [U] 破壊工作,妨害行為
cài yīngwén 蔡英文
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