This Creative Writing Thesis includes four short stories written by the author. Each of them a portrays a young foreigner’s personal experience as he or she interacts with the locals, and adapts to his/her new life in Taipei. The first story describes the gay relationship between a young man from India and his boss in a Tech company, and we see how the former must struggle to balance his outward, conformist professional life and his inward, messy personal life. The second story looks at the relationship between an African student and a middle-aged Taiwanese lady as they spend a Sunday hiking in the hills near the city. In the third story, the young white artist, also working a part-time English teacher, juggles between reality and his passion for theatrical art, which slowly turning into an overwhelming obsession. The last story show us the life of a young Vietnamese woman who agrees to marry a Taiwanese man in Vietnam, quickly becomes pregnant and comes to Taiwan with her this man and his family. She quickly realizes her husband is a cold fish who does not really love her so deeply, and at the end she seems to be considering getting an abortion and returning to Vietnam. The stories employ a realistic style and try to catch the everyday life of the characters and their interactions and deepest feelings, dreams and fantasies. Now and then, when the descriptions of characters and scenes become more poetic and we even enter the dreams of characters, we might say the style comes closer to surrealism.
