Hunanese-born Shen Ting-jie (申婷頡) attended the Beijing Oriental Culture and Art Institute (北京東方文化藝術學院) to further her education. She has worked as a visual design director in Beijing and has professional design and illustration talents. She quit her employment till 2018, got married to Taiwan because of love, and moved to Chiayi City. Shen Ting-jie made the decision to use her artistic creation skills to produce cultural and creative goods for Chiayi City in order to support the growth of regional history and culture. At the same time, she took part in several family events for new immigrants and actively shared her life experiences with them.
New immigrant from Hunan. Shen Ting-jie (申婷頡), brings Chiayi’s culture and history to the globe via art creation.Photo provided by NIA Chiayi County Service Center
When Shen Ting-jie (申婷頡) firstly arrived in Chiayi, she admitted that it was challenging to get employment and that many of her certificates were not accepted in Taiwan. Everything had to be started over, whether it was employment or artistic production. Shen’s family in Hunan even persuaded her to return to her hometown many times.
New immigrant from Hunan. Shen Ting-jie (申婷頡), brings Chiayi’s culture and history to the globe via art creation.Photo reproduced from Shen Ting-jie (申婷頡) Facebook
Shen Ting-jie (申婷頡), who was expecting at the time, experienced extreme difficulty. Fortunately, there are new immigrants care associations in various regions of Taiwan. With the care of the associations, new immigrants from many different countries can share their thoughts together.
Shen Ting-jie (申婷頡) learnt about her talent for art design through the introduction of Taiwanese acquaintances, which may be very beneficial to the growth of Taiwan's artistic production. Shen thus made the decision to set up a studio for visual design creation and dedicate herself to creation in order to further the growth of art. Shen once took part in the NIA's "new immigrants’ dream building project," receiving funding to publish picture books (稻草人吉爾奇遇歷險記) that she distributed to kids in Taiwan's mountainous regions, elementary schools, and Chiayi City communities, in the hopes that students would appreciate the splendor of Chiayi's history and culture by reading this imaginative tale.
Shen Ting-jie (申婷頡) gradually developed an interest in Chiayi's historical history after relocating there. She claimed that when she first learned that Chiayi was known as Taocheng, which literally means “the city of peach,” she initially assumed that this was because the region was abundant in peaches, but it turned out to be completely different. It was because the fence of the ancient city was shaped like a peach. Shen created a variety of cultural and creative products to introduce Chiayi's distinctive humanities, environment, ecology, and industries, carry forward cultural connotation of Chiayi City and promote the tourism industry in order to increase awareness of Chiayi's historical development as "Taocheng."
Shen Ting-jie (申婷頡) aspires to use the power of painting to foster the solidarity of the new immigrants through the events planned by the NIA Chiayi City Service Center. Shen also met many new immigrant families from many nations, including Vietnam and the Philippines, throughout the process so that the new immigrants who married Taiwan may look after each other in Chiayi. Finally, Shen Ting-jie urged the new immigrants to Taiwan to have the bravery to share their works and fully utilize their talents in order to have fulfilling lives.
