For example, what was there that you did not like?

Heidelberg, there’s a big one.

Warm dishes?

What is it with your heart that you just mentioned?

I’ve never heard of it. What is it?

Does it affect your health, or?

You’re walking on mountains all the time, basically.

It was so serious that you had to be treated in the hospital?

That was one of the reasons you went back?

What happened exactly when you were in Germany? What made you...?

Then he sent you over to Heidelberg?

You wanted to join the local soccer club?

That was one of the reasons you went back. One of the main primary reasons?

You went back to have a surgery in Taiwan?

But your dad stayed on in Germany?

What about your health today? Today, do you still need to go check your heart every now and then? Do you have to take medicine?

Every year?

Because of the surgery you underwent years ago?

Let’s jump a bit.

Hold on, do you want to jump over...? Let’s jump to Tsai Ing‑Wen and how she picked you. How did she know that you’re around? How did she know that you might be a person she wants to work with?

You just said Premier, but you’re not referring to Tsai Ing‑Wen?

The Premier at that time was...?

The woman I just met last week?

When you were sworn in.

Building this Asian Silicon Valley in Taiwan, you said, really is one of your main tasks, right?

What does this dot stand for?

In the beginning, it was Asian Silicon Valley?

Now it’s Asia.Silicon Valley.

How will you do it?

Can I see the top again?

Asia Silicon Valley Development Agency.

Asvda.org.

I’ll note this. Asvda.org.

Can you tell me concretely, what’s your vision of Taiwan? How do you wish to see Taiwan’s tech scene in a few years?

What barriers are there at the moment to build up a startup, to found a startup?

You just mentioned other Asian hubs or IT hubs like Singapore. What does Singapore have that Taiwan does not have?

You also mentioned that part of the job is linking startups to the American Silicon Valley.

What’s your relation? Do you know founders in the Silicon Valley?

How do you know them? What’s your...?

The ASVDA agency set up for that, had their C‑level people, I think all of them are Silicon Valley veterans who returned to Taiwan to run this. They already have a lot of personal connections.

My own personal connection is mostly around the open‑source community, the free culture community and so on, which underlies many of the new startups. The AI scene is almost entirely open‑source at this moment. The IoT scene is not.

AI is artificial intelligence?

What’s the IoT?

That was before you started working for the government?

Speaking of Asia, there’s so much going on in China, also the tech scene. Beijing has been called the Silicon Valley of Asia a few times.

I think Shenzhen was more because of the production.

Anyway, what I wanted to say is for example, there’s this ranking of the richest guys in China, the Hurun ranking. Number two, at the moment, is the founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma.

Number three is the founder of Tencent, Pony Ma. There are those big companies, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu.

They’re making huge amounts of money.

Can Taiwan keep up with them?