West Valley leaders look to Taiwan city for economic growth

WEST VALLEY CITY — City leaders are planning a trip to Taiwan at the end of July to build global business relationships with the island country.

The 13-day trip by the mayor, a city councilman and ChamberWest President Alan Anderson will include a study of how West Valley's sister city, Nantou, recovered from a 7.6-magnitude earthquake in 1999.

The 10-member delegation will be celebrating West Valley City's 10-year relationship with the Far East city of about 105,000 people. In addition to elected officials and the chamber, representatives from the sister city committee, Utah Transit Authority and Granger-Hunter Improvement District will attend, with all but one paying their own way.

A native Taiwanese police sergeant will act as official translator, and Ross Olsen, director of the city's cultural celebration center, also will attend, with their flights funded from the sister city committee budget. The Taiwanese hosts will cover all other expenses.

"This is not a junket," Mayor Mike Winder said. "This is a sister city program that works. It has been going for 10 years and has been able to do significant things in several areas."

Taiwan is very welcoming and accepting of Utah residents because of the country's ties with Mormon missionaries, according to a Taiwanese representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in San Francisco.

Winder served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the northern part of the Taiwanese island and speaks fluent Mandarin. Like West Valley, Nantou has many middle-class people and strong family-centered cultural orientation.

"At the end of the day, you realize there's more that unites than divides us as fellow human beings on this planet," Winder said.

But there are also differences, according to Keith Sadler, chairman of West Valley's sister city committee.

On his last trip to Taiwan, Sadler particularly enjoyed the bamboo-based diets and the grandeur of Buddhist temples. However, he was shocked and saddened by the many great buildings left in ruins by the 1999 quake.

"I felt nothing but compassion over the earthquake," Sadler said. "But they hadn't given up. The spirit was still there, and the desire to overcome."

For Anderson, the upcoming trip could be a way for local businesses to expand their customer bases.

"They're recognizing that there's a bigger market if everybody's in the sandbox together," he said.