But Li is highly unusual: she is originally from mainland China, one of only two people running for the island's parliament to hail from across the Taiwan Strait.
Beijing regards democratic Taiwan as a renegade province to be retaken, by force if necessary, and the issue of how to manage the island's giant communist neighbour has loomed large in the election.
Li is running for the Taiwan People's Party (TPP) -- a smaller group aiming to break up the dominance of the two main parties.
She is fighting for the rights of the 360,000 spouses of Taiwanese citizens who like her are from mainland China, and to "make her small contribution to ease the misunderstandings" between the two sides.
"I feel very unhappy when I see mainland nationalists criticise Taiwan, but I am also not comfortable when Taiwanese politicians and media criticise the mainland," she told AFP.
Asked if she hoped that China could one day be a democracy like Taiwan, she said it would depend on what the Chinese people wanted.
"If people in the mainland like the current way of living we should not interfere, but if people's minds change and they want democracy we are happy to see that," she said.
"It's not our business whether people eat with chopsticks or forks. We should just do the best of our own things."
Taiwanese voters will choose a new president and lawmakers on Saturday in a ballot closely watched around the world as it will determine Taipei's future ties with an increasingly bellicose Beijing.
China has halted high-level communications with the administration of Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and strangled cultural exchanges -- blocking mainlanders from studying in Taiwan and halting tourism from China.
People like Li, living in Taiwan but with family on the mainland, find themselves caught in the two sides' political tussle.
- Student woes -
Spouses from mainland China have to wait six years to apply for citizenship in Taiwan -- twice as long as those from other countries.
"We don't want compassion, we just want to be treated fairly," said Li, who moved to Taiwan 30 years ago and now runs her own business.
But if mainland spouses face a long wait for citizenship, it is at least an option for them -- and they are allowed to work in the meantime.
For Chinese students studying in Taiwan, the prospects are much tougher, with no right to apply for central government scholarships and no right to find jobs locally after graduation.
"Mainland students are just like locals but we don't get the same treatment. I think it's unfair," Wooper, a mainland student in Taiwan, told AFP.
"This unfair treatment is based on political considerations," he said, asking to use a pseudonym because he was worried about the repercussions of speaking to foreign media.
Mainland students were first allowed to apply to Taiwan universities in 2011 when the China-friendly Kuomintang was in power, with numbers peaking above 40,000 in 2016.
But in 2020, Beijing authorities banned their students from applying for degree study in Taiwan, and by October last year, there were barely 2,000 degree students left.
When he came to Taiwan in 2016, Wooper thought he would adapt to local society easily, but eight years on he says he feels only like an "observer" as "mainland students are separated from Taiwan's life, especially political life".
Wooper hopes the new government will improve conditions for students like him, and allow him to live and work on the island after graduation.
- Travel ban -
As well as barring students, Beijing has also blocked its citizens from going on holiday to Taiwan.
Beijing authorities have refused travel permission to Taiwan since August 2019, so only Chinese people living abroad are able to visit the island as tourists.
Jenny Feng, a restaurant owner in China's Hunan province, hopes the rules are eased -- as a fan of Taiwanese music, she is keen to visit the places mentioned in song lyrics.
"I hope the relationship between the two sides can go back to the period when we can travel to Taiwan," she told AFP.
Mainlanders sneak a peek through China's window to Taiwan
Xiamen, China (AFP) Jan 11, 2024 -
An intercom blares out on the crowded cruise, sending Chinese tourists racing to the upper decks for a glimpse of what they've all come to see: democratic, self-ruled Taiwan.
That island has entered the final stretch of a dramatic, ill-tempered election campaign -- closely watched from Washington to Beijing as the winner will determine the future of Taiwan's ties with the mainland.
But while newspapers in Taipei on Thursday carried wall-to-wall coverage of the high-stakes poll, frontpages across the Taiwan Strait were, as usual, dominated by one man: Xi Jinping.
Xi has said that China's unification with Taiwan is inevitable, and his government warned this week that a vote for independence-leaning candidate Lai Ching-te -- the presidential frontrunner -- poses a "severe danger" to the island's future.
Aboard a three-storey sightseeing boat Thursday morning for a leisurely cruise past the Kinmen Islands, administered by Taiwan and at the nearest point just under five kilometres from the mainland, one tourist said he agreed.
"I hope the motherland can be united at an early date," Huang Ling, a 41-year-old tourist from China's central Hubei province, told AFP.
"There'd be many benefits. A prosperous country and strong people," he said.
"Although Taiwan is separate over there, they're still Chinese people, our brothers and sisters.
- 'Curious' -
Another tourist -- a man in his mid-fifties who only wanted to give his surname Chen, told AFP he was "very curious" to see the islands.
"My father's friend was a Kuomintang member and went over to Taiwan during the war," he said, referring to the now-opposition party in Taiwan that fought a decades-long war with the Communist Party for control of the mainland.
"Later, after travel became possible, he came back and met my dad," he said.
"That was about 30 years later," he explained.
"They were so happy to see each other."
Not long after setting off, chilly winds on the boat's upper decks drove most passengers into the more sheltered lower level.
But half an hour later, a voice over the loudspeaker announced the cruise had reached its closest point to Kinmen -- sending the tourists racing back up the stairs for selfies with the rocky islands, visible about two kilometres away through the haze.
- 'One country two systems' -
On the mainland coast nearby, along a crowded tourist beach, a giant red sign blared the slogan: "One Country Two Systems, Unify China".
Tourist groups posed in front of the slogan -- large enough to be seen from the Kinmen Islands -- some clutching small Chinese national flags that fluttered loudly in the windy conditions.
The words referenced a deal China made guaranteeing the former British colony of Hong Kong certain rights and freedoms ahead of its handover in 1997 -- rights that have since been eroded in the semi-autonomous city.
The word "Taiwan" rang out regularly as travel guides and visitors descended from large coaches, disembarking onto the beach to squint out at the distant sight of grey shapes in the narrow strait.
"Cheap tickets for a look toward Taiwan's Kinmen island!" a beach vendor standing next to binoculars on a tripod shouted through a loudspeaker.
Curious tourists peered through binoculars, trying to spot the landmarks across the strait.
Nearby, visitors stood on a small stone platform opposite a sculpture of big and small hands, trying to snap photos on their mobile phones through a gap between the artworks.
"You can see Taiwan through the hole in the middle!" one tourist explained to another group of curious onlookers.
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