Learn about Taiwan's uniqueness from its youth

A Mascot for all Occasions

Whatever happened to recognizable animals for mascots?

Taiwan really goes all out with mascots. Teams have them. Products have them. Companies have them. The government agencies have them. Just about anything or anyone that wants to be something must have one.

I'm not sure it's always necessary to have mascots for every single thing but it does fit in line with making even the most boring or mundane things seem lively and/or cute be it Company XYZ's wingnut to the ROC's military. Amazingly though, a lot of mascots are very ambiguous looking such as the one in the picture for ShuLin City on a barren road in the middle of nowhere. What exactly is it supposed to be?

Feel free to send in your stories and pictures of the most ridiculous mascots you have seen in Taiwan or elsewhere.

UPDATE: I recently went to a Japanese cartoon culture exhibit that might share some light on why every organization is adopting mascots. See the last paragraph.

Taiwanese Ladies Flock to Bangkok

Admittedly, I got suckered into it. I spent almost a week of my 20 days in Thailand in Bangkok - shopping!

Westerners typically think of Thailand as a beach resort destination (think Phuket and Phi Phi Island) for fun in the sun and sea, not to mention getting a tan. It soon became clear for me that there was only so much sand, sun and sea that my Taiwanese wife could take. You see, Taiwan's upwardly mobile city girls mostly aspire to have lily white skin (there is a reason for this since having a tan, historically, meant that you came from a poor, working class background, much like having a farmer's tan, hence the Chinese expression that stems from this: 一百遮十丑 yi bai zhe shi chou (one white covers up ten uglinesses)).

If you didn't know already, however, THE hot destination for young Taiwanese ladies is Bangkok. It's due mainly to the impact of one book:
女王i曼谷 ("i" as in 愛) - The Queen Loves Bangkok

Who is the Queen (her nickname) you say? Well it's a young lady named Chen Yi-li. She is a celebrity among the single ladies crowd. Read this interesting WSJ article to find out more:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304198004575171161126405820.html
It turns out she is an icon of single Taiwanese ladies. The article covers the single lady phenomena and also talks about the low birth rate and, of course, Yi-li herself and the success of her books.


On a side note, all this breaking the female market into categories stuff reminds me of a cartoon I saw in TIME magazine years ago: http://blog.islaformosa.com/2007/03/girl-typology.html
Accordingly, the single Taiwanese girls described in the article seem to be a blend, kind of like career girl with little princess mixed in and the troubled with men and passion aspect of desperate housewife and bad girl thrown in.

Back to the shopping in Bangkok part. What I didn't know before the trip was that Taiwanese girls were reading Yi-li's book like a bible, much as Westerners hang on to their Lonely Planets when traveling, except that Yi-li's book is focused on (clean) fashionable hotel accommodation, sometimes fancy eating joints and all the shopping you can shake a stick at. It even has advice on how to soothe those sore shop-a-holic legs and feet with creams, stretches and prodigious Thai massage.

Well, the secret is out. The book has inspired scores of Taiwanese girls (and the girl's shopping bag touting boy-toy suckers, if any) to flock to Bangkok. There is ample evidence for this based on the cheap flights to Bangkok (our AirAsia flight was NT$6000/person round trip Taipei-Bangkok), hotels in Yi-li's book full of chatty Taiwanese and the shopping malls and markets where Mandarin speaking is definitely on the rise (to be fair, the cat is out of the bag for other Chinese in the Chinese speaking world as well like Hong Kong, Singapore and Mainland China). Many shoppers openly carry Yi-li's book while shopping.

They are also cutting out the middle (wo)men. While visiting the markets, especially the wholesale goods market near Siam Center (Taipei has one called Wu Fen Pu but I have to say that Bangkok's blow that one out of the water!), it became clear that Taiwanese merchants were buying up stuff in Bangkok by the truck loads. Now that I'm back in Taiwan, I recognize the styles and patterns of many of the items I saw in the Bangkok markets. Of course, the prices of the same items in Taipei are several times the price in Bangkok. As the ladies travel there in large numbers, 3 or more of many items nets you a wholesale price at a fraction of the Taiwanese cost.


One super popular non-wholesale destination is the largest NaRaYa store. NaRaYa cloth handbags etc. are sold in locations in Taiwan as well at a considerable markup. In the Bangkok store, Taiwanese were snatching them up at really cheap prices like there was no tomorrow. The shop was swarming (see pic)! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naraya

We'll see how the political situation in Bangkok impacts on this Taiwanese lady travel shopping trend but from the looks of it, girls have continued to travel there right through this current school break. With the protests recently taking a turn to the violent (AirAsia has even offered to convert tickets to go to other destinations as a result), Bangkok's good shopping thing may have some rough days ahead.

BTW, we had a great trip in the end, thank you! Enjoy the pics:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/islaformosa/sets/72157623640512659/

Have white guys got it all wrong?

"[I]s it possible that Westerners, on average, have thinking styles that make them ill-suited for the problems of the future while Asians have styles that make them better suited?"

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/western-men-are-doomed/?ref=opinion

I put this out there.  Are we doomed?  It's an interesting little debate.

Teaching Kids the Lowdown on Poop

Enjoy the stool world at the Taipei Zoo.

Taiwanese are Dense

Talking with a friend of mine last night, the topic of population density came up and the often quoted statement about YongHe being the most densely populated area on Earth. I live in YongHe so it was of immediate interest to me when I had heard first heard this.

I remember hearing or reading (in the Lonely Planet?) that YongHe held this record many years ago but I have never been able to corroborate it with data until now. Turns out it is wrong. Although not the most dense, YongHe does rank among the densest populated areas on Earth though:

YongHe 41,139 per km2 making it 37th on the list
By comparison to the densest:
Marine Lines, Mumbai, India 114,000 per km2

Taiwan island ranks 6th among islands at 636 per km2
By comparison to the densest:
Ap Lei Chau HK 66,755 per km2

The Republic of China ranks 15th among 'countries,' also with 636 per km2
By comparison to the densest:
Macau 18,405 per km2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_densely_populated_country_subdivisions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_by_population_density
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density

Unemployment Rate Blues

There's been a lot of coverage lately about Taiwan's highest unemployment rate ever: 5.9%

forbes

bloomberg

Taiwanese seem worried but, honestly, I can't help but laugh. Western countries' unemployment rates usually range in the 7 to 12% range in normal situations and, heck, we're in a global recession at the moment of huge proportions. By comparison, Taiwanese screaming about unemployment rates seem like Chicken Little (The sky is falling!).

Just how do unemployment statistics stack up across countries? Well there is a lot of dispute since some governments are less open about reporting unemployment statistics or have vastly different ways of calculating them (some countries do not include incarcerated prisoners in their statistics, a fact, that as some have pointed out, makes unemployment statistics in countries like the US artificially lower [feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about this]).

Wikipedia to the rescue! Found some good data to compare which needs to be taken with a grain of salt. However, the overall picture painted is clear.

Taiwan 5.82%
Japan 5.2%
China 9%
United States 9.5%
UK 7.6%
Germany 8.3%
Spain 18.7%
Russia 9.9%
Brazil 8.8%
Iraq 18.00%; 28% among youth; 83% among women

Compare these to:
Zimbabwe 90%
Andorra 0%

wiki

All this unemployment talk has made me think about ways that citizens of each country react to unemployment news. I look at a country like Spain in particular which has, in my opinion, a fairly high unemployment rate for the kind of country it is. No one is rioting in the streets there about unemployment. However, if it were Taiwan, people would be thinking it is the end of the world. So how does a country like Spain cope?

I think it has a lot to do with the capacity to absorb unemployed back home to the family and this is also a point in Taiwan's favor as well. Usually, the goal of western kids is to leave the nest and strike on their own and be independent. Living with parents has a stigma attached to it. However, traditionally, kids lived at home. In some cultures, having the kids at home later in life doesn't have a stigma attached. In fact, some parents are thrilled to keep their kids at home longer or indefinitely (think 'mama's boys' or 'failure to launch' types).

Spain is a Latin country with a strong family tradition (let's not forget those relatives too). In tough times, kids can come back home to roost. Is Taiwan so different? Lots of kids are living with their parents (who have relative huge savings compared to their kids) indefinitely or have no qualms returning home if things go wrong or they need a break.

In fact, now that I think of it, western kids trying to live apart from their family creates unecessary duplication (another house and related costs) and spending (buying bulk saves more money). If there just weren't such a stigma attached to living with parents forever!

Taiwan will do fine in the face of this higher unemployment. No riots here. The sky may feel like it's falling but the family unit and emphasis on Taiwan families taking care of their own will prevail.

How many Taiwanese does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Here's the story behind the punchline.

I bumped into a female Taiwanese colleague in the elevator at work the other day. It seemed early and she looked like she was leaving so I asked her where she was going. She said home.

"Oh, to do what?," I asked.

"To change a lightbulb," she said.

"Why not later after work?," I decided to ask.

"Because a plumber is coming over to change it for me," she said matter-of-factly.

"Ok, can't you change the bulb yourself? I mean it's easy," I questioned.

"(Oh you silly foreigner) I'm a Taiwanese girl," she replied.

Yes, you certainly are, I thought.

Turns out that she didn't know anything about switching off breakers or electricity I guess and was willing to pay to have someone do a simple thing like this. This can happen in Taiwan where the girls often really play the part.

So to repeat from the beginning:
How many Taiwanese does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Evidently, in a Taiwanese girl's case, it might mean at least two...

Ice Saw

This guy just got a block of ice delivered to his market stall.  He plans to cut it with the saw.

From Blogger

Another Doggie Poop Sign

Taiwanese love those cartoon version doggie poops.  Obsessed with them, in fact.

From Blogger

Blood on the streets

From Blogger

Imagine seeing this on your city street back home. This was one of the things I noticed about Taiwan when I first arrived. It's not a pretty picture is it?

At first, I thought street corners just had an inordinate amount of accidents. Bloody accidents.

I know better now as do most people after living in Taiwan for some time. 'Tis the mark of the cursed betelnut spittle.

Being a Banana or an Egg

Are you a 'banana'? If you didn't know already, 'banana' is slang for an Asian born in North America. That's right, yellow on the outside, white on the inside. However, I really think that the term applies to Asians who have left their country and have pretty well adopted their new 'white' country's culture (for example, leaving Taiwan at even a young age).

Some ABC and CBCs I know have told me about their experiences in Taiwan, interacting with their relatives without the language ability or the acceptance of a lot of the customs. It's the distance they sometimes feel cultural-wise from their local counterparts. Some Taiwanese must really feel that these guys are a pale shade of what real Taiwanese are.

And another odd thing happens to me when I go back to Canada. I go see my Chinese friend who, for all extents and purposes, is less Chinese than me. Hey, I speak Mandarin; he doesn't! I eat Chinese food every day. Not him!

That's why I guess I'm kind of an 'egg'. You got it! White on the outside and yellow on the inside. Hey, I don't get offended! I'm not a total Asian convert and will probably never be but there is something to be said about returning to your native country and have a little bit of reverse culture shock.

In fact, I believe there is a kind of reversion that happens when we do return to a place that we have an affinity for. I guess for some it can really get confusing, especially when you don't know where you should really call home. Eggs of Taiwan unite!

Different Perspectives of the Taiwan and the World

view of the world

An interesting set of maps depicting various views of Taiwan and the world from both Taiwan's perspective and the American one.

Press the link to view... You'll need a little Chinese to understand but then you can do that, can't you?

The Mounted Police of Taipei County

Saw these guys in Yingko a while back and caught them there again this weekend.

Very striking, very interesting, totally copied from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, right down to the red uniforms and hats (the sunglasses are a nice touch dude and let's not forget how nice it is to see a policewoman in uniform and in the saddle!)

From there being little or nothing about this new type of policeman in the news and on the web, there is a lot of chatter now. (I posted a comment here way, way back asking if anyone had any info about them. You can see them in the picture walking around Taipei Harbor.)

China Post
Taipei Times
Taiwan Review

"There are presently 40 male officers and 12 females on the mounted police team.

Their daily patrol territories cover the more populous districts in the county, extending from Danshui Fishermen's Wharf, to Yinge township that is noted for ceramic art works, museums, and other tourist spots.

Mounted police have the advantage of patrolling terrain districts that are difficult for the police vehicles to comb."

Other cities are getting in on the bandwagon: "To promote tourism, the Kaohsiung County Government has recently organized a mounted police team."

Here is one worrisome thing: "Captain Huang Hsin-wei of the mounted police team said it is rather safe for people if they avoid standing behind the horses."

Some people were actually doing just that and I told my wife than if one odd-ball (note the guy standing behind in the first picture) wasn't careful, he or she might get booted by the hind legs.

How do you spell lawsuit? Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

And what will this all bring? Well more tourists for sure. It may just fuel a new horse riding trend in Taiwan. Hell, we might even see a musical ride soon!

Here are some more pics of the police from my Picasa dating back to April of 2006:
picasa1
picasa2
picasa3

Some riders on the beach in DanShui at sunset:
picasa4

The Height of Convenience

The pursuit of convenience seems to define the Taiwanese. Always looking to cut corners to simplify life. Looking for shortcuts to success and riches.

The overuse of the word "convenience" in English by Taiwanese is a matter of fact. It has some funny and questionable uses such as in "Traffic is convenient" (which actually should be interpreted as meaning transportation around the city provides convenience to get around).

In the end, Taiwanese are just attempting to describe their 7eleven around every corner (or often 2 or 3 7elevens per city block!) mentality of convenience.

For example, check out this girl lighting her coal BBQ using a spray can blow torch. Similarly, I've also seen people use hair dryers as well to get the show on the road. No time-wasting fan waving and blowing on the coal chunks for these guys!

Any other tales of locals (or expats) achieving the ultimate convenience in Taiwan? Drop me a line...

Cost of Living in Taipei Down ... WAY DOWN!

A new survey of the costliest cities to live in Moscow has topped again for the second year in a row.

What was remarkable was that,
"Eight Asian cities made the top 50, though Taipei, Taiwan, plunged 20 places to No. 48."
msnbc

So what does this mean? Well it's cheap to buy the necessities of life in Taipei. Would anyone really argue with this? I mean, fast food is dirt cheap at between NT$50 and NT$120. Taxi rides are a song, the meter starting at NT$70. The minimum fare for a bus ride is NT$16.

Having fun here is super cheap too. The Palace Museum is a paltry NT$160. NT$60 for Taipei Zoo! Imagine that!

I can also remember telling my parents about our house loan that currently hovers around a rate of 2%. Canada's mortgage rates is hovering around 7%!!!

Is there some deeper meaning to Taipei's drop in costliness? Well, you might be able to argue that it has something to do with current currency exchange rates making goods cheaper. However, it could be due to Taipei losing its edge in desirability amongst the other cities.

People living here in Taipei of course know better. The city services and feel have improved a lot since the 1990s. Locals like to throw around the word 'convenient'. Convenient and cheap, fun, easy and affordable, all these come to mind. We love Taipei for all these reasons!

I include the results of the survey for your perusal...

The 50 priciest cities in the world, according to the cost of items including housing, transportation, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment:

1. Moscow 2. London 3. Seoul, South Korea 4. Tokyo 5. Hong Kong 6. Copenhagen, Denmark 7. Geneva 8. Osaka, Japan 9. Zurich, Switzerland 10. Oslo, Norway 11. Milan, Italy 12. St. Petersburg, Russia 13. Paris 14. Singapore 15. New York 16. Dublin, Ireland 17. Tel Aviv, Israel 18. Rome 19. Vienna, Austria 20. Beijing 21. Sydney, Australia 22. Helsinki, Finland 23. Stockholm, Sweden 24. Douala, Cameroon 25. Amsterdam, Netherlands 26. Madrid, Spain and Shanghai, China 28. Kiev, Ukraine 29. Athens, Greece 30. Almaty, Kazakhstan 31. (tie) Barcelona, Spain 31. (tie) Bratislava, Slovak Republic 33. Dakar, Senegal 34. Dubai, United Arab Emirates 35. Abidjan, Ivory Coast 36. Glasgow, United Kingdom 37. Lagos, Nigeria 38. Istanbul, Turkey 39. Munich, Germany 40. Frankfurt, Germany 41. Birmingham, United Kingdom 42. Los Angeles 43. Luxembourg 44. Brussels, Belgium 45. (tie) Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates 45. (tie) Berlin 45. (tie) Dusseldorf, Germany 48. Taipei, Taiwan 49. Prague, Czech Republic 50. Algiers, Algeria

Source: Mercer Human Resource Consulting

Foreign Devils Get Unequal Treatment

Words in Chinese used to describe Western people:
鬼佬 ghost chap
白鬼 white ghost
洋鬼子 foreign ghost or devil
老外 old outsider

It seems Caucasians have garnered quite a few terms of 'endearment' over the years. Some of them well deserved considering the occupation of China.

But now, in Taiwan, we may be deserving of the titles for an entirely different reason: services and treatment.

People who will bend over backwards to please a foreigner might not lift a finger to help their fellow Taiwanese compatriots. There are numerous examples of this:

CASE 1: The Tax Office
Taiwanese have to fill out and calculate their tax forms by themselves. Foreigners, on the other hand, are assigned an official who will fill out the forms for them. Since I am a foreigner I qualify for this service but if my wife, a Taiwanese, were to go to file our taxes she would not.

CASE 2: Online Phone Service
Try calling one of the government phone cues. If a Taiwanese calls they usually get short, abrupt and sometimes annoyed officials on the line. A foreigner, struggling with a little Chinese gets the red carpet treatment with officials bending over backwards to accomodate.

CASE 3: The Police and the Law
I am going through a police check for drunk driving while going home on the scooter. I don't have my license or my scooter registration with me. The police officer just waves me through, presumably because he's embarrassed that he can't communicate in English. Not even a slap on the wrist. This is not to mention the time I protested a driving fine that was overdue and had thus tripled. I decided to protest this as unfair. At the transport department they told me to write on the back of the fine, in English, why I couldn't pay my fine on time. Bingo! My fine was back down to it's original paltry amount.

CASE 4: Taichung Nightclub
I remember going to a nightclub with my wife and finding out that foreigners get in free while locals had to pay. My wife was furious and incredulous. Presumably this was a way for the club to get more foreigners to come in which they assumed would attract more local clientele due to the novelty of foreigners in many people's eyes. "No Chinese or dogs allowed" in for free indeed.
(No Chinese Or Dogs Allowed)

I'm sure there are many other cases so you can see my point (please feel free to send in a few more).

There is a kind of 崇洋 or 'foreign fetish' going on here. That is, Western foreigners (and many foreign products and ideas) are perhaps a little exotic or are considered in higher regard by Taiwanese in general. This treatment is a little ridiculous and over the top though. Taiwanese treating their own as lower than foreigners? C'mon!

This, by the way, is the root of the God-complex that a lot of foreign devils get when they live in Taiwan. The "I am special" or "I'm a super star" feeling. The 崇洋 mindset and these experiences unintentionally fuel it!

As a foreigner I can say that I am appreciative that Taiwanese take the time with me, bend the rules for me and sometimes make me feel special (sure, like a VIP). I don't think I'd like to be treated in the disdainful and annoyed with way that lots of service people treat locals.

However, my point is this. The way foreigners are treated, with respect and admiration, proves that these service people are capable of a higher level of service. So why not give that level of help, respect and admiration to all people, foreigner or local? I rest my case.

The Asian Pecking Order

The other night my wife, a Taiwanese who studies at Tamkang University, told me about an interesting discussion she had in one of her classes.

The topic was foreign couples. The professor asked the students what they thought about things like foreign brides from South East Asia. The class was almost solidly against the idea of intermarriage. Various reasons came out of this such as inferior intelligence for the children of such a coupling and the social and economic problems that these newcomers living in Taiwan and their children would give to society.

My wife then spoke of her marriage to me, a Canadian, and the class sighed about how lucky she was. Obviously marrying a Canadian wasn't such a burden. She quickly burst their little dreamy bubble by adding "What if I had told you I was married to a Vietnamese?" As the students scratched their heads, what became quickly apparent was what the teacher wanted to point out from the beginning: Taiwanese have feelings of superiority over what they consider lower Asian nations.

Where does this come from? Well I think a lot of it can be attributed to education at home from the parents. A lot of parents have indoctrinated their children with feelings of superiority. Even some students who claim not to look down on people from other countries show their true colors in the end. Try a conversation like this with a Taiwanese:

A: Do you look down on people from other countries?
B: Of course not!
A: Would you marry someone from the Philippines or Vietnam or an African?
B: Euh... I don't think so...
A: Why not?

So this got me thinking that Taiwanese, and I think many Asians, have a pecking order in their heads. It goes something like this. Japan is at the top of the pecking order and then it goes down through Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and then the South East Asian countries. At the bottom is the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia.

Taiwanese will wake up one day and realize that the South East Asian workers that they hire to build roads, construct buildings and work on the MRT are, in fact, are setting no better a precedent than the fact that Chinese were hired by North American railway companies to build our railroads. Hard, perilous work with low pay. What Taiwanese would want to lower themselves to do such menial jobs?

Far below this pyramid are black Africans which Taiwanese are irrationally afraid of. It's xenophobia for the most part as Taiwanese, coming from such a homogeneous society, are afraid of people they don't understand and people who have radically different skin color. Their feelings of superiority from their parents and what they see on the news about violence and poverty in Africa only reinforces their stereotypes about black Africans.

There is some light at the end of the tunnel. Although Taiwanese parents might be shocked to hear the different point of view brought up by some bold professors in university (my wife's professor admittedly thanked her for presenting a dissenting view and thus balancing the debate in class), students are gradually coming around to realize their ignorance about this issue due to their blind adherence to their parents' values. One step at a time...

Building the Necessary Spousal Skills?

From the Taipei Times:

"Women dance at a studio in Taipei on May 13 as part of the "How to Look ad Feel Sexy Workshop." Nina Chen, the creator of the nation's first strip dance workshop, teaches women how to sway to the music while slowly taking off their clothes in front of a wall of mirrors, aiming to help women appreciate their bodies and boost their self-confidence"

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/archives/2007/05/29/2003362927

They have to pay someone to strip? Wait a minute. isn't it supposed to be the other way around?