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ramakentesh
Joined: 05 Mar 2005
Posts: 145
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 Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2005 11:21 am Post subject: Why does Taiwan attract so many weirdos? |
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Ive been to many places in asia and Taiwan seems to attract by far the highest ratio of social misfits and weirdos from the west.
I guess most come here to try and feel better about themselves and I guess there is nothing wrong with that, but it must make local Taiwanese wonder what westerners are like given the only examples around my area included a man with 1-inch dirty fingernails who talked to himself, another guy who stalks chicks and an autistic-type.
Secondly the majority of expats are weirdos in taiwan - reminds me of that cartoon 'Charisma man' - where a dwebby westerner who is socially alienated heads to asia to become 'charisma man' where people dont notice his social inadequacies and he is treated with more respect.
'Charisma man's' arch enemies are other westerners who see what he is really like. |
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Welshguy
Joined: 06 Jan 2005
Posts: 143
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| Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2005 1:25 pm Post subject: |
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I must confess I have also noticed this and the number of shotbox people wandering around seems so much higher than anywhere else I have lived in Asia. I was fighting guys the first month I was there.
I once got my bar bill paid by taiwanese teaching colleagues when I opined that most of the foreign 'teachers' I had met couldnt get a gig in mcdonalds back home. These Taiwanese people were all certified teachers with degrees etc and it was a source of some resentment that the foreign flotsam and jetsam were rewarded disproportianally to themselves. With typical stoicism they put it down to supply and demand.
It certainly helps when contacts with the host culture are positive and we should all try to make an effort in that direction as and when possible.
W |
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sbettinson
Joined: 22 Jul 2004
Posts: 81
Location: Taichung
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| Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2005 2:26 pm Post subject: |
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I know what you mean about the strange people in Taiwan. I think a lot of people as you say are on the run from their social inadequacies in their home countries. Then again, I have met some 'interesting' locals here too.
The thing that really annoys me the most is the number of foreigners I see who are ignorant and rude to the locals here. I see this mostly in restaurants or stores. The typical scenario is the, "I am going to order my food or goods in the way I would back home and not consider that the locals may not understand me." When the person they are speaking to doesn't quite understand what has been said the foreigner then starts to speak in a condescending manner as though the person was stupid. Reailty check people! This is not your home country.
The people here are not stupid just because they don't speak English. If there is a misunderstanding a smile will go a long way in solving all your problems. I always imagine the shoe being on the other foot and a local wanting something from me by just barking Chinese at you and thinking you are stupid for not understanding.
I think there are 2 key things to help people get along with the locals here and ensure that future travellers here will always feel welcome. The first is to learn the language. Even just a few phrases above Ni hao and Xiexie. You don't need to be the next ambassador's interpreter to get along. The second is to always smile if someone is serving you and be sincere about it. It's amazing when you do this how people will remember you next time you go back to the same place.
Ok, rant over.
Shaun |
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Taylor
Joined: 24 Oct 2003
Posts: 384
Location: Texas/Taiwan
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| Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2005 1:19 am Post subject: |
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Dear Readers,
Wouldn't it be great if every Westerner were as cool as Brad Pitt...or Tom Cruise? No, wait. Tom Cruise is a complete dork, so let's stick with Brad Pitt as our social model.
Taylor
Kaohsiung |
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Xenophobe
Joined: 11 Nov 2003
Posts: 163
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| Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2005 2:10 am Post subject: |
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| Yeah, there we go, a guy who screwed around on his wife. He's a great social model. |
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Borromeo
Joined: 05 Nov 2005
Posts: 16
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| Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2005 11:02 am Post subject: |
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| Welshguy wrote: |
| Quote: |
| I once got my bar bill paid by taiwanese teaching colleagues when I opined that most of the foreign 'teachers' I had met couldnt get a gig in mcdonalds back home. |
Great idea. Get a few cheap drinks for insulting your compatriots/fellow foreigners en masse. Really high class.
If in New York I heard a Chinese person say something like "You know, most of these Asians here wouldn't be able to get a job stir-frying noodles back in Asia"; if I heard a Mexican say "You know, most Hispanics here are a lot of so-and-sos", I certainly would not think very highly of him. And if I saw a bunch of Americans warm to the guy for saying these things, and give him free drinks for it, I definitely would not think very highly of them. Would you?
It sounds to me like your need to feel superior to your fellow-foreigners, and in their need to feel superior to foreigners, you developed a very useful symbiotic, if pathetic, relationship.
But if you are going to insult whole groups (most of the foreign "teachers" here) at least make a fraction of an effort to be original. That "they couldn't get a job in McDonalds" line was old when I was young. And it was as inaccurate then as it is now: last time I heard, foreign teachers throughout Asia are required at least to be college graduates.
| Quote: |
| It certainly helps when contacts with the host culture are positive and we should all try to make an effort in that direction as and when possible. |
I agree completely, although saccharine bromides of this sort aren't generally to my taste. I do not agree that insulting your fellow foreigners en masse is the best way to have a positive contact with the host culture.
On the larger question, I will freely admit that throughout Asia one notices a number of foreigners who, at least as far as external appearance goes, do not provide a very lovely image of their race. But here in Taiwan I have seen more foreigners who look happy, healthy, and professional than I did in Korea or China.
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Borromeo
Joined: 05 Nov 2005
Posts: 16
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| Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2005 11:44 am Post subject: |
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| sbettinson wrote: |
The thing that really annoys me the most is the number of foreigners I see who are ignorant and rude to the locals here. I see this mostly in restaurants or stores. The typical scenario is the, "I am going to order my food or goods in the way I would back home and not consider that the locals may not understand me." When the person they are speaking to doesn't quite understand what has been said the foreigner then starts to speak in a condescending manner as though the person was stupid. Reailty check people! This is not your home country.
The people here are not stupid just because they don't speak English. If there is a misunderstanding a smile will go a long way in solving all your problems. I always imagine the shoe being on the other foot and a local wanting something from me by just barking Chinese at you and thinking you are stupid for not understanding.
I think there are 2 key things to help people get along with the locals here and ensure that future travellers here will always feel welcome. The first is to learn the language. Even just a few phrases above Ni hao and Xiexie. You don't need to be the next ambassador's interpreter to get along. The second is to always smile if someone is serving you and be sincere about it. It's amazing when you do this how people will remember you next time you go back to the same place.
Ok, rant over.
Shaun |
I'd like to begin by saying that I agree with these sentiments completely. If one is going to live in a foreign country for any length of time, one owes it to oneself to learn that country's language, at least a bit. It makes life miles more interesting. It is also a basic mark of respect to the country one is staying in. And you have expressed very very well the rudeness of going to a foreign country and expecting them to understand one's own language.
Now here comes the "but". I do not think that I am alone in finding that Chinese--the language and the people who speak it--present some unique problems in this regard. I studied Italian for three months--three months!--and when I went to Italy I could order food in restaurants, ask directions on the street, have simple but meaningful conversations with people, and get the main idea of newpaper articles. (granted, that is after years of studying French and Latin, which made Italian slightly less foreign.) When I went to Spain I found that I could understand the people (not in everything, or course, but in a lot) simply because of the similarity of the language to Italian. However people could not understand me at all. I was only going to be in Spain for two weeks but I bought a textbook, spent a few intensive hours on it a day, and after three days I was ordering food in restaurants and chatting with people next to me on trains. One evening at a cafe I was seated near two Englishwomen one of whom said to the waiter "we would like two cheese sandwiches", in English. The waiter understood no English. The lady repeated the request more loudly and then the third time she shouted it. I went over and quietly said in Spanish that they wanted two cheese sandwiches and the waiter was, you can imagine, very very happy.
The Spanish were also capable of intelligent solutions when the language barrier was a problem. When I saw a word on a menu which I didn't recognize, and asked what it was, the waitress left the room and came back after a minute with an eggplant. There it was: now I knew how to say eggplant in Spanish.
Compare this to my experience here and in China. I have now been studying Chinese intensively for two years. I can read and write more than fifteen hundred characters and I know a lot of grammar. I can converse in a limited way with people who are friendly and intelligent. But on the street it is still trying in the extreme. Consider what happened at a breakfast shop a few days ago. The woman was grilling a chicken cutlet. I pointed to it and said "is that chicken?" She said yes. (of course the whole conversation was in Chinese.) I said I would like a piece of chicken "like that", still pointing to the cutlet she was frying. Then I noticed some flat, thin, tortilla-like bread and remembered that they made a nice dish of it with egg, bacon, and cheese. I asked for egg, bacon, and cheese, "with that bread there"--except now that I pointed to the place where, only a moment ago, there had been the tortilla-like thing. So I said, "the kind of bread that was right there, a moment ago, on that blue thing, right there" pointing to the place where it had been. "yes, yes," she said, smiling, "you want bread, I understand." Then I had one more request, because I know from experience that they fry the eggs far longer than I consider reasonable, until they are almost rubbery (I like the yolks to still be liquid inside, they seem to like the yolk to resemble a hockey puck.) "Please only cook the egg for a minute or two, not too long" "Yes, yes," she said, "you want an egg, I understand."
When she gave me my dish, there was a strange kind of ground meat patty on it, and a very over-fried egg on a thick bun. The ground meat was the "chicken"; it turns out that what I wanted was "ji pai" and what she gave me was "ji rou". As for my dramatically pointing to the cutlet while she was cooking it and saying "I want that--that", I suppose she simply ignored it, as she more or less simply ignored everything else I had said. What more could I have done that I did not do? I spoke her language. I spoke slowly and clearly. I repeated myself a number of times. My pronunciation is not that bad. Even if it was so bad that she did not understand what I said, why didn't she ask me to repeat myself and try to arrive at understanding? Can I avoid the impression that people like this woman do not understand because they just don't try? So, if I see a foreigner being rude in a restaurant, sometimes I find it hard to blame him.
In China one night a German man blew up at a waiter in front of everyone at the restaurant of a five-star hotel. What was the problem? He had just sat down. He had just begun a very expensive buffet meal. And then the waiter had come to him and said "our buffet finish, please take what you want now." Is this not an outrage? The waiter would have been within his rights to tell the man, when he arrived at the restaurant, "I'm sorry but we're closing now." But once he allowed a customer to sit down, he cannot then say "please hurry up because we're closing." Not if he's going to expect the man to pay the full price for an expensive meal. (I was lingering over coffee myself but equally annoyed: twenty Chinese waitresses noisily dismantling a buffet is not appropriate background music to a restaurant meal. And it's not as if it was midnight: it was something like half-past eight.) My point is, anyone who saw the German explode would have said "look at these rude foreigners who give such a bad impression". But what was the alternative? Although this was a hotel where just about all the patrons were foreigners, the waiter's English was minimal. This might be where learning Chinese comes it: it would be fabulous if the German man could have eloquently explained his problem in polite Mandarin. But after two years I am as far from that sort of ability as when I first began.
Having said all this I find that by frequenting places where locals eat, imitating the locals, and not caring too much about what specifically I eat, I am happy most of the time. I smile and usually don't have a problem at all. But when after two years I can't even say "please cook the eggs lightly", sometimes my patience wears thin. |
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teacha
Joined: 25 Aug 2005
Posts: 186
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| Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2005 6:34 pm Post subject: |
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| Taylor wrote: |
Dear Readers,
Wouldn't it be great if every Westerner were as cool as Brad Pitt...or Tom Cruise? No, wait. Tom Cruise is a complete dork, so let's stick with Brad Pitt as our social model.
Taylor
Kaohsiung |
Yeah Tom is dork, good point. If scientology does not allow plastic`surgery, how come he doesnt age? He's like 50 ya know! |
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Big John Stud
Joined: 07 Oct 2004
Posts: 513
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| Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2005 5:24 am Post subject: |
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| Borromeo did you pay for the food even though the lady clearly messed up? |
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ramakentesh
Joined: 05 Mar 2005
Posts: 145
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| Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2005 8:34 am Post subject: |
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'Great idea. Get a few cheap drinks for insulting your compatriots/fellow foreigners en masse. Really high class. '
Is it an insult if its true?  |
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Welshguy
Joined: 06 Jan 2005
Posts: 143
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| Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2005 1:19 pm Post subject: Wouldnt have thought so myself |
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Well,
In there words it was nice to hear a foreign teacher confirm their day to day reality.
I certainly didnt give the opinion in order to benefit from their largesse.
So there.
W |
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Welshguy
Joined: 06 Jan 2005
Posts: 143
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| Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2005 1:20 pm Post subject: |
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OK their words then.
W |
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TaoyuanSteve
Joined: 05 Feb 2003
Posts: 1028
Location: Taoyuan
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| Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 4:17 am Post subject: Re: Why does Taiwan attract so many weirdos? |
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| ramakentesh wrote: |
Ive been to many places in asia and Taiwan seems to attract by far the highest ratio of social misfits and weirdos from the west.
I guess most come here to try and feel better about themselves and I guess there is nothing wrong with that, but it must make local Taiwanese wonder what westerners are like given the only examples around my area included a man with 1-inch dirty fingernails who talked to himself, another guy who stalks chicks and an autistic-type.
Secondly the majority of expats are weirdos in taiwan - reminds me of that cartoon 'Charisma man' - where a dwebby westerner who is socially alienated heads to asia to become 'charisma man' where people dont notice his social inadequacies and he is treated with more respect.
'Charisma man's' arch enemies are other westerners who see what he is really like. |
Implied in any negative observation about others--such as the one made here about fellow expats-- is the assumption of superiority. How else can one spot others' weaknesses if not from a position of perfection? They (expats here in Taiwan) are so weird. Of course, I am a flawless human being who, because of my superiority, can cast judgement on an entire group of people--most of whom I've never met. Right...
I personally don't find the foreign population to be any weirder than the locals, nor do I find westerners here to be any worse than the general population of a western country. I think the OP is exhibiting a classic case of expat syndrome. |
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Ki
Joined: 23 Jul 2004
Posts: 475
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| Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 6:00 am Post subject: |
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I think the OP was talking specifically of himself.
Ah stuff it! I'm a weirdo and I love it. I'd hate to be 'normal'. |
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