Saturday, December 22, 2012

Free Availability of The Betelnut Equation Kindle Book

Hi All,

I recently made this blog available as an e-book with reformatted, reorganized, rewritten and added content. It will be available for free download from the Kindle store on Christmas Day, the 27th and the 28th.

I did made it available as an e-book for a number of reasons. Ideas and understanding of the situation are continually evolving and improving so I have spent a lot of time to go back and review all my posts and make sure points are made clearer and quicker - and connections that I previously hadn't noticed are drawn - As well as adding additional content. 
The e-book format also offers several other advantages: all the content is grouped according to categories and, as there is a hyper-linked index, it is very easy to jump instantly from one story to another or one chapter to another. This way you can definitely get deeper into the stories and come back and forth quicker.
The amount of content is huge so I have split into two parts, the first is available on the Amazon Kindle Store at the links below - I will be adding the second part very soon and also adding the content to other book stores.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.de/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.fr/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.it/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.es/dp/B007QSGZ3U
My passion and mission hasn't changed: to deliver some real and extremely relevant insight into the culture of Taiwan in an entertaining style. Hopefully, arm anyone coming with knowledge I didn't have. I look forward to hearing whether I have achieved that aim – And will of course work hard to answer any of your questions.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

China and Taiwan: The Olympics and Really Understanding Taiwanese Thoughts about Not Having a Country

For foreigners it is not always easy to gauge Taiwanese feelings about not having their own country.
We know the China and Taiwan situation (this is a rough guide for the people who are not familiar with Taiwan): Taiwan exists in a state of de facto independence with its own army, currency, government and passport, but in reality has only relations with a few tiny countries and no nation-level representation in any international organizations because China doesn't allow it to be a country. When SARs happened it is said the WHO guys were scared to come to Taiwan without asking China, and then refused to take Taiwan off the list until China came off the list of SARs affected countries. However, as Taiwan pretty much functions as a country, you really only notice when you are applying for a Taiwan visa; searching Google for Taiwan embassy, and finally work out there is no embassy, just a trade office.
Of course there is a political party that stands for independence – or used to – and if you go down south the people are more vocal in their desire for a country. And, during the fifties, sixties, and seventies 10,000s were imprisoned or killed fighting for democracy. However, looking at now: the people managed to elect the party in favor of unification twice, about a million or more Taiwanese live in China, an awful lot of guys will do all they can to avoid military service – and the Taiwanese keep a healthy sense of humor about it all based pretty much on the practical knowledge it is a lost cause (It is 23 million against 1.4 billion). And that comes back to the Army thing again: the Americans were apparently surprised when they found the Taiwanese army wasn’t like the Israeli, but Israel has a chance of winning whereas Taiwan doesn’t against China. Apart from in stupid movies people don’t fight to the last man in lost causes; in much fairer fights than this one, plenty of countries have given up early when odds turn against them (as my father would say about a certain neighbor across the water who apparently just wanted to protect their architecture).
Often people stupidly cite surveys where Taiwanese answer that they support the status quo not a declaration of independence, as proof they don’t want independence. They are answering the question practically not in a dream land, ie, the status quo means they won’t get bombed, then they reluctantly choose it. If they asked the question, ‘would you like independence?’ (forget China invading) of course they will resoundingly answer yes.
They can appear apathetic, but then when the Olympics comes round it kind of reveals their true feeling. Or in fact any sporting occasion or sign of success overseas:
1) Jeremy Lin – A Taiwanese American did well in the NBA and now is a national hero in Taiwan even though he is in fact really an American.
2) Wang Jien Ming – A genuine home grown baseball pitcher who a few years ago played for the New York Yankees. When he was playing they erected screens in public places all around the country and the normally hardworking Taiwanese all stopped to watch.
The incident that most sticks in my mind is the Olympics in Greece back in 2004. Taiwan won 2 Golds in Taekwondo. When the Taiwanese went up to the podium to receive their gold every channel had been changed to broadcast from children’s TV to stocks to news. As they raised the shitty Chinese Taipei flag and broadcast some weird national anthem that nobody knew their wasn’t a dry eye in the studios. Presenters who had covered wars, seen the results of terrorist attacks and lost family and friends could not control the tears from raining down.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Taking Taiwanese girl back to the West to make her more outgoing

I had really assumed this kind of behavior was a relic of the past, but then the friend who inspired me to write this blog confessed to doing it, and then I bumped into the guy below. Clearly, some things never change…
Dave Ritco had got married to a Taiwanese girl and left about 2 years ago. I had got occasional emails from him but now I suddenly saw him on the street in Taipei.
“Why are you back? Thought you were nicely settled in Canada?” I asked.
“It is a long story man. Sorting out the divorce.”
“What?” I asked. We then had a long conversation about what had happened and how she had refused to work or make friends in Canada. It wasn't a surprise to me but then the key words came out: “I thought she would change back in the West. Become more outgoing.”
I felt sorry for him because we had all been through this stage. It was also an interesting confirmation of that fact: to lesser degree or more we had all bought into the nonsense that the West was going to make Taiwanese girls more outgoing.
The argument of course went like this: Taiwan was sexist and given the freedoms and emphasize on being yourself in the West, said Taiwan girl will come out of her shell. It was an easy mistake to make, but still a bad one nonetheless.
  1. Not everyone in the West was outgoing – Once you thought about that fact and realized that most people spent their time knocking themselves or trying to do anything possible to gain more confidence you would realize the take them back argument wasn't going to work.
  2. Outgoing was a personality issue not a society one – This tied in with the above and had reams and reams of evidence to prove it. Once you met loads of Taiwanese you realized that an awful lot of them were extremely outgoing. Taiwanese: set up businesses, they are extremely social, they have little fear of public speaking or even public singing and dancing. They just operate within a social framework which makes certain aspects of their character appear timid. They are scared of their parents and bosses and we define outgoing and freedom as the ability to tell our parents to fuck off. I always like to refer to Dangerous Liasons the film with Glen Close. Clearly she is an outgoing, determined woman but she has to keep it under wraps because of the society in France at the time. 17 or 18th century France didn't by default make all women doormats, but rather made them think harder about where and how they could express their character.
  3. Taiwan society isn't that repressed – As well as being very sexist and paternalistic, Taiwan is also one of the most socially and sexually liberal places in the world. Parents in general don't care what their kids do as long as come home, pay up the monthly allowance and are seen when relatives come to visit. They operate an extremely long rope policy turning a blind eye to most of the things their kids get up to. The classic being the Taiwanese girl who is on the phone to her mother at 11pm to tell her she is staying at a friend’s house; the mother says nothing even though she can hear a guy discussing hotel room sizes with the receptionist in the background. In short, if someone was naturally outgoing there were a million ways to express yourself. And, in even shorter, if your Taiwanese girlfriend was afraid to sing in KTV, or dance in the disco, or meet your friends, or get up and speak at work; she was naturally introverted and that was that. No amount of time in the West was going to change her.
The above may appear commonsense and it was. However, if you were able to keep your commonsense while in deep culture shock there wouldn't be a need for this blog.
Don’t forget to check out the kindle books linked in the post below.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Betelnut Equation Now Available As An E-Book

Hi All,
I have now made this blog available as an e-book with reformatted, reorganized, rewritten and added content.
I did this for a number of reasons. Ideas and understanding of the situation are continually evolving and improving so I have spent a lot of time to go back and review all my posts and make sure points are made clearer and quicker - and connections that I previously hadn't noticed are drawn - As well as adding additional content.
The e-book format also offers several other advantages: all the content is grouped according to categories and, as there is a hyper linked index, it is very easy to jump instantly from one story to another or one chapter to another. This way you can definitely get deeper into the stories and come back and forth quicker.
The amount of content is huge so I have split into two parts, the first is available on the Amazon Kindle Store at the links below - I will be adding the second part very soon and also adding the content to other book stores.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.de/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.fr/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.it/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.es/dp/B007QSGZ3U
My passion and mission hasn't changed: to deliver some real and extremely relevant insight into the culture of Taiwan in an entertaining style. Hopefully, arm anyone coming with knowledge I didn't have. I look forward to hearing whether I have achieved that aim – And will of course work hard to answer any of your questions.