An article in today's Taipei Times newspaper hit home for me.
Chinese citizens (tourists) have been visiting Taiwan for about 10 years.
I have experienced their deportment on many occasions, especially tour groups.
I have experienced their deportment on many occasions, especially tour groups.
Individual visitors are not as easily recognized as Chinese tour groups.
This article, written by a staff writer for one of Shanghai's newspapers hits the nail on the head!
Here is the Taipei Times article
Here is the Taipei Times article
Worth your read!!!
3 comments:
Nice piece Kent Mathieu. But don't you think Taiwan was ONCE, what China is now 45+ years ago ? When we were once all stationed on Taiwan proper, it was just accepted. Spitting on the ground. The main North South, two lane highway called Ta Tung-Lou, drivers would stop and urinate at those trees lining this route. Trash and cigarette butts littered the streets. Taiwan back then was this way. Since then, the ROC Govt has managed to educate her people to be more tourist friendly, and to realize their country is such a beautiful emerald isle by not trashing her shores.
Rick, I totally agree with your assessment. I just posted this comment to the actual article: First let me say that I love Taiwan and it's people. I long to return for a visit and my fantasy is to live there again someday. I left Taiwan in the summer of 1976 after living there for 2 years. Now here comes my BUT, At that time, the culture was a mix of many types of people. There were the Chinese that came over from the mainland and their offspring. There were also a lot of "Taiwanese" descendants of those that had lived there prior to the Chinese occupation of Chiang Kai Shek and his government. Somewhere, though I do not know of ever meeting any, were the Indiginous people of Taiwan. Ettiquette was scarce in many places. Traffic in the city was very chaotic and people pushed and bumped each other in crowds and never apologized. I was exiting a bus on a busy street in Taipei and an impatient motoped driver sped around the bus on the RIGHT side, hitting me and knocking me to the ground. I remember men probably, taxi drivers, "hanging out" on the streets of the city by squatting on their hinds, chatting and smoking. Many men chewed betel nut,spitting the red sputum on the ground. You could see it anywhere on the ground. It may have been many years ago, but it was a developing culture in Taiwan. Now China is developing it's new culture and freedom. They should not be belittled. I don't like the spirit of this article.
I am a Norwegian born and raised in Taiwan where my parents were missionaries. Since 1996 I have been living in different places in China. Now I live in Zhejiang. Xi Jingping has said not long ago that all the villages and especially the toilets must be clean. I have the last couple of years seen a revolution of cleanliness that has just blown my mind and often the most beautiful and cleanest place in a village or anywhere are the toaletts. I travel a lot and as a Norwegian, I have never seen toaletts cleaner than the toaletts today in China.
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