I’ve recently been promoted in my company where I’m dealing with the financial end of things. I have always had a good deal of respect when it comes to the Taiwanese (and still do) but now seeing a side of them where I just want to ring their collective necks. What is it that when money comes into the picture Taiwanese become complete irrational dickheads? Even when it’s not their money! I’ll have EU or US accounts that are paying the bill and yet the locals do all types of weird cagey shit to cause problems. An example which didn’t effect me but had me just scratching my head –
Our building starting using an elevator card in which we were required to purchase one for each employee. Our neighbor who is a successful RE Agent thought 150NT was way too much. So instead of paying the price he took ours and ran all over town for 4 hours to find counterfeit ones. In the end it saved him a total of 300NT and 4 hours & gas wasted.
I understand being tight fisted but have they ever heard “penny rich, pound foolish”?
…Know I just need to cool off, thank god CNY is upon us.
I hear your pain! But trust me, they are way worse here in HK and companies know it, which is why they are constantly sending crap little vouchers out for some revolting local sweet muck.
I swear a person where I work, who is a multi-millionaire in the American sense, walked into a meeting lugging ten huge bags of bog paper she happened to nab on special during her lunch break. Why she just didn’t leave them with her driver I have no idea, but perhaps to bask in the glory of this treasured find?
Back when the Taiwanese national lottery first started up I watched as thousands of Taiwanese put their homes in hock, called in every loan they had ever made, hit up mom and dad and extended family and friends, scrapped together every nt they could and bought as many 50nt lotto tickets as they could afford. Then I watched as many of them commited suicide. The Chinese love money and lust after it more strongly than sex. Of course that’s just generally, I mean. But stuff like the RE agent did is simpely normal local culture. He waisted half a day of work and who knows how much for gas, but he feels great cause he “outsmarted” those elevator security guys!
I feel a little better other people out there are on the same page as me. I think Housecat nailed when saying “they lust for money”. How else can you explain some of the shit? The other rational I’ve heard in my line of work is they want the US/EU side to think they are saving them money, justifying their job.
Like HGC my old boss was a millionaire but when we would go out to lunch he would refuse to go to the clean, better quality lunchbox place but rather eat at the dirty, rat infested, sweaty boss tank top wearing lunch place as it was 15NT cheaper.
Penny wise and sometimes pound foolish is what I have found.
I remember working in a company where they would purchase cheaper train tickets for employees who would go down to Ilan to visit the factory. They would purchase tickets for the slower train, which would be 70NTD cheaper but take an extra hour. When I implied that what this amounted to valuing each employees time at 70 NTD per hour, I just got the …but we saved money. People here seem to understand cost in terms of money but not value for money. It took me a while to convince my wife that instead of buying those cheap batteries, to buy Duracell that is more expensive but lasts longer.
But I remember when I was young my parents well, I would not say cheap, but thrifty. Coming from the time they were grew up in, they were taught that you preserve money. Same goes here I think. I used to nag at my wife about her mom being pedantic when her mom haggled for an half an hour for a 10NTD reduction, but then my mother in law used to wear no shoes and empty rice sacks as clothes when she was young. So different circumstances, different experience, makes people see the same thing differently
And I think everyone lusts for money, not just here in Taiwan. Money gives you power and the ability to choose.
Where I work I get guys comes in everyday to copy lottery ticket numbers and I think he buys like a lot of tickets each session. I usually told him how its a waste of money to go for lottery tickets but he never gets the hint even though he loses more money than he earns doing lottery tickets.
I also don’t think this is something that is distinctly Taiwanese. There are people everywhere who go to extreme lengths to feel like they have saved a few extra dollars when in reality they have only wasted time and effort for virtually nothing.
I remember when I was growing up in Southern Ontario and thousands of people used to drive all day to cross the border to do their shopping in the U.S. Sure, if you lived within an hour of the border this might be cost effective, but I knew of people who would drive three hours one way (six total, for the mathematically impaired) and spend an entire tank of gas EVERY WEEK to buy their groceries. This would, in effect, save them less than $20 (Canadian dollars, no less) per shopping trip.
Mercifully, my parents were not these sorts of people.
I know people in NW Arkansas who drive their SUV’s for an hour to do their shopping in MO, as there’s no sales tax there. They justify this behavior because the price of gas has made everythig more expensive and they have to save whatever they can. I used to just shake my head. The rising price of gas has also made the price of
GAS more expensive, but they just don’t make the connection. If they shopped locally and bought cheaper brands, or changed their menus at home to stretch things a bit, or clip cupons, they would save more than the hour long trip accross the border.
So yes, this happens everywhere. But this is not the lust for money I’m talking about with the Taiwanese. It’s hard to explain, I guess. I met people who saw their children at most only once a month. They sent then to live with others so that they could work more. They did NOT have to do this. Not like some parents who have no choice, as maybe they’re single and the job sends them too far away to be home every night, or whatever. And not like parents who work a lot so gran’ma takes care of the kids for a few hours after school every day and most weekends.
These people simply didn’t want to take time out from working long enough to raise their kids. And frequently, I was told by these people (yes, I asked them a lot of questions–they facinated me) that they hate what they do. But asked what they would do if they could do anything they wanted, they always answered something like, “have a lot of money!” They could not even answer the question properly, as money is a posession, not an activity.
We just bought a deepfreeze from a local shop. Our neighbours immediately had all kinds of things to say about how we got ripped off/ should have bought at Carrefour or RT Mart, etc, etc… and to please ask them to “help” next time we want to buy something.
I mentioned that these people will honour their end of the deal re. warranties without hassle (we’ve done business with them before), that they delivered for free (same day) and that we ended up with a better brand than the single version sold at any of the big shops. They said that foreigners must like paying more. (Even though we got a great deal and didn’t have to pay for delivery). These are the same people who buy bread and muffins in bulk from Costco (40 km away) and throw away 75% of it because they don’t use it in time and because it doesn’t stay “fresh” if you freeze it.
As for the Canadian thing, when I was in school, it was always thought of as a status thing to go shopping in the states and bring back stuff. My parents didn’t get the concept, so we never had American stuff. It bugged me then, but I guess I got over it.
Money and Chinese hey…Mao should have guessed that communism wouldn’t work.
My parents have never been poor, but they’ve always liked dockets for saving money. Nothing wrong with that I guess, but what I can’t understand is why they wouldn’t get a cleaner for the weekend since they spent the whole weekend cleaning! They’re professionals…surely working a bit of overtime and then paying for a cleaner makes more sense.
As for these Taiwanese companies saving money by getting cheaper tickets that cost an extra hour…what moron thought of that? For anyone who works a large number of hours in a day, you need to put a dollar value on your free time. You should turn around and ask those people who thought it was good, what they value their hourly time as worth. If its $70 NT, turn around to them and say, I’ll give u $70 NT per hour to come clean my house and then see what they say. However, I used the same logic on my parents and for some reason, they didn’t see the light…
[quote=“Tyc00n”]
As for these Taiwanese companies saving money by getting cheaper tickets that cost an extra hour…what moron thought of that? For anyone who works a large number of hours in a day, you need to put a dollar value on your free time. You should turn around and ask those people who thought it was good, what they value their hourly time as worth. If its $70 NT, turn around to them and say, I’ll give u $70 NT per hour to come clean my house and then see what they say. However, I used the same logic on my parents and for some reason, they didn’t see the light…[/quote]
It was just the office in Taiwan that did this, locally ran office. It seemed to be a rule or understanding that everyone followed (keep costs down as much as possible) but never asked why.
Not to generalize but it does seem the method to do business here. Profit equals whatever money is made minus whatever you had to spend, so the emphasis seems not to be on thinking how to increase revenue and productivity but how to keep costs down. This though is part of the work ethic here, where performance is measured on time spent in office, not necessarily on what you achieve, where the boss assumes all the staff to be lazy backstabbers and where firings continue until morale improves
But thinking about it there may be truth in the belief that Taiwanese have an obsession with money. It seems to be bred into people that the objective is to make money, but no reason is given for this objective. So people do something without satisfaction because there is no end/no goal/no payoff to it, it is a mundane repetitive task … make money, make money, make money, make money
Then again I also find it interesting that not only is the objective to make money, it is also necessary to present the facade that you are rolling in money via the expensive mobile phone, car or other trinkets, but not necessary to present this facade when you are buying your 30NTD lunch. Here it seems that getting the best deal which equals as cheap as possible, demonstrates that you are smarter/have better business acuity than the average bear, and have got one up on the guy who spends 35NTD on lunch two shops down
[quote=“TNT”]
Then again I also find it interesting that not only is the objective to make money, it is also necessary to present the facade that you are rolling in money via the expensive mobile phone, car or other trinkets, but not necessary to present this facade when you are buying your 30NTD lunch. Here it seems that getting the best deal which equals as cheap as possible, demonstrates that you are smarter/have better business acuity than the average bear, and have got one up on the guy who spends 35NTD on lunch two shops down[/quote]
So next time, you can point out that whilst they only spent $35 NT on lunch, you saved $10,000 NT on your phone.
My parents used to tell me about making money and all that, I think parents tells their kid to make money to motivate them and to make sure they want to be successful and it seems that is measured by how much money you have. Perhaps its everywhere in the western exposed asian culture. I seen people often drive expensive cars but they go into debt to get the expensive car.
OK, I’m not much a coffee drinker, so forgive me for my insensitivity, but when it comes to Taiwanese people trying to save money, why is that they hunt down the 60 NT bien dang and then go blow 120 NT at Starbuck’s? Oh… I know why… So they can sit there all day in a comfy chair, type on a laptop (free Wifi!) and even have big company meetings. Anyway, I don’t get it–given the mindset about scrimping on everything else.
It’s a definite part of Chinese culture. Scrimp and save, cost/benefit calculations not included. This has been passed down for generations. I guess this has been the first generation that has known anything like mass material prosperity. I don’t think the same ideals are present in most similarly historically impoverished places, it would be interesting to know if it will change here in the immediate future. Still many westerners could benefit from a touch of this when it comes to things like savings. This can be a particularly fruitful area for cultural exchange.
I have been waiting to get this off my chest for quite some time so here goes.
Yesterday I came across a vid by a rather famous M13… I am sure all of you know who he is…
In that vid, he mentioned some incidents where some Mainlander Chinese food manufacturers try to make a quick buck by putting poisonous substances in their food products. One notorious example is the babypowder incident a few years back.
Now I have lived in China, HK, Taiwan and traveled to countries with a significant overseas Chinese population. And I really hate to say this but tis true that most Chinese including overseas chinese like the taiwanese are overly obsessive with money. An European friend of mine once told me he was simply amazed at how all the Taiwanese would incessantly pray to the local deities for money, a good marriage, children, etc etc.
You tell me, my friends… isn’t the Chinese Culture all about Money?
I’m a Chinese and yes, wealth and fortune is a very important aspect of our culture and lives. During Chinese New Year, we wish each other to have an auspicious new year, gong xi fa cai, make/earn/get loads of money. When I pray, I ask for blessings for my family to have good fortune too. We see a car accident on the road, we copy down the car plate number to buy lottery. As observers, you may find it funny, but the fact is that money and fortune is part and parcel of our everyday lives.
The milk powder incident is of course due to greed to make more profit. However, it is more of an ethics issue. Please don’t misunderstand that while money is a big part of our culture, we will do anything to make a bigger profit. There are ethical and unethical businesspeople everywhere .
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