Taiwan, a violent place?

Taiwan is a small island so anytime something happens, it’s going to be on the news and reported. Most of the time nothing really happens, and it’s still reported. I would say Taiwan is relatively shape compared to most countries around the world.

I’m a cyclist, but there’s two things that make Taiwan the safest place I’ve ridden.
Most importantly, there’s none of that “get to the side of the road, you law-breaking, lycra-wearing, Americano-sipping, Euro-elitist fucktard on a thousand-dollar bike” attitude so prevalent in certain parts of the US. Drivers and scooter riders give you the same irresponsible recklessness that everybody else endures, with no malice toward any group.
On the plus side, you’ll get frequent "thumbs up"s, smiles, friendly questions, and the occasional “Jia You!” I’ll say it again, It’s a great place to ride.
The other factor is scooter lanes on bigger roads; I’ve come to learn that scooters aren’t the enemy. The general chaos that reigns on the roadways serves to slow everything down, and that increases available reaction time. This is to the good.
I have witnessed violence here, and I have been threatened/attacked on a few occasions. My neighborhood is full of Taoist temples and is frequented by people from other neighborhoods, some who loiter all day smoking, drinking and gambling, or who are looking for new opportunities to do the same.
During Moon festival three years ago, the dreadful ogress who lives across the street was hosting a daily card game. A lot of money was being won and lost and there were some grumblings and occasional finger pointing accusations. All was as normal for this wretched household on a big holiday. Three days into this stretch of card games, which went all day and late into the evening, a howl went up. A young man fought his way to the front door of the house, and just as I got to the window to see what was happening, another young man started hacking him up with a very sharp temple sword. When his grisly work was done, the kid with the sword called out his mates and they all left on scooters… double time.
Meanwhile, at the Taoist temple immediately adjacent, about 40 worshippers in their white dentist tunics looked on from 30 feet away and did nothing. Nor did they move or reach for their phones. They all stood expressionless and stared. In all, the event lasted about three minutes, and the faithful were still standing in the street as the attackers fled directly through them. They resumed their ceremony half-heartedly and wrapped things up with some haste. In 20 minutes all of them were gone and the shutters came down.
The ogress and one of her lackeys stayed with the victim and pressed towels to his wounds while an impossibly large pool of blood grew around where he lay. She began crying melodramatically. After about 40 minutes an ambulance arrived, and at long last, the police. It was clear from the lack of urgency and the massive pool of blood that the kid was done for.
I’m not a sociologist and I hate the wise old expat greybeards who cluck indignantly and wag their chins sagely while spouting pedantry at their foreign peers. This is simply one person’s experience of a horror in the countryside. Frankly it has scarred me: I can still hear the wet smacking sound made by the sword as it cut through flesh. I think that violence resides with the violent people in this society, and everyone else does their best to keep out of it at any cost. I’d say if you’re concerned for your safety you should surround yourself with people who are like you, and venture very carefully into the unfamiliar places. Seems to me that the violence is confined to small circles of people you probably don’t want to associate with anyway.

Most violence is domestic violence h
ere (and elsewhere quite often), so many victims don’t have a choice as such in staying away from it.

I wonder how violent the schools are, my impression is it varies enormously according to the school, the better schools are less violent as it is competitive to enter them.

Taiwans violence is definitely not as open as it is in many western countries. And it differs a lot. But for Child abuse I think Taiwan is higher than a lot of Western countries

In the country areas I find there is a lot of Child abuse especially from teachers. At one of the schools my wife used to teach at kids frequently came home with bruises for not doing simple things like doing there homework. Teachers would often just beat them for no reason. There was also plenty of sexual things going on. I caught a teacher one day hugging a child but the child was trying to run away.
My wife tried doing whatever she could to contact the government but they just turned a blind eye to it. It is not just in one school it is in multiply schools in the area and they all protect and support each other. One of the principles in the area not to long ago was done for having sexual relations with most of the boys in there school.

Then there’s what comes from the parents. It is very common to see kids beaten in a public place like a supermarket. I still see it enough in the cities but it is a little bit less.

But apart from that Taiwanese are generally not violent in front of people. They will always do something behind your back instead.

Yep there are some dodgy teachers out there, I heard some stories last year, one was of a teacher caught showing hardcore porn to female junior high students. This was also a small town school. I don’t think anything was done about it and I"m not sure if anybody reported it.

But this is what I really want to post about. It’s a good article, read it. I also noticed the Taichung weird love quadrangle murder case which got almost NO press, as well as the recent case where a mother killed her kids in a misguided suicide attempt. There was another case where a step dad kidnapped the ex-wife’s daughter, and killed her during his suicide, but didn’t kill his natural born son (evil evil man).

I suspect that some of these murderers or victims are related to powerful people here, but it could also be that the media has a certain quote of murder and mayhem so pick up one case and drop another. I think the below murder/suicide in Taichung was briefly on the TV news though as my wife mentioned it to me.

taiwantake.com/#!The-Miracul … AA14837524

[quote]Double homocide is news, isn’t it? Apparently not in Taichung. While preparing the Central Taiwan news report for ICRT on Tuesday night I came across a short, three paragraph and 1:19 video TVBS report on a mother who strangled her two children to death. The report itself is very odd, with around 1/3 of it devoted to the Qiqi property the family lived in, including noting the cost and when the building was build. There were the obligatory comments from the door guard (no emotional problems he/she knew of) and people at their daughter’s elementary school who expressed surprise and shock. Also mentioned is that the husband owned a concrete factory. In short, it was a terrible piece that left out most of the critical details. The age and gender of the other child wasn’t mentioned (phrasing suggests maybe a boy), what she strangled them with, how the bodies were found or where, how or even if the police are involved or really much of anything at all. The article’s main thrust was essentially how could a wealthy woman living in a swank building in a swank part of town snap?
Missing and misleading information is not uncommon in local reports, which is why I usually get three to four reports whenever possible to compare. This was the only report I could find. I couldn’t find a single report on this anywhere else. So, in the end I dropped it from my report–it was just too flimsy and uncorroborated by any other source.
So what is going on here? Three possibilities come to mind. One possibility is that the story is just simply too depressing and they thought it might turn off viewers who would rather watch “cam porn” traffic accidents and the like. There was a similar story about a woman who drove to a motel and poisoned herself and her kids in a motel room, but in the end she survived. That got more press than this, though not by a whole lot. Could the discomforting aspect of this story turn away the press? The worst story I reported on was a wierd love quadrangle that ended up with three or four people torturing a young woman to death over a few weeks. It was a truly sick and horrifying story, and it got surprisingly little press. On the other hand, the Sun Moon cult case where they tortured a member’s high school son to death got plenty of press.
Another unlikely possibility is that TVBS just made it up, and that is why no one else covered it.
Then there is the possibility is that the family is rich and powerful, and they managed to scare off the press.
What do you think is going on here?[/quote]

Just to put things into perspective, Taiwan came out second (behind Japan) in this ranking of 2014 which lists the “Top 10 safest countries to live in” (measured by crime statistics):

lifestyle9.com/top-10-safest … e-world/4/

Here’s a similar top 10 list with Taiwan again on the number 2 spot (behind Iceland this time):

presscave.com/top-safest-cou … the-world/

[quote=“GC Rider”]Just to put things into perspective, Taiwan came out second (behind Japan) in this ranking of 2014 which lists the “Top 10 safest countries to live in” (measured by crime statistics):

lifestyle9.com/top-10-safest … e-world/4/

Here’s a similar top 10 list with Taiwan again on the number 2 spot (behind Iceland this time):

presscave.com/top-safest-cou … the-world/[/quote]
I find Taiwan(and Taipei) on those “safest” lists very frequently. I think we are definitely on the safer side, but the safest? I don’t think so.

Besides, none of these lists takes traffic into account, which is arguably the most dangerous thing here.

I think it all depends on where you are from. I just ask myself how many people I know have been robbed at gunpoint this week? How many houses were broken in around my neighborhood? I do not count the ones on TV/paper/news. It can get worse. How many of my relatives have suffered some kind of crime here? Myself? How do I feel by myself/with my family in public spaces? Can I take out my cellphone for a call and not worry about losing my hand/life? Don’t get me started on what I wear, or rather, what I can wear.

In summary: what do I fear here in Taiwan? Blue trucks and taxis, to be honest. And I do not drive and will never ever touch a scooter/the wheel of a car here again. But that is for other people’s safety, to be honest.

[quote=“Icon”]I think it all depends on where you are from. I just ask myself how many people I know have been robbed at gunpoint this week? How many houses were broken in around my neighborhood? I do not count the ones on TV/paper/news. It can get worse. How many of my relatives have suffered some kind of crime here? Myself? How do I feel by myself/with my family in public spaces? Can I take out my cellphone for a call and not worry about losing my hand/life? Don’t get me started on what I wear, or rather, what I can wear.

In summary: what do I fear here in Taiwan? Blue trucks and taxis, to be honest. And I do not drive and will never ever touch a scooter/the wheel of a car here again. But that is for other people’s safety, to be honest.[/quote]
I’ve always been curious about where you come from…sounds like Venezuela or something.

And I don’t want to learn how to ride a scooter or drive a car either, even though everybody I know is doing it. I absolutely HATE scooters, and I’m certain that cars operated by brains will eventually be invented, sooner or later. :laughing:

[quote=“Icon”]
In summary: what do I fear here in Taiwan? Blue trucks and taxis, to be honest. [/quote]

And buses…

The neighborhood where you live in the Bay Area can mean life or death. Tragically this sort of stray bullet killing happens at least a few times a year in Oakland

sfgate.com/bayarea/article/M … 125836.php

[quote=“nonredneck”][quote=“Icon”]
In summary: what do I fear here in Taiwan? Blue trucks and taxis, to be honest. [/quote]

And buses…[/quote]

And blind corners.

[quote=“Mucha Man”][quote=“nonredneck”][quote=“Icon”]
In summary: what do I fear here in Taiwan? Blue trucks and taxis, to be honest. [/quote]

And buses…[/quote]

And blind corners.[/quote]

and ugly architecture. and cho dofu stench.

Well, if you grow up in more violent environment Taiwan seems very safe. I grew up in Waco, Texas which actually led the nation in murders per capita for a few years. I love the comment from the Waco police head in an article for 2013 stats…guess the local hospitals have a lot of useful experience with gun and knife wounds.

[u]Swanton also partially attributed the low number of homicides in 2013 to the quality and accessibility of hospitals in the surrounding area.

“Being able to provide that within that golden hour for our victims — we are extremely fortunate to have that in the Waco area,” he said. “It keeps our murder rate from being much higher.”[/u] :thumbsup:

Actually, the town’s black population lived on east side where weekly domestic violence kept the police hopping. Being white I stayed out of the east side at night except for when I was 17. At that time every Sat night I used to give a ride to black cook who lived on the east side (we worked at a restaurant). He was an alcoholic so he had to stop at the liquor store on the way home. One o’clock in the morning is the wrong time to be a white boy in that neighborhood. ha…haven’t thought about that in years…

Having also lived in Singapore I can say that I felt much safer in Singapore but much of that is attributed to not worrying some driver is going to get out and try to hack me up for honking at him/her for also running my off the road.

Not sure if a new thread should be started. Anyone else notice the surge in road rage this year?

All the crazy stories on the news. :noway:

That’s true and very easy to avoid it.
If you try not to have direct contact with those road dicks, you are free of danger!
Most aiwanese just ignore the unfriendly horns or try not to give a risky horn.

There’s no such thing as an average hood in the US.

I have no doubt that you can find bad neighborhoods in Taiwan if you look hard enough. I haven’t looked hard enough.[/quote]

I came to Taiwan from Manila, that entire city is a bad neighborhood. I’m in Taoyuan now, not exactly the most aesthetically pleasing city on the island and not far from me is the little red light district. Sadly there are times when I have to walk through it when taking a bus home from DaYuan but one of the pimps comes over all the time to speak English to me. I’ve never paid him for any of his services or anything like that but the 1st time he talked to me he started yelling, hello, hi, hello so I walked away and he started to come over to me he said are you scared of me? I started to walk faster and he said I don’t get to speak a lot of English and I like to so I stopped and chatted with him, I can’t imagine any pimp in the US buying a Coke for someone who isn’t a client and even that might be a stretch. The guy doesn’t even try and push his girls on me, he just likes to talk to me. It’s pretty funny.

I’ve never felt unsafe at all on this island, granted my ex wife was also in a connected family so that probably helped a bit when I was in her city but I’ve had people on the subway tell me I dropped money, the guy at 7/11 come running after me because I forgot change. Sure things happen but even my one bad experience with road rage ended when the guy realized I was lao wei and then he got all apologetic.

The Lunar New Year holiday, often when family members interact the most frequently, is a peak period for domestic violence, Luo said, adding that friends or relatives should not try to deal with violent behavior, but should instead help victims report abuse and seek protection.

Wishing everyone happy holidays. :roll:

Unfortunately domestic violence is an extremely prevalent problem around the world.

The worst thing about it is that in Taiwan lots of women tend to not report it, and in the West they probably report more.