Wow! Thanks for all the amazing insights folks! That’s really reassuring and eye opening.
I’m glad no one cut my head off!
I think after my contract ends I’m probably not going to stick around here too much longer. Will see how the covid situation pans out… It’s nice and all but if people who have been here for decades / are ethnically Taiwanese feel excluded… That doesn’t sit right with me.
On a regular basis I witness what I’d call low to mid grade emotional abuse from the teachers to the kids in school. I’m not surprised the kids grow up to be such awkward adults when they’re raised in this environment. Honestly the teaching I see at school here is regularly bad if not dreadful… Well any way. An interesting cultural experience none the less!
In reality this is the case to some extent anywhere you go in the world. Sure, some countries are more or less willing to embrace “outsiders” and people who are “different” in some way, but I haven’t been to any place where foreigners/multicultural/third culture kids are so fully accepted and embraced that they forget they’re not a local.
I think it all comes down to community. Do you feel part of any community in Taiwan? Work isn’t often the place in Taiwan (or most places) where
people (especially foreigners) find community (sometimes friends though), but maybe your experience in life has been different, and work has been the place that you have found community.
I found that after I was in Taiwan a few years, I “built” (and I use this term very loosely) a community of my own. It was a strange combination of foreign teachers I knew, some people from martial arts (both foreign and Taiwanese), and some people from a local religious group (all Taiwanese).
After I left Taiwan and returned to Canada, even after more than ten years, I have not found people that I have felt more accepted by than my “community” in Taiwan. I talk to most of them on a regular basis, and it is a big part of why we are moving back to Taiwan from Canada in 3 years or so.
So get out and find people that you actually want to be around, doing the things that you actually enjoy doing. There is a cultural gap, for sure, but this often decreases greatly when everyone is doing something that they enjoy, together.
Work is absolute political civil war in Taiwan. Most Taiwanese workers are skeptical of “friendships” at work and are constantly re-evaluating political alliances, risk/reward and future survival. Being a foreigner just wanting to make friends is a distraction to the on-going political games and boondoggles. Your innocence to the game serves little purpose to bigger players. Remember, before reality TV, there was the Taiwan work environment.
I lived here with a Taiwanese woman and her daughter, to the mum I was a trophy *(i had to go everywhere with her, even the hairdresser?)*to the daughter I was a dirty foreigner who could’t speak HER language.
Mums friends where so false towards me other than a lesbian couple who I became more friends with than my then partner.
I have a partially disabled right hand, my 2 middle fingers have no muscle strength, my index is weak. You can imagine what my chopstick skills are like I still had that comment said to me?! Brachial neuritis
Just to even it up a bit, SOME Taiwanese han immigrants used to eat Aborigines and attack aboriginal villages killing them and driving them into the mountains and taking their land . They were even worse.
Never heard of Han people eating aborigine
You sure bout that ?
Driving them into the mountains maybe
The plains aborigine but most likely marrying them and assimilating them into the culture
Many aborigine lived in the mountains anyways that’s why they were called mountain people
Yes you will always be a wai guo ren bla bla bla and most people will treat u in that slightly awkward way. Which, honestly doesn’t bother me a whole lot anyway, over time you just know what it is and brush it aside.
But if you are accepted into a group of friends or family then i find things are basically pretty normal. Especially if you are using chinese, people will accept you more.
And yea people generally don’t buddy up with their work mates. kinda weird but you just have to know your role.
Like it’s not exactly like I want to be Taiwanese, but I would like to feel like I’m part of a team of people that I’m working with…
Me too, and it seems impossible at work (though much easier outside of work, as others have mentioned as well). About the language thing, I don’t think that is the only/main barrier - my mandarin Chinese is decent and I have several colleagues who will begin every conversation quizzing me on my Taiwanese and knowledge of obscure idioms, jokes, etc. as if just looking for a way to establish me as “other” first.
Also, I’ve experienced a bit of the freezing up but even with colleagues who are fine having a conversation in Chinese, it very rarely feels that the conversation is one among equals (I mean professionally, equals as in the sense of working together on the same team).
The practice was still around when the Japanese got here. One tael of Aboriginal meat was worth 20 cash (wen).
So Han Chinese people were killing aboriginals on sight.
The meat of Aboriginals were said to have medical properties, and they would cook the bones until the gelatin came out, and that is referred to as Babarian Gelatin (番膏).
It was a practice recorded by both Qing and Japanese officials, MacKay himself, and the last recording was in 1921.
To take it a step further, it’s even a thing in the West too. That’s why you see so many enclaves of immigrants. They feel more welcome with their own ethnicity.
I still hear it said… “a Chinese, a Black, a Mexican etc family just moved in to the neighborhood” as supposed to a simple “a new family has moved in”. Humans are good at picking up differences and discussing them.
I still had that comment said to me?!
