ABCguy,
Don’t you weary at all of playing the role of indignant “debunker”? Can’t you just accept that one of the major functions of these froums is for expats to vent some of their frustration about living in Taiwanese society? Don’t you feel a bit overwhelmed by the task of setting everthing that you regard as a spurious opinion, right?
A while back, in one of these forums, someone posted a link to a site, similar to this one, that seems to be for Asian-Americans living in North America. In addition to lots of networking resouces, and informative articles, the site also has forums. These forums are full of people sharing expressions of Asian pride and soildarity, and their experiences about living in Canada and the States. As you can imagine, there are many ancedotes posted about encounters with racism and descrimination. There seems to be a lot of spleen venting going on, both constructive and not so consturctive - similar to the kinds of things we can find here at Oriented.
As a non-Asian reading through the site, do I find the postings offensive? Perhaps, sometimes - but generally, no. Do I feel compelled to lambast people for expressing their frustrations -even when they are expressed crassly, or as gross generalizations? No, I understand that theirs is an experience, and perspective that I, as a white person, can not know. I also understand, because I have a shared experience of living as a minority, and as a foreigner, that friction is inevitable, and frustrations with the host culture are part of the expat experience, regardless of the expat’s country of origin. I also understand that, no matter where you go in the world, you will find that some people can simply not be bothered to express themselves tactfully.
You seem quite self-assured in your observations about Russian culture based on the two whole months you spent there last summer. Apparently, you now feel “qualified” to enlighten us on things you observed there. I’m glad for you that you had such a great experience, and were able to get so much out of it. Now, here is a mind bender for you; Many of us have lived in Taiwan for YEARS. We speak mandarin, we have lots of Taiwanese friends, co-workers, spouses/partners, bosses, students, relatives, neighbors - we understand the people and the culture, enjoy our lives in Taiwan, but still have the kinds of grievences you’d expect for expats to have. Some of us might be guilty of expressing our feelings as culturally relativistic generalizations, but we are not ignorant. Most of us aren’t gratuitously dissmissive and dissrespectful of Taiwan, it’s people, and it’s culture. What we DO have, for those of us who don’t come from a Chinese heritage, is a perspecitve - as foreigners in Taiwan - that sometimes might seem offensive to you.
I applaude you for challenging things you think are wrong, but I also can’t help thinking that it’s kind of futile for you to, “get your knickers in a twist”, about attitudes that arent’s that much different than expats anywhere. Perhaps you should just try to deal with the fact that foreigners can be critical of aspects of Chinese society in Taiwan, and the Mainland - but that doesn’t make them irrational biggots. I don’t know how much time you have spent in Taiwan, but perhaps you also might want to consider the fact that there are probably many non-Chinese posters to these forums who are signifcantly more “qualified” than you to comment about life in Taiwan, based on their years of practical experience.
Were you in Taiwan on Sept. 11th? Were you there in the weeks following that event? I was, and most of the posters here, were, too. I’m sure many of us have anceodtes to share of the warm sympathy that we recieved from Taiwanese friends, at the same time all of us have seen and heard things that dissapointed us. This thread, to me, seemed a useful sounding board for people to share both the good and the bad. Sorry, if the negative things offend you.