Most definitely 
Common.
New Year and the weeks up to it are the hot season for break ins, pick pockets and other petty and not so petty crime.
-
People stash cash at home for red envelopes. Lots of cash.
-
People receive their anual bonus in cash. They will keep it in bills so they can buy stuff and or stuff red envelopes.
-
People buy new stuff on New Year, so they will carry cash to buy it and or have new stuff at home that can be resold easily.
Ergo, keep an eye out, be a bit more vigilant, watch your purse/billfold in crowded places such as markets, Dihua street, etc.
If you notice, police are doing extra rounds in neighborhoods, metro stations, markets, etc because of this.
And they do print the clearest image they can of any perv or thief in the hood and post it in public neighborhood boards.
8 Likes
Thanks for putting this in writing because I’ve thought about this before.
Remember the Tainan quake, how much cash they were pulling out the wrecked building? People were getting ready for family events and red envelope stuffing…
Jokes on them because we can’t even do hongbao exchange or other CNY festivities this year. We are abiding by the yearlong mourning period for my grandma. Stupid thieves!
…T__T
Haha, not. They just put on a helmet or cap.
I used to park my bicycle at the bottom of the apartment stairwell, locked, and people kept stealing the headlight and the little saddlebag and such. It was annoying. I’ve never had a break-in anywhere I’ve lived, though, perhaps because my house is always full of dogs.
So that’s my advice: Adopt a bunch of dogs.
Not if you have coverage from your house until the public CCTV cameras begin. If there are no gaps, they will choose easier targets.
Big dogs, as small dogs could be stolen! 
3 Likes
Luckily, we are in Taiwan, where big dogs are still allowed.
Unfortunately, we can’t say the same about the other side of the strait…
My husband has had his shoes stolen twice, because Taiwanese families often leave their shoes outside the front door. But this was in a building with a locked main door!
So it was either a neighbor, or someone left the building’s front door open…
I guess they want to try to resell them? Crazy!
I am a firm believer that Taiwan has unnaturally high (unreported) robbery issues. I got my stuff repeatedly stolen my first year (later found out the landlord had given keys to all SORTS of people, and no, my stuff was never recovered and no one responsible was prosecuted). The police rolled their eyes and told me and my roommates that it “must be one of your friends” every time we went to report it (a few times a month, for 10 months). They wouldn’t LET US file police reports because that would have meant they’d have to DO THEIR JOB and actually INVESTIGATE, which they are too lazy to do.
If you walk around any major city in the US, you don’t see bars on the windows like you do in Taiwan. My grandparents have lived in same house in the city of Chicago since my mom was in high school, and they have only ever had one break in (in like 40+ years of living there). No bars on the widows, not even the basement. Obviously more populated/ downtown areas will have grates over basement windows, but even then, it’s not as crazy as you see here. NYC has stairs outside of older buildings because fire escapes are more important than keeping out thieves. Do people break in? I’m sure. Have people weighed the risk? yes.
I currently live in a first floor unit, with a sizable “back patio” with a shoulder high wall and door that locks. You can reach over to unlock the door, and people have. They have wandered right in to my kitchen and then claimed they “thought it was the front door to the upper units” when I tell them to f*** off because there’s no way you didn’t notice the 1) locked door 2) lack of street address signs and 3) lack of mail boxes. I now paranoid check that both doors are locked and have security cameras on the front and back. No one has “accidentally” wandered in (to my patio area) since.
I once mentioned that I had left my 5th floor (barred shut) window open when I was living in Taipei and everyone told me that I should go home NOW and close it. Are there ninjas scaling the walls to break in to 5th floor apartments? Do they carry a saw with them to get the bars off? There’s no way there isn’t a massive problem with break-ins here if people are willing to trap themselves in (hello earthquakes?) in order to keep “bad guys” out.
All that being said, Taiwan is still a lot safer than a lot of places, especially when it comes to wandering around/ taking public transit alone at night. Just don’t be the moron who runs around believing that there’s no lawlessness to speak of
The bars hark back to a time when there were burglaries decades ago… Theyre not needed now its ingrained in the mass consciousness of the people so they continue to put them on new houses and dont remove the old ones.
I honestly have never heard of a break-in happening with anyone else I know, and it’s the first time it’s ever happened to anyone in my family, although I’m sure it happens. That’s why I’m so curious about the actual statistics. At any rate, unwanted visitors (including critters) seem much more likely if you live on the first floor.
The bars on the windows now seem like a functional thing from my point of view — a place to put some plants, hang laundry, protect the ass end of the air conditioning unit…are they ugly? Hell yes. But they provide a little extra space in an otherwise cramped city, and I’d miss them if they were gone.
The oldies love them. There was a renovation downstairs and old bars went off and new bars went on all around. They are secured with a screw from the outside, so I wonder if a would-be burglar could just unscrew them. The window installations are generally not up to par safety wise, so I suppose the bars act as a secondary measure to stop any kids in the house falling out, I remember that actually happened at a day care centre a few years ago.
That said, there have been a couple of renovations in our area where they have done away with the cages and put in big European style windows, that let in, heaven forbid, some sunlight.
1 Like
That’s because they do.
3 Likes
The answer to both of these questions, unfortunately, is yes. Well, more like bolt cutters for the bars.
This, unfortunately, is not true. I have a friend whose place was broken into even with the bars…they weren’t thick enough, and were easily cut through and bent aside. The burglar made off with a good amount of cash and jewelry.
2 Likes
Nuh uh, it’d never work.
You need a car jack to spread the bars, like Jackie in Shanghai Noon
Not on the good bars. These weren’t the good bars. They were, however, replaced by the good bars.