Press making a fuss: why did the folk coming from Wuhan were greeted in a separate hangar and had to wear protective gear and the buses that transported them went to the hangar but the folk coming from India only wore simple masks and we’re on a normal flight and -gasp- walked along the main hall to get to the special buses towards quarantine?
I can’t even…and we will not hear the end of this for a while.
Press also making a fuss because 2 TECO staff are being evacuated by special medical personnel back to Taiwan.
I was on the MRT from Jingmei to Ximen yesterday. The carriage was pretty empty. I sat down with an open seat on both sides of me. The train was eventually packed. People would charge to the empty seats, see me, and prefer to stand. This happened for 25 minutes.
Now I know I’m ugly, but I was wearing a mask, hence most of my hideousness was hidden, but really?
Do people not see the news? The fucking virus is being brought in by TAIWANESE returning for cheap health care, and TAIWANESE pilots!
Fucking xenophobia really pisses on my battery.
At least I’m not getting beaten up and spat on. Small mercies, I suppose.
Just stormed out on an old friend of mine (Taiwanese) because she was spewing about how this virus is going to be out of control in Taiwan “because of all these gold card holders and foreigners who have no right to be coming in”. I don’t know how many different opportunities I gave her to use her brain with actual government-provided statistics; she kept doubling down on why what she was saying was right and I was wrong “because she knows people who know these things”. That Taiwanese people sometimes have to go abroad to take care of family members. Somehow, no foreigner traveling to Taiwan has family here. Also, that I was taking things too personally to point out that she was talking to a foreigner who hasn’t been back to the US since early Feb 2020 but people don’t know that and are racist towards all of us because of things that she is saying. And this was after she (a medical professional herself) spent a good 10 minutes telling me why the COVID vaccines are dangerous because we don’t know what kind of negative effects they’ll have on us for another 20 years. She’s not completely wrong, but really? She thinks it better that we all hold tight “safe” here in Taiwan for at least a decade for the rest of the world to get the vaccine because, “if it weren’t for these foreigners coming in, we wouldn’t have to worry about the virus.”
I knew someone would bring that up. Yeah, it’s nice to have the room, @Marco, but not if you’re thought of as unclean. You feel sad, dirty, and isolated.
There must be some misguided Line group spewing all that disinformation as it sounds rather disingenuous and repetitive, meaning they all sound very cult like.
Don’t trust the vaccines…mmm, her words sound taken from a certain US tv station … And yes, I have heard of many doctors telling patients not to get vaccinated. After SARS in 2003, that’s pretty rich. I assume it is also a matter of politics.
Blaming the foreigners usually falls on the SEA crowd. Funny how the cases here are all blamed on foreign pilots… because they are not/cannot be tested. Gold cards being blamed with hidden sources? Sounds political.
And that closure thing comes up even in foreign FB groups: we are safe here, we should leave everyone out.
I have made the comment before and I say it again: we were in the mall in Dawn of the Dead. Mall Taiwan. Now we are in the supermarket in The Mist.
If you have the CDC added in Line you will see why Taiwanese people think like that. When I get the notification it is written like this but in Chinese : Two new imported case from the [insert country name] !!
Yes, with the exclamation point and all. Completely unnecessary. When people read the notification it is the first impression that stays. Even myself, being a foreigner, that’s what stays with me. I will always have the country name in my head, and after a few dozens of this notification I found myself not even thinking about the Taiwanese folks but the name of the countries sticking with me. I would first remember the country and never consciously remember it was a Taiwanese person who brought it. When I found myself doing so I removed the notifications and went to just read the news. Kind of a psychological thing. Now, think about the local Taiwanese people, how it is imprinted in their heads, specially those who are too busy to read details or don’t care to.
It happens to me with Taiwanese women. Foreign and local men sit close to me as if there are no more seats.
In the moment, I got up and walked out. She called me like five times in the time it took for me to walk to the nearest bus stop. She also called one of my friends (that I didn’t even know she had the number of) because she was “worried about me”. Thankfully that friend can read people well enough and knew she was 講ing 廢話. Told her that I don’t 亂發脾氣, so she must have said something reeaalll bad for me to walk out.
I just sent her a message. In English because I don’t have any energy to think of how to shout via text in Chinese. She’s called me like 20 times in the past hour. I just told her that it’s Taiwanese pilots responsible for this outbreak and a Taiwanese hotel that didn’t follow protocol. I reminded her that spreading lies about the pandemic can result in massive fines. I then went on to “how dare you” about the gold card and pointed out that Taiwanese people had a little fit when there weren’t enough SEA slaves to do all their work for them so the government started to let them back in. I ended by letting her know that she’s free to be racist in her echo chamber but I will not associate with people who think it’s OK to be racist and blame everyone but their own people for their problems.
The friend who had gotten the phone call told me I should have said something about 互相尊宗 (mutual respect) and ended it there. I’m so past that. If no one calls out Taiwanese people for their lies, we are going to end up with the same level of racism towards foreigners that we have in the US towards Asians.
about how this virus is going to be out of control in Taiwan “because of all these gold card holders and foreigners who have no right to be coming in”. I don’t know how many different opportunities I gave her to use her brain with actual government-provided statistics; she kept doubling down on why what she was saying was right and I was wrong “because she knows people who know these things”. That Taiwanese people sometimes have to go abroad to take care of family members. Somehow, no foreigner traveling to Taiwan has family here. Also, that I was taking things too personally to point out that she was talking to a foreigner who hasn’t been back to the US since early Feb 2020 but people don’t know that and are racist towards all of us because of things that she is saying. And this was after she (a medical professional herself) spent a good 10 minutes telling me why the COVID vaccines are dangerous because we don’t know what kind of negative effects they’ll have on us for another 20 years. She’s not completely wrong, but really? She thinks it better that we all hold tight “safe” here in Taiwan for at least a decade for the rest of the world to get the vaccine because, “if it weren’t for these foreigners coming in, we wouldn’t have to worry about the virus.”