Starrstruck, one of our newest members, was checking out the Forumosans and caught that I am the Mucha Man (with a C dammit). Anyway, it alerted me to the fact I now have 5 five cinco wu stars! Yeah baby. Five years on this site. Where has the time gone.
Here’s an early post. I haven’t changed at all:
[quote]Mo, I have no problem you taking umbrage with the folk who trash Taiwan mindlessly: those who complain about the food, the weather, the lack of respect for privacy, middle class niceties, etc.
However, you seem to have lost the ability to look at your environment critically, by which I mean examine it without an excess of cultural or ideological blinkers. In your case, your habit of open-minded liberal tolerance has become as rigid a thought pattern as any dogma.
The fact, pure and true and simple, is that Taiwan has not been urban, modern, electrified, etc. as long as we have in the west. And experience matters.
A recent study by the health department showed that less than 50% of people have even a basic knowledge of health issues. Yes, there are historical and cultural reasons for this. But so what? To ignore the ignorence around you, to condone it, is to do a dis-service to your Taiwanese friends. Cross-cultural meetings are meant for the sharing of information. Your acceptance of all things Taiwanese is frankly patronizing. I treat my Taiwanese friends as equals, as intelligent people who may not always have the lastest information, but are smart enough to accept it when they hear it. It would seem you treat people here as anthropological specimens to keep pure and simple.
If you’d ever walked into a bathroom and seen your wife/lover/friend standing ankle deep in water with a hair dryer going you would quickly drop the pretense of non-interfence. Some things are just plain wrong. Mo, you will do more good for this country educating the local population about health, democracy, and safety, than lashing out at the foreign community.[/quote]
