Looking for advice from people who’ve been here a while, the gifting culture here is very nuanced and different from back home. I would actually consider it rude back in the UK, but obviously I am not in the UK
So for example, people (teachers / students) at my public school have been gifting me little pieces of plastic tat, high calorie junk foods or foods with short perishable dates (for example a 蘿蔔糕 turnip cake that had 2 days to be eaten).
Now back home I’m sure you would almost always ask ‘would you like XYZ’ but here it’s a regular occurence to find a cup of sugary bubble milk tea left for the teachers. A student will turn up with a cup of ice cream and sugar or deep fried mush. Up to this point my strategy has been to politely accept and then secretly dispose of the junk foods if no one else is willing to take them. With regards to perishable foods I just tell the purchasers that I ate them at home and they were delicious - but I really don’t like being put in a position where I’m wasting food…
Obviously on the one hand people are thinking about me which is lovely. On the other it wouldn’t take much effort to ask ‘Do you want this thing that is either pointless, full of fat/sugar or about to go off when you don’t have a kitchen to cook it in?’ and then there would be less plastic and I wouldn’t have to feel bad about throwing away (junk) foods that I never asked for…
Can anyone explain why the exchanging of small pieces of plastic and junk foods is so prevalent here? Or is it indeed a Taiwanese thing? Or is this specific to my school / the public school system? Any advice will be greatly appreciated