[quote=“Flipper”]
I have a cousin with an acne problem. she’s had really bad acne since she was a kid. she’s in her mid 30’s now, married, has a couple of kids and still has an acne problem. when other relatives see her, they will comment on it a lot. lack of tact on the part of my relatives? certainly. an underlying desire to insult and denegrate my cousin? I doubt it.
saying Taiwanese people have no tact is one thing. saying they’re all mean-spirited bitchy people out to purposely insult their friends and relatives is quite another.[/quote]
OK, so let me get this right. They’ve known her for decades and they still feel the need to comment on her acne, when obvisouly this woman knows she has an acne problem, I mean she’s seen her face in the mirror now for over 30 years. And this is supposed to just be a lack of tact and not a desire to insult and denegrate?
Having once had my own Taiwanese relatives, for lack of a better word, and been on the receiving end of countless remarks about my weight and acne during my early 20s, this kind of crap is more than a lack of tact. Of course they are not all mean-spirited or bitchy, especially when they want something from you.
flicka brings up a good point. flicka too. maybe there is something in the middle.
i don’t think the TW people are mean spirited either, but they often lack what western society calls tact. it’s true. tact is something you learn at home at school in society.
while the east seems to lack tact, the west seems to lack love. i often read usa internet sites and they are full of ugly racism against blacks, mexicians etc.
I never see this kind of ugly racism in the east. just lack of tact. yes
I must admit that working together with Americans has surprised me. They snack all the time. When ordering lunch, a few more finger food items get thrown in. Moreover, while I see mickey D’s as a place you take your kids to once a month, they eat there every day. Man, that’s well educated ppl about 40~45 with guts the size of mountains? While I won’t say anuthing bad about their life style, I would try to cut a bit down on the snacks and the big macs in order to see if it might help. Moreover, the fatty food here in general has its oil on the outside - like mediterranean food. Looks fat, but it isn’t that bad.
But well, many female locals tend to be a bit round once they get their clothes off, I must admit that.
The people you work with, not ALL Americans. I cannot remember the last time I ate fast food. But I’m not carnivorous.
I don’t eat potatos/fries either. Especially now, after visiting Prague. The young people look great, it’s the older ones who become rather stout and apple-shaped, which is supposedly the worst shape to be if you want to avoid heart trouble.
I agree about the mediterranean diet. It’s by far, the most delicious and one of the healthiest diets in the world. Combine that with lots of exercise and you’re doing well. I swear it’s the main reason I want to move to Italy! Really!
Well, what surprised me was that they belonged to the upper 5% of the population based on education, money etc. They should know better - one of them exercised, but his calorie intake was still of a size which would see him exercising 24 hours a day in order to butn it off.
Good gravey folks, I know I haven’t been back to the States in a couple of years, but I gotta object to the way that fat seems to equal American on this thread.
I admit that the last time I did get home I was shocked by all the over weight people. Almost everyone I knew who wasn’t fat before had gained a lot and I felt that it was rare to see anyone who was thin like a Taiwanese Shaojay. However, there must be over weight people who aren’t American. Even here in Taiwan.
As for some insight into the way Taiwanese women think of fat, I have a friend who lived out here a couple of years. She weighed 45kilos or less usually, due to an intense battle with anorexia (sp?). What finally got her eating again was that some Taiwanese girl saw her eating and m&m, one, and told her that she shouldn’t eat that or she’d get fat.
And when I met my husband I weighed 130 lbs., I’m 5;8", and people used to tell me to be careful because I wasn’t fat, but “about to get fat.”
I had a baby 6 months ago, gained enormous weight, but managed to loose it again. I’ve lost 60 lbs. the past 6 months. I really know what it’s like to go through this, and there usually is a reason people are fat.
Don’t for one moment think that they just don’t notice, or happened to notice but thought, “whatever!” The deserve respect. They’re going through something that’s very personal and impossible to hide. If you were having a problem drinking it might be a while before it was noticed, but gaining/loosing lbs is impossible to deal with privatly until you have a hold on it once more.
My doctor-fiance told me that for some people eating can be as addictive as alcohol, shopping or any other bad habit. When they feel bad, they simply must eat something otherwise they will feel unbearably depressed or something.
For me this really shed a new light on the idea of “just eat less and exercise more”. What if you must eat to feel happy?
I guess under such circumstances it must take enormous will-power to eat less, much like getting off the bottle “cold turkey”.
Some time ago I read an article about why some people can eat whatever they want and not gain weight (like me) while others gain weight even on a normal diet.
The difference was, that people like me burn those extra calories by unvoluntary movements, such as stretching the muscles or generally moving more on the chair (change position more often, this rapid up and down movement of the legs etc.).
Also I move a lot when I am sleeping, so I guess this uses up extra energy.
Years back I worked with Tongans and Samoans and it was the bread that got them. I swear we’d sit down to “morning or afternoon tea” and they’d devour white sliced bread a loaf at a time. Highly religious they were too. No boozing.
they should know better? that’s kinda strange logic. they might have the money to buy organic food, fruit flown in from latin america, the most expensive wines and restaurants… or they could be eating steaks everyday, large size portions, too much, ahem, beer, too much fine cheese, too much oil, and little vegetables, butter with everything, too much cocaine, etc. it depends on one’s tastes and diet beliefs, not education.
What about Hottentot women? Now, there’s a strange-looking beast if ever I saw one! The fat’s there alright, it’s just kind of piled up in one particular place …
folks, I know I haven’t been back to the States in a couple of years, but I gotta object to the way that fat seems to equal American on this thread.