In the first baseball game between America and Taiwan, there was some crazy fan with a huge picture of Osama Bin Laden and the words “America, You Will Lose” printed beneath. Now, I understand that there are nutters in every society, what I don’t understand is that the local media found this crackpot worthy of the television camera’s attentions, not once, not twice, but over and over again. Do they have no understanding of what happened on September 11th? For the record, I’m British, not American, and I’m not a particularly ardent baseball fan. Still, I think that almost all members of the international community lost citizens in the 911 terrorist attacks, and recognize that it was an insidious act. Do local residents not realize that innocent Taiwanese citizens also lost their lives to Bin Laden’s insane plot? If it’s not Hitler advertisments from Chen Shui Bian’s party, or Holocaust themed restaurants, it’s something else. Seems every month I find a new example of absolutely appalling behaviour by Taiwanese who should know better. Taiwan keeps begging for international recognition. Maybe they should first recognize the international community. Right now, the ignorance of the outside world regularly displayed by the media, the government, business leaders and by the average bloke on the street is embarrassing.
It seems someone must have been paying attention.
from today’s Taipei Times
quote:
[b]Bin Laden ban[/b] Stadium security forced a fan to remove a poster with a drawing of Osama bin Laden prior to the game between the US and Taiwan. The public address announcer then asked the crowd not to hold signs or refer to the Sept. 11 attacks or bin Laden, as happened in the Nov. 11 game in Kaohsiung between Taiwan and the US.
I thought last night’s Soong Mei-ling (give America zero) poster was pretty good.
Please tell me which TV station it was that did this. If it was more than one, give me all of them.
Also please tell me who the person was holding up the sign? Was it a Taiwanese or white person, or what?
Thanks
Roger that on the no-bin thing. That sign was about as tactful as waving a poster of Mao – Subtitle “Next stop Orchid Island you inept bastards!”
Nother point - If globalization and assimilating with the world community are things that Taiwan wants, then what’s up with canceling Christmas?
. . . And talking about ignorance of all things foreign.
Since when did embracing a Christian holiday have anything to do with globalization and assimilating with the world community? According to my almanac, Taiwan only has about 700,000 Christians. This is definitely not any kind of majority and Taiwan is not a Christian community.
quote[quote] what's up with canceling Christmas? [/quote]That holiday wasn’t Christmas. It was ‘Constitution Day’ and just happened to fall on Dec 25. It was one of the many holidays to get the chop this uyear when Taiwan stopped the ‘work every second saturday morning’ system.
Bri
Have you seen the special offer by that shop “Drinks” (xiang mu tong)? They are having an “Explosive 911 offer”. Three bottles of wine for only 911NT. Seems they have put a lot of thought into it as there is a plane used in the advertising banners outside their stores.
Isn’t there some sort of organisation which monitors advertising/promotional content in this country?
Isn’t there some sort of organisation which monitors advertising/ promotional content in this country?
I doubt it. Otherwise, maybe we wouldn’t have been subjected to the Hitler heater ads two years ago. (“Declare war on the cold front!”)
Drinks has a bulletin board on its website. But most of the site is broken, so I doubt anyone from the company pays attention to what is posted there.
I’ve heard (or maybe I read it somewhere) that declaring “Constitution Day” to coincide with Christmas was a concession the KMT gave to the Catholic Church in 1949. Apparently, after the “big move” from the Mainland, the Church was (still is?) one of the largest landholders on this island (and no, they are not all churches! But they do own the land under the ones you see).
Declaring a holiday on 25 December was, therefore, a political choice. No surprise, then, that it was cancelled – along with many other Non-Christian holidays – when the workweek was shortened to 5 days.
Friends of mine born in Taiwan tell me that Constitution Day was treated as a Valentine’s Day for young couples. It was a holiday that they didn’t have to go to school, but didn’t have any family obligations either! So much for the mistletoe business
Joe,
Sorry to point out to you that Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ. Making this holiday especially Christian.
Whether or not you and everyone you know celebrates it for that reason is another matter.
Taiwan’s majority religion is Buddhism, why should the Taiwanese population in any way be inclined to mark the birth of Jesus Christ?
Joe, I am not too impressed with people pushing religion in the guise of assimilation and acceptatnce. Spew your proselytizing fallacies on some other board!
Hey Placard JO,
in case you hadn’t noticed, the family time for over 1/4 of the world is at CNY- and if you apply statistics to regions, Asian countries’ recognition of Xmas is negligible.
Also, much of the ‘non-US’ christian world (mainly Russia and neighbouring states) attach more importance to epiphany, easter and other fests…
Maybe it’s time for Europe and the states to recognize CNY as well as Xmas??
Cultural tolerance is what it’s all about…
quote:
Sorry to point out to you that Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ. Making this holiday especially Christian.Whether or not you and everyone you know celebrates it for that reason is another matter.
Well I think that for many people like myself, who are not Christians or not very religious at least, but come from western countries, Christmas has become an important ‘non-religious’ (for us) cultural holiday. Anyway, you’re forgetting that as far as much of Europe is concerned many of the customs of Cristmas, and it’s timing, are taken from much older Germanic and Celtic festivals (as the Catholic church coopted many pagan holidays), so it’s incorrect to call Christmas a strictly Cristian holiday.
Official holiday or not, just do what I do and take the day off. If your company is too stingy and culturally insensitive to give it to you, why are you working for them?
Bri
quote:
Originally posted by gus: I've heard (or maybe I read it somewhere) that declaring "Constitution Day" to coincide with Christmas was a concession the KMT gave to the Catholic Church in 1949. Apparently, after the "big move" from the Mainland, the Church was (still is?) one of the largest landholders on this island (and no, they are not all churches! But they do own the land under the ones you see).Declaring a holiday on 25 December was, therefore, a political choice. No surprise, then, that it was cancelled – along with many other Non-Christian holidays – when the workweek was shortened to 5 days.
Sounds like an urban legend to me. First, the Constitution was 1947, not 1949. And there’s quite simply no way the Catholic church was a major landholder in Taiwan then.
Protestant sects – the Presbyterians, in particular – have always been the dominant Christian groups on the island, not the Catholics. (The Spanish were in Keelung for a little while; but the Protestant Dutch soon booted them out.)
Chiang Kai-shek (as well as Chiang Ching-kuo, Sun Yat-sen, and Lee Teng-hui, for that matter) was a Christian. That might have had something to do with the decision to have the Constitution go into effect December 25.
Oops, 1947 not 1949 I thought 1949 sounded funny, too.
If I ever remember my source, I will re-post. Thanks for setting me straight on both counts
I’m all for CNY holiday in the States. Maybe it could be combined with MLK day.
I heard that some people were pushing to have “Dragon Boat Festival” recognized as a National Holiday in the USA. Does anyone have any more information on this?
How about a US election year holiday also since the election has again begun in earnest with 9 months to run?
This won’t be online after tomorrow so for the future reseachers of ignorance of all things foreign, here’s a beauty! Backpage of Taiwan Post (sic) today:
UNLIKE IN THE WEST. Get this:
Unlike in the West, the grown-up children in Taiwan given family inheritance are more likely to visit their parents still alive, according to an Academia Sinica sociologist. TOP INTELLECTUAL THERE!
Chu Ching-yi, a sociology research fellow, told a forum yesterday the difference may lie in a more accentuated family system in China.
In the West, the visits the offspring pay to their parents who have yet to divide up their legacy grow or decrease in number in direct proportion to what they think they would get, Chu said.
“The less they believe they would get,” Chu said, “the less likely they would visit their parents.” “The more they think they would receive, the more visits they would pay,” he added.
On the contrary, their counterparts in Taiwan would pay more visits to their parents, once they were given their share of the legacy, Chu said.
“It is quite likely,” Chu added, “that such sons and daughters are afraid of being called unfilial, if they do not pay such visits as often as they can.”
Filial piety is one of the most dominant social values in China.
24 PERCENT? WHAT HAPPENED TO 25 PERCENT? Get this, I kid you not:
One out of every four parents in Taiwan, or 24 percent, divide their family legacy and give each of their offspring a share.
“These parents,” Chu pointed out, “received much more visits from their offspring than those who have withheld the family legacy.”
AND FERTILITY YES! Get this:
Another difference between Taiwan and the West is in the fertility of daughters-in-law, Chu noted. “In the West, there is little difference,” he said. “But in Taiwan, the wives who live with their parents-in-law tend to give more births,” he pointed out. INCEST? SUPERIOR GENES? HMMMM.
There is hardly any difference at homes where in-laws do not live together, Chu said. In Taiwan, more and more married couples live independently. SO INTERESTING!
Ugh.
I hate inferiority complexes. I have to say the level I’ve seen it at here is by far the worst, and I’ve been to quite a few different countries and experienced a lot of different cultures.
I mean, like someone said before on this thread (or maybe it was another one), the Taiwanese (in general) are quick to embrace Western Culture, but also just as quick to put “westerners” down as being inferior to themselves.
What a crock of sh*t. :fume:
I agree with whoever said that Taiwan wants in on all these international organizations and such, but with the kind of rhetoric like this that is continually spewed from the proverbial mouth, they don’t deserve it because they don’t show the kind of moxie and acceptance of international cultures that I think is a requirement. IMO, of course.
The textbooks I used to use had a little picture of a hitler to represent Germany. Now how F*%ked is that? He was even Saluting and had a little swastika. Good message for Kindergarten students across Taiwan.
Then how about the nazi theme bar in Tiachung?
Ski