Well this might be a Danish translation of the book, I don’t know. I just regurgitated what I read on the linked sight. Here’s where I snagged the picture from. Maybe it will help clear things up.
Pissing, shitting and spitting in public encourages the spread of diseases like hepatitis, TB and parasites.
It isn’t quaint or colourful: it is unhygenic and increases the risks that diseases will be passed on from person to person. I don’t want to shake hands with a person who has hepatitis contaminated shit on their hand, or parasite eggs etc.
I’m not “dissing” people for their culture…I’m dissing their sanitation. Stuff like this is illegal in the west for a reason. Unlike, say, seat-belt laws, if you piss in public, it can have a very profound affect on someone else’s health. People here can eat with whatever utensils they want, worship whatever gods they want, listen to “Fur Elise” on repeat for 30 minutes everyday, and completely hide their resentment for anyone in public…and that’s all good and fine, and those are the things that make Taiwan a unique experience. Pissing in public, spitting beetle-nut juice, and/or packing 7 kids onto a scooter in rush-hour traffic and driving on the sidewalk are things that make taiwan, at times, a dangerous and/or disgusting experience. Culture is not an excuse for the violation of other people’s rights…or should the world have turned it’s cheeks when America allowed slavery, just to preserve a “unique culture”?
And this doesnt really have anything to do with Taiwan, rather, it has to do with humanity. I’d bitch about anyone, anywhere, pissing in a place with heavy pedestrian traffic. However, it is exceptionally funny in Taiwan, because people instantly turn into extreme, paranoid hypochondriacs when there’s a disease outbreak…but they refuse to recognize simple measures of prevention. That’s like building a fallout shelter after the bombs have dropped.
I’m with Shin-gua on this one. You folks need to relax. And how does pissing spread TB anyway?
I took a piss out the bus window yesterday. It was a crowded street but we were going really fast so I think it turned into a fairly harmless piss mist pretty quickly.
It is spread via spit, it takes several hours of direct sunlight to destroy the germ. Piss spreads hepatitis etc. Hepatitis carriers can have no symptoms but continue to spread the disease by poor hygiene.
Yes, not only is hypochondria rampant here (even when there’s no disease outbreak), but so is hypochondria by proxy!
When I arrived here, I was getting over a cold, and as always happens with me in that stage of recovery, I coughed for a couple of weeks. Strangers seemed to freak out at the slightest cough I made, and my inlaws kept urging me to go see a doctor. My insistence that I was OK fell on deaf ears, and I pretended that I was taking medicine just to shut them up.
At the same time, people here hawk loogies in the streets and empty their congested nasal passages right on the ground. (Nowhere as bad as in China, though.) They pick their noses on the bus and then grab onto the handles and poles. And don’t get me started about what I see in the toilet stalls.
Trees drop their dandruff (leaves), seaman (pollen), and children (seeds) indiscriminately on humans. I don’t see the problem with humans returning the favor.
How did the seamen get into the trees to be dropped by the trees indiscriminately on humans? I’ve never seen such a thing.
Some good points regarding public hygiene. And the transmission of disease from this.
And interesting piece of news about Taiwan:
Childhood deaths are 10,000 + per year from various Liver Diseases.
The vast majority of liver diseases are transmitted.
Could this disregard for public hygiene play a significant role in this extraordinary rate of childhood deaths?
The only purpose of trees are for small boys and dogs to pee on them.
I really have problems to see what is wrong for little kids to pee on trees - must be much more hygenic than going to a filthy, public bathroom…