Local Strangers: "I want to be your friend."

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
41

But who are we kidding, guys want to get into girl’s pants all the time, just as girls want guys with heavy wallets. Just a little turnabout and fair play, I suppose.

Really shows that at the base, we’re all selfish animals. People always try to squeeze these base instincts into socially-accepted practices. “It’s acceptable to like a person for this reason but not that reason.” But seems to me that at the end of the day, human mores and customs are just a false veneer tacked on top of self-serving motives. My point is that we shouldn’t resent each other’s blatantly selfish motives simply because we’ve suddenly realized they’re being selfish. People behaving selfishly, that’s just reality, like it or not.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been in the position of resenting the person wanting to learn English. And Hell knows, I’ve certainly resented chicks plenty of times for not sleeping with me. :laughing: This may just be some Jerry Maguire philosophizing that I’ll regret in the morning, but maybe we’d all be happier if there was some way to come to grips with our common selfishness, other than saying it’s unacceptable simply because it’s selfish.

42

I’m not trying to play devil’s advocate here, but didn’t I hear somewhere that there’s a different concept of “friendship” in Chinese culture – that many “friendships” are more “acquaintanceships” based on mutual benefit, or at least on your own benefit?

Richard Hartzell’s “Harmony in Conflict” lays it out pretty clearly, I think.

In the West, friendship (like marriage or romantic love) is supposed to be based on emotion or common interests, whereas in China (at least traditionally, and perhaps more and more in the mainland??!?) friendship is based on your interests, the interests of your family, or whatever. So “making friends” with someone so they can teach you English probably isn’t a distasteful topic for Chinese, whereas furriners tend to be upset because “she doesn’t like me for my beautiful soul” or something. :?

43

Once I got a phone call from a gay local guy I’d never met. A Taiwanese female “friend” had passed my number on to him, apparently hinting that because I’m 35+ and single, I must be gay. The guy calls me, and asks me out for coffee. When I say no, he got upset and started pleading “but you’re a friend of XXX.”

Anyway, after I passed my “friend’s” number out to half a dozen horny, creepy foreign men, hinting that she’s up for it, and encouraging them to call, I felt much better…

44

Is Hartzell’s book a relatively large thick book with a big red circle on the cover? The title sounds familiar, I think I read it a few years back, I recall thinking it was quite helpful for my culture shock at the time, though I don’t recall any of the specifics.

I tend to think that the way people are self-serving tends to transcend culture, though I could be wrong. It seems to me people take the idealistic high ground when it’s consistent with their self-serving interests. But if the idealist high ground goes against their self-interest, then they toss aside the high road and just act blatantly selfishly.

Even when we resent other people’s selfishness, if we think about why we resent their selfishness, I think you’ll find it’s because their selfishness impinges on our own self-interests.

The thing that used to bug me the most about people wanting to learn English wasn’t that they were trying to learn English per se, but that it seriously impinged on my own ability to learn Chinese. I figured, I bought a plane ticket and transplanted my whole life just to learn this language. Seems only fair I should have at least a few opportunities to speak the language. I resented the shallowness of their language interest most of all: “I’ll practice my English when it’s free and I don’t even have to go to the US; but you? I don’t care if you’ve transplanted your whole life and sacrificed friends and family, I’ll take away your opportunities to practice Chinese because I want free English conversation”. Even the ones who do come to the US, hardly any of them are serious enough about learning English and most speak English only when forced to. If they’re not serious about English, I figure they might as well let the serious Mandarin learners (who have demonstrated their desire to learn by moving to Taiwan) have a go at it.

45

She was, too. Phwoooaaar!

46

Wow! Neo, I wish you were being ironic but I fear you’re not. Really, I don’t know who you’ve met but in my experience Taiwanese people trying to learn English, whether in TW or in my home country, are a whole lot more serious about it than the majority of native English speakers living in TW are about studying Mandarin or Taiwanese. The members of this forum are disproportionately serious-minded and don’t represent a cross-section of the population.

Those who speak a little English, whether currently actively studying or not, tend to be much more humble about their abilities than many of us who think we can speak some Chinese.

As regards actual ability, my feeling is that, at least as far as oral skills go, Mandarin is somewhat easier for native English speakers to learn than vice versa.

Anyway, no-one here is really impinging on your ability to learn Chinese; it’s their choice whether to speak to you at all, actually, and yours to speak back or not. Quite a few people in my home country would be reluctant to speak to foreigners at all; I would far rather have good-natured if occasionally a little pushy attempts at conversation in any language than stony silence and avoidance of eye contact.

47

But it’s interesting: in my experience, I’ve only met one foreigner who thought his Chinese was truly better than that of many native speakers (and, to be fair, it probably was – he’s something of an unusual case), but I’ve met MANY, MANY Chinese who felt that after a couple of years in the US, or a couple of courses somewhere, their English (particularly their written grammar) is much better than that of educated foreign native speakers.

48

I must just repeat that you’ve met different people than I have. Out of the thirty or so Taiwanese and mainland Chinese people I knew before coming to Taiwan, not one thought that his or her English ability was remotely as good as that of a native speaker. A number of them asked me to help them proofread their dissertations or theses.

49

Maybe the ones overseas realize that they are small English fish in a big pond of native speakers, while the ones still here who have never left think they are big sharks in a small pond?

50

I haven’t encountered too many “know it all” foreigners or Taiwanese people, either way, but I’m sure they exist. I’m sure a person could master a certain segment of the language (e.g. vocabulary in a certain trade or field) but it’d sure be hard to master the whole thing enough to be better than a native speaker.

The Taiwanese proclivity to practice English does have a very real impact on learning Chinese. It’s easy to say that one can choose to interact with them or not. One could be a silent hermit, sure, but that wouldn’t help much in the Mandarin learning department and would be pretty depressing too.
Have you ever noticed that overall (and this is very broad stroke of course), foreigners from English speaking countries have the worst Chinese? I think it has to do with the constant English speaking. Once I started getting into intermediate Chinese classes, there were fewer and fewer native English speakers. In my last one, I was the only one. I don’t think native English speakers are somehow less capable of learning the language; I just think they’re under less pressure to learn it than people from other countries.

51

"but it’d sure be hard to master the whole thing enough to be better than a native speaker. "

You should qualify that as better than an educated, verbally articulate native speaker. There are plenty of non-native speakers that have clearly superior language skills compared to uneducated native speakers with limited vocabularies that seem to mostly consist of variations of “F–K” and “Gananinia!”

52

The graduate students from China and Taiwan that I met studying in the US had very different English abilities. The ones from the PRC had much better English than those from Taiwan. They seemed smarter and more hard working too.

One guy in particular, who came from this tiny place in rural China, was brilliant in his field (engineering, what else?) and had extremely good but not outstanding English. He was also extremely arrogant and took delight in putting people in their place.

One day I ran into him while walking across campus and we stopped to chat for a bit. Suddenly he said to me, “You know, your English is really terrible. I am Chinese and my English is much better than yours.”

He knew that I was an RA at the university’s ESL center, where I wrote questions for the Michigan Test and graded tons of MT essay answers, as well as tested all foreign grad students who were conditionally approved to be Teachers’ Assistants.

I thought at first he was just joking around but he was dead serious. That was the last time I ever slowed down or dumbed down my English for him. After that I talked fast and threw in as much slang and obscure vocabulary as I could.

When I mentioned the conversation to mutual friends from China, they just laughed and said something like, “Oh, never mind him, he is an asshole to everybody.” And he was. Sky high IQ and yet the EQ of a snail.

The funny thing is, that if we met again today he could say the same thing and be absolutely correct. After years of living in Taiwan my English has definitely gone downhill.

53

On the “be my friend” bit of wanting to exchange phone numbers: That has happened very rarely to me, perhaps because I am rather tall and every day is a bad hair day for me so most timid people are frightened off.

For those few strangers bold enough to strike up a conversation and wanted “to be friends” I never gave out a home phone number. Instead I freely passed out my business card that had my office phone and biz email on it. I figured if some “new friend” did call during office hours I could fend them off with the “too busy now, let’s talk later” line but actuallyI never needed to use it. Email worked fine. It is pretty quick and easy to recycle some generic greetings, questions, and good wishes. I found that while most people I met hope to practice talking English they are way over their heads when it comes to writing anything in English.

So I suggest that if the “be my friend” thing is a problem for you then it may be worth it to spend a couple hundred NT to have two or three boxes of plain biz type cards made with just your name and email address. It will save you a lot of hassle. And you might actually meet some very sincere, very nice people that you eventually trade phone numbers with.

54

One afternoon last year I was in a kind of a "Don

55

wazai, you better send your story to Reader Digest :slight_smile:

ax

56

That’s a great post, Wazai.

57

Ironlady wrote about English students whose “homework” is to go around and “interview” foreigners. I totally agree that this is inappropriate.

I turn the tables on them. I speak TAIWANESE to them (not Chinese) as my Taiwanese is better than the average 19-year-old’s. THEN I start asking the questions:

LEE MBEN TZEU JIT LAY DAI JEE (You don’t have to do this.)

SA MEE HAK HAO? (What school (are you from)?)

LEE A LAO SI GYO SA MI MYAH? (What’s your teacher’s name?)

LEE GUM TZAI AH EE A DEN WAY? (Do you know that teacher’s phone number?)

LEE DUNG KEE A SEE TZUN, GA LEE A LAO SI GONG LEE MBEN TZEU JIT LAY DAI JEE (When you go back, tell your teacher that you don’t have to do this.)

I haven’t actually gotten any phone numbers out of this yet—BUT WHEN I DO, I’ll call that teacher and speak my best, most polite Chinese and tell that teacher that it’s “not favored by the foreign community” and leave it at that. (Of course, I’ll post that number here, so EVERYONE can call and say the same thing–in the language of your choice).

That’s how I handle this, at least. I know not many foreigners can speak Taiwanese, but I hope it makes me sound older than I really am (32) and/or makes me sound “like an authority figure” that’s not to be pushed around. If everyone can tweak this method to suit their individual personality, style, and language ability, maybe we can curb Taiwanese teachers from assigning this crap.

If anyone gets any phone numbers out of this, please POST IT HERE. My Chinese is at least “pretty good” (sometimes people don’t know I’m a foreigner on the phone) and I’ll be polite and try to “work my magic” to help reduce this menace to society.

Anyone got any ideas better than mine? Let’s work on this together!

coolingtower

58

I think its the toughest to become bilingual if you are a native english speaker…there is essentially zero pressure to learn foreign languages…how much foreign media exposure is there in the US/england? are 50-90% of all popular songs/movies in a foreign language…nope…yet in many european countries english language movies and music are extremely popular…there are much more opportunities to expose yourself to this language. Everyone wants to learn english, and it is frickin annoying at times if you are a native speaker and want to learn other languages.

59

Of course they exist… they all post here!

60

I worked in the engineering offices of a Taiwanese company for two years – the only native English speaker out of a thousand people – and was asked numerous times to check English language documents from the chairman on down to those of fellow engineers. Not once did anyone ever accept my suggestions. I finally realized that they were all convinced that their English was near perfect and just wanted a stamp of approval.

I was an easy editor and only went for the gaffes so they were all pretty glaring. Even when I followed up on company spec sheets and brochures that went out to US and European customers and told the perps that the errors in them made us look dumb and incompetent they wouldn’t change them. I especially liked the mangled English sentences asserting how competent and attentive to details we were.

I’m still perplexed at the insularity of it all. I had to assume they thought my English was substandard.

As far as people coming up to me and wanting to speak English with me, folks here rarely do, unless they’re in a group or flying by on a scooter. My wife says it’s because I just look mean though I don’t feel mean inside at all. I’m more the language bandito here. When I’m out with my wife I talk to every kid I pass.

“Hey, that’s mine. Give it back.”

“I’m hungry. Can I have your lunch?”

“Your bike is better than mine. Wanna trade?”

Most of the kids just freeze up and hope I pass on by quickly so they can start moving again. I thought that’s the way it was for everybody here.

Yeah, my life is pretty quiet. Somebody talk to me. Send me the people who are bugging you. I’ll teach 'em to bother foreigners with casual conversations.