I say this is a good move. The snake shops, and the captive whores on huaxi street was a spectacle out of a hollywood movie. Exotic and weird ass shit.
But it made Taiwan look very very third world. Killing snakes the way they did, skinning them and cutting out the beating heart is barbaric and inhumane. And the captive young aborigini girls forced to be slave prostitutes was a huge example of much that was wrong with society. And about the rights of young girls.
It made Taiwan a travesty of human rights and even more barbaric.
The young aboriginal girls were taken from hill tribes with bribes of small money and other gifts and forced to have sex with many customers a day for peanuts. Drugged up as well.
A civiilized country should never allow that to happen. It PROVED Taiwan was barbaric, backward and uncivilized no matter all the good that there was.
It was the personification of EVILon the wan.
I say good riddance to sexual slavery (especially of young girls) and good riddance to snake shops that practice inhumane treatment of animals.
It happens all over the world every day with cows and chickens and pigs and other animals. But most people would rather not see it happening right in front of them.
Sad to see the snakes go because apparently they were killing protected species which is a bad thing.
Now I guess the area is famous for old girl prostitutes cuz whenever I walk around alone after dark, old women always try to proposition me. Go home granny.
Bit unnecessary. Those women have been working in the sex industry their whole lives. They have a right to continue to ply their trade and they still do good work.
I don’t think live skinning and evisceration happen “all over the world every day with cows and chickens and pigs…”, but OK.
Don’t quite follow this??
Anyways, like always, @tommy525’s referencing a scenario that hasn’t existed for the better part of 2 decades, as far as the sexual enslavement goes. I hate to harsh the “Taiwan is barbaric and amoral” buzz, but they actually do have laws and enforcement preventing this.
Of course, if anyone has actual recent personal experience with this practice, beyond urban myth and old Internet wive’s tales, feel free to jump in.
WRT the Snake Torture Cafes, well yeah, it would be nice to see the total demise of that utterly stupid Dare Food culture as practiced here and in China (FWIW, the news story I saw last night said this one that’s closing was the last Snake Shop left on Waxi St., even better)
I’ve never understood the reasoning behind wanting to present visitors with the grossest, most unpleasant experience possible.
It’s always struck me as infantile and mean-spirited.
I mean,if one went to visit @tommy525 on a visit to the Bay Area, I’m sure he’d be compelled to show you the best possible dining experience, rather than squirreling you to down some shithole back alley to someplace where they serve sewer rat hemorrhoids wrapped in human scabs and boiled in cat piss and giggling with glee watching you try to choke it down.
Aside from just being plain nasty, the practice has also helped perpetuate the centuries-old perception of your Oriental being a subhuman sadist (see the tired old chestnut about cats in Chinese food which was very much alive when I was a kid growing up, not to mention this tired old tale)
in the context of portraying exotic cultures as exceptionally cruel, callous, and/or strange.
Yes I should have the tag on my name
“Left Taiwan in 99”. So my observations may be a bit dated.
Glad to see some things are indeed improving
When I visited in 2009 and again in 2012
I felt like Taiwan was a different country and yet familiar in many ways
I would just mention recent news reports of foreign girls and women engaged involuntarily in prostitution.
As to local aborigine and other endangered groups, I had heard that one before from one of my coworkers who sued those services back in the day. If your family had a debt, or wer too poor, they will sold you or you world be “traded” to the mafia and pay off the debt… in that way.
Yeah, with some slimy dude on the mic “this steak will keep your skin smooth and is the best thing for a cold… these ribs will keep you hard for hours…”
I’m not so confident about that. It’s not all crammed into one crappy alley now, for sure.
Has anyone gone to Han lately? Is it even around still? It was once considered by the Asia Wall Street Journal as the best restaurant in Asia. I paid it a visit on that hook. It was good, but so were all the beer gardens that were around back then.
Yes, obviously. Is that a rhetorical question? Killing anything for pleasure of its pain is psychopathic and generally bad. If its got to die, why would we not try at least a little to make it fast and as painless as possible? That should be basic common sense and human decency.
The last snake eatery in Taipei’s Snake Alley, also known as the Huaxi Street Night Market (華西街觀光夜市), is set to close its doors for the last time today, marking the end of an colorful era in Taiwan’s history.
