Sometimes Taiwanese are so inconsiderate

I am a Korea born Taiwanese, so I didn’t get to visit or stay here.
since I just graduated last year, and my parents have moved to Taiwan, I start to really hate this place.

  1. One of my neighbors I don’t know what is she or he doing in the middle of the night but every night at 2 or 3 am she starts to cook sth. and it wakes me up every day.
    I try to call the building manager they say they can’t do anything about it, the only way is to call the police, but when I am just about to do so, it just stops.
  2. There is a library in our building so I go there to study sometimes, the library rule is to keep quiet, no cellphones inside or chatting loudly, not a single person follows the rule.
    3, there is this old man who is smoking in front of a non-smoking zone, and he listens to music with a loudspeaker for 5 damn hours !!
    I start to doubt if I am the weird one here, I don’t like to talk or fight with people since I don’t speak fluent Taiwanese, and my mandarin as to them sounds like Chinese. (their attitude change when I speaks mandarin)
    If it weren’t because of Covid, I would have left this country.

Not every house is like this, you can always find another place to stay, often for cheap.

I don’t have these issues and this shouldn’t be a reflection of the entire country as a whole just because your parents’ neighbours are inconsiderate people.

8 Likes

These are local issues to you and not issues with Taiwanese as a whole.

Could you move somewhere else in Taiwan?

You get irritating people everywhere, though, bear this in mind.

7 Likes

To go where? Back to Korea?

1 Like

This sounds like someone preparing their food cart product to sell.

3 Likes

This isn’t just Taiwan. I have people in the states who blasts crap music through their phones too, and when I ask them to get a headphone or something they look at me with murder in their eyes. It’s just a lot less in your face because people don’t live so close together. But if you ever live in an apartment complex you will have LOUD parties every so often that is loud enough to wake the dead and can go until about 7am.

4 Likes

All the problems you mentioned can be solved easily.

I always tell people who smoke in nonsmoking areas to put the cigarette out immediately. I usually do it with such a murderous look in my eyes they physically retreat. The reality is that people know the laws, but they test the limits because they assume no one will them off for it. So you need to be the one who tells them off. No one has ever tried to challenge me. Sometimes they try to wait for me to walk away so they can finish their cigarette after I leave, but I stand there and wait for them to put it out.

Music is a little different, but you can always remind them that there are other people around and headphones were invented for a reason. Loud music is something I’m polite about, since it’s only hurting your ears and not the lungs of everyone around them.

3 Likes

This is interesting. I always found that Taiwanese people are ultra anal about following guidelines. For example, if I sit on a priority seat on the MRT when nobody is around, people stare at me with murderous intent and, in one case, even dared to confront me (a dreaded foreigner) about it. Also, when people do minor things that go against the suggestions in a community, people will complain about it to no end on the Facebook group page.

Two things I’ve found Taiwanese people to be inconsiderate about though are playing loud music from their phones and not moving themselves or their bags to let you sit down on the bus. For the most part, however, I find them a little too “considerate” in a busybody type way…

2 Likes

Ah, so you’ve met!

13 Likes

i guess you don’t drive here!

but in general i have found them to be more considerate than the global average

4 Likes

No, but I’ve heard (and believe) that they’re extremely inconsiderate drivers.

I am not saying that entire taiwan are bad, but i ve been living in different countries in the world. i lived in China, US, Phil and in Korea
none of the countries above have those problems
plus my house is one of the fine buuldings in linkou, most people who live in here are highly educated and rich.
i find out some of you pointed out entire Taiwan isnt like that and this is just a local issues. Maybe it is, but for most people I met in Tiawan, they were a bit unfriendly.
I guess, Taiwanese are mostly nice to foreigners since i look just like them, and i have Chinese accent when i speak i just get to have more bad experience than you guys
lastly, waking up at 4am everyday is making my life so hard, can you imagine sleeping only 4 hours a day ? sometimes its 3am… and i have an upcoming dental board exam to take next year.

1 Like

Yup

those stuff you mentioned are pretty minor for me i dont get disturbed by it.
the biggest problem for me is waking up at midnight haha…

Maybe you should just…I dunno…. relax…? :man_shrugging:

Someone is cooking late at night (it’s not like they’re blasting loud dance music), and someone is smoking where they shouldn’t be… are not exactly huge problems.

Are you sure you’re from Korea? I lived/worked in Seoul for years and the amount of night-time noise (loud music playing outside storefronts until midnight, trucks driving around promoting dance clubs on speakers, drunken assholes screaming in the streets at 2am all the time, neighbor’s dog always going nuts) was much worse than anything I’ve encountered here.

well I will if i am not preparing for the exam. plus how can u be relaxed if u get to sleep for 3 to 4 hours everyday ?
I was born and lived there for 15 years in Korea, those sounds wont wake me up … i guess its just that the soundproof isnt really good in this building i can sometimes here the downstair or upstair man peeing sound. WTH

That’s a construction/insulation problem with your building. Not uncommon for Taiwan. If you (or your parents) own the space, you could always retrofit it with insulation and higher quality windows. Neither of those comes standard here, even (or maybe especially) in rich people’s buildings.

2 Likes

ohhhh is it ? maybe the building is quite old and thats why. i thought this was the problem of other buildings too.
we dont own this place, but i will try to ask the owner if I can do so. thanks for the advice

You will find ‘inconsiderate’ people in all walks of life :grin:

5 Likes