Anyone had the feeling that the violenconometer has been rising lately in Taiwan. As long as I have been here, there has always been bar violence perpertrated on the obnoxious and the unwary at “certain” bars". Lately, something unseen seems to have upped the ante. In the last two weeks, one of my friends was stabbed walking on Shida and another was bashed on the head for “talking to Taiwanese girls” near 45. Another friend went to rock candy and got punched in the face and glassed for talking to a girl he has known for years. I think what I am saying is, “gimme your best fight stories in Taiwan.” That’s a hell of a lot more interesting than Lady Judge and Jody Lin aint it? I gotta million of 'em (okay maybe three or so) if anyone is interested.
The VIBE about 3 years ago.
Little Taiwanese guy with beautiful Taiwanese girl, I mean a total shag, standing in the corner drinking a Gin+Tonic.
A foreigner walks over and starts talking to the girl. The Taiwanese guy looks a little unsettled and tries to cut across the conversation, but to no avail as the foreigner towers over him and keeps turning his back to him blocking the Taiwanese guy out.
Taiwanese guy walks away and foreigner thinks he has scared off her little brother and she is an easy target for his charms now.
10 mins later, Taiwanese returns with more Taiwanese friends. Must have got on the DA GE DA and called in the reinforcements. So the Taiwanese guy now is standing a little taller and the foreigner realisies that maybe he shouldn’t fuck around with short guys in black tacky suit who have beautiful girls hanging off them.
Bang! Bang ! Bang!..5 seconds later the foreigner gets about 5 bottles smashed over his head… and is out cold on the floor.
Taiwanese exit the VIBE as if nothing happened
Taiwanese people are very emotional, and if they feel threatened and they snap, they will react uncontrollable. Here why go one to one when you can go 20 to 1 with baseball bats.
Even though you see a lot of guys who think they are gangsters, in Taiwan, they are as unpredictable as the real ones. Why? Cause they are trying to act and prove themselves as one.
Not to say that the Taiwanese are worse than any other people at fighting etc, but some people think or like to think that Taiwanese guys are soft and little bitches, but believe me, you piss them off or cause them to loose face and they will react out of instinct or simply loose control
PS I saw a couple of foreign scumbags outside of 45 one night. They were obviously drunk and looking for trouble. Came back later and they were being arrested for fighting with other foreigners. Assholes like this should be deported. One thing I enjoy about Taiwan is how safe I feel, I guess this element of brawling and drunken idiocy that is a common sight of Western Nightclub/Pub culture is getting into Taiwan now
Taiwanese will get more of this sort of thing as time goes by, Chinese culture has always been repressive and Taiwan was under martial law for a long time. Places with a military presence usually have very low crime rates and people are usually less lightly to cause trouble and to do petty crime, why?; cause the judge is a AK-47 or an M-16 (ie Northern Ireland). So when this goes what happens is there is a vacuum left behind letting what westerners perceive as normal in.
“normal” – what chainsmoker described about 45 etc above, also burgalary etc
Your friends have been being attacked fro talking to local women? yikes. I guess they were just corrupting the virtues of good Taiwanese women - peni-envy most likely.
I haven’t had anything burned on my lawn yet, but my brother was once got into it with someone who we thought might be a mobster. He said something to a drunk guy in a Lamborgini which was misinterpreted and he jumped and grabbed not a gun, not a knife, but a carpentry saw and began swinging it wildly! Fortunately his friends and girlfriend pushed him back in the car. My brother could have gotten a nasty perforation!
My roommate’s sister was at a bar striking up a casual conversation with a Taiwanese man. The conversation ended and she went to the dance floor, where she began to dance with a foreigner.
The Taiwanese man, she was previously talking to, broke his beer bottle on the bar, walked 30m to the dance floor and ground the jagged edge of the broken beer bottle into this unsuspecting (but incidentally neanderthalic) foreigner’s forehead.
Afterwards, the Taiwanese man went up to my roommate (the girl’s brother) and demanded payment for preserving the honor of his sister. I don’t remember if he paid or not.
LuckilyＩhavent had any bad experiences going out at nights and I hope it keeps on being the same way. Of what I read above, its so freaky!! I guess you got to watch out who you are talking to. Anyways…PEACE!!
Maybe some Taiwanese guys think
“Damn Foreigners…come here to Taiwan… drink our beer…steal our women”
As much as the Taiwanese like our western culture and are curious and interested in us, I think a majority of them don’t like Taiwanese girls having foreign jockeys or being associated with those lusty horny charming foreigners.
Could be jealousy as Taiwanese girls are attracted to the handsome foreigners. They love the stereotypical western male pop singer/actor, on the other hand their Taiwanese role model is an irresistible stallion on his San Yang motorbike, chewing the ‘nut, smoking the long life, and pulling the phlegm up from his toes in good heartily draws
Taiwanese thinking…”I will protect you from the Lao Wai’s evil sexual attraction and huge slong by immobilizing him with a glass bottle in the head, or by beating him senseless”
Only one way around this, talk to her male friends as well and promise them you will give them a go off your sister if they back off(this method should only be used in cases where the male friends are really resentful of you or are too aggressive and protective)
The nightclubs and bars could bring this aspect of thinking out in some Taiwanese guys, as these places are places that this is totally in their face.
Or maybe they think if I can’t have some of the nice ladies here tonight then that scummy foreigner can’t either.
I know one guy who goes to these nightclubs, where no foreigner goes, thinking the competition will be less, so the prize should be better. He also though has a black eye most times I see him. Then again he claims he is a charmer(a charmer it seems that knows little about charm)and would get up on a cracked plate so only god knows his motos operandi in these establishments.
Taiwanese guys are very insecure…even in relationships…did you see the ad on TV for FarEasTone where the girl is talking on the phone and the guy thinks she is shagging the entire population of Taipei(well maybe not that many, but he thinks she has a new guy)
Seems to me that the fight dynamic has changed a little. In the old days, if you were blatantly obnoxious or got into a conflict with a group of gangsters, you paid for it. Now, I keep seeing instances where a couple of Taiwanese guys target foreigners just for talking to Taiwanese girls (not hitting on them) even if they are just friends. In the instance that happened last night (a Thursday night for God sakes!) the guy had brought a Taiwanese girl who was just a friend of his with him to the bar. The girl left and then he left about an hour later. He was completely sober and it was about 1:00am. A guy ran up behind him near spin and clocked him with an ashtray he took from 45 (What a horrible choice for a weapon). After smacking him in the head, the Taiwanese guy said, “Don’t talk to Taiwanese girls!” and ran off. According to the bartender, these particular guys do that shit all the time. Spin and the area around Spin is freakin crazy these days. I’m just glad there aren’t a lot of guns around Taiwan.
I think I will swing wide of 45…and the 711 area…
Do the police know about this…or are they too busy issuing tickets to actually care about it
98 percent of the foriegners around Taiwan definitely wouldn’t have this superior"real man"security back where they came from,c’mon get real with the Taiwanese versus westerNERDS comparisons,cause the truth is that you guys only feel like studs over here,back home non of you guys would even be in the " wow !,his so fine!" category.Take a good look in the mirror,back home you guys just couldn’t even be “wanna be players”,because you just don’t have any game!Go ahead tell me that you are the that confident back home about your masculinity!A geek is a geek no matter what counrty your in.Going by the post’s in thread,most of you really think that asian men are “cowardly little bitches”,who feel threatened by manliness.Westerners are all bark no bite,the way westerners like to fight is to insult someone first,then tell “I’m gonna kill you,you **xx##!!!,and then maybe take action.Asians “bad boys”,are “REAL” thugs,they go about things in a much more calculated,intelligent manner.When you piss off a “REAL” thug ,he’s not going to let you know what’s instored for you,he’ll wait t’ill you’ve calmed down and forgoten,wait with the patience of a predetor and just take you out when you least expect it!Whatch out for those quiet,small types,they’re the most dangerous!You might forget who you pissed off,maybe forget why you pissed off"that LOCAL”,but I know that the local will never forget you!Tourist always learn the hard way to"never piss of the natives!".The locals will never change their way of thinking for your way of thinking,and why should they?Remember where you are,and adapt or you will always suffer the animosity of the locals.Get your shit together HAOLIES!
First I’d like to respond to Not Charmed. Who are you? Are you trying to say that Taiwanese thugs are superior to Western thugs? I don’t get it.
And Calling people “haolies”? What the hell is that?? Are you Hawaiian, or just an imbecile?
Anyway, sorry, back to the topic. I have a friend whose dad was jogging in the park early in the morning when some gangster (we guess) came up and shot him in the leg for his wallet.
The point is, these nuts exist everywhere - though it is still safer here than in most cities in the states. (Don’t know about Europe.) And while guns are still less common, they do exist here, and it does seem to be getting worse.
Did anyone hear about the motorbike hooligans wielding banana knives going around chopping people at random? I think it was mostly in the south, and haven’t heard about it lately…
Just came back to Taiwan after 2 years away and the whole bar fight scene seems to be taking off again. When I was here it was really bad for a few months then everything just stopped…mainly because Peter (manager of Spin) had the thugs under control. Mind you, I’ve seen Peter with someone else’s blood all over his shirt once.
This time back spin seems to be much ‘darker’ then before mainly because of Vibe just down the street taking away much of the business. The place is very ‘Chinese’ now and predominatly male. This aside, I will never go back.
Last month I witnessed a bunch of drunk westerners picking on one guy , also western, on the dance floor. In a minor frey he knocked one of the guys onto the floor and proceeded to leave the bar only to be followed by the mob. The guy wound up staying in Spin as about eight drunk english assholes taunted him to leave the bar and ‘step outside’.
Don’t whine about violent chinese who are insecure and jelous, most of you are blind drunk and itching to call each other names and get into dancefloor shoving matches.
As for the Chinese, these are their bars, when you’ve gone home to your farming village, east european sh#$hole, college campus, unemployment, etc., these guys are still going to be regulars at these bars. They just have to deal with a new crop of assholes.
P.S To all of you ‘old timers’, teachers, and long time slackers, I mean no offence, most of you have a better idea of what time it is then I do.
What the hell happened to the concept of the nightclub bouncer? I mean the huge mean tough guys (or people who at least look the part)whose job it is to:
- Deter the cowards who use glasses and bottles to hurt people
- Eject puking, drunken fools
- Stop the riff-raff who they know are in categories 1 and 2 from entering a club in the first place
Bouncers are paid (badly, usually) to keep away the people that will ultimately undermine a club’s profits by driving customers away.
Before anyone tries to tell me bouncers are not a “Chinese thing,” I can tell you the Hong Kong clubs do have them, and they even hire foreign bouncers there.
No doubts though establishemts like VIBE and SPIN would get bouncers whose other jobs include being the heavies for some gangster or working at the Bing Long stand. Preferably cheap and rough looking
If you don’t get professinal boucers the whole trouble level can be exaserbated.
And I think foreigners usually start it first from the fights I have seen. Drunken guys thiking cause they are westerners they can do as they wish.
Has anyone actually being speaking to a Taiwanese and getting their insight to the apparent increase in pub brawling and attacks on foreigners.
Are we blowing this totally out of proportion or are these isolated incidents, that always have been occuring?
Or is there an increase as Chainsmoker said in the violencometer.
Is it the Taiwanese guys fault or the westerner or does one cause the other to be agressive and attack.
Is it jealousy on the Taiwanese guys part…
Or resentment towards the foreigner
Or just culture differences that are hightened after a couple of beers.
Its just strange to me, I always believed the Taiwanese were very welcoming and open, and well basically not an aggresive people, its a shame if this violencometer increases as I enjoy going out at night in these places, not expecting or looking for trouble.
After reading the posts here, I may think about that again
Maybe Richard should do a piece on it in his column on the China Post.
I have never seen anything like that on CCTV or TVBS regarding the violencometer, but again why would they put on news like that when we are only foreigners
And I am not going to run down peoples professions here.
But I have been in Taiwan for 4 years. I care about and like Taiwan. In a way it’s sort of is my second home. I know most people who post in these forums either think like this or are responsible and have their heads screwed on right. Barring that Denis dude.
I think most of the foreigners that cause trouble here are the guys that are over here for a little while wanting to teach, they don’t care about Taiwan, seeing taiwan as a way of making money and will either probabily leave after a year or get deported.
They don’t understand the people here, cause they do’t even try, they think the Taiwanese girls are for their taking, act the maggit, presenting the Taiwanese with a bad picture of us.
If you are them and read this… I would please ask you please leave now… for some of us your behavior does nothing good…
I don’t get it – there’s 14 posts here about violence and bar fights, but the fights mentioned all seem to have taken place in the scummiest dives in the city.
Where I come from, one or two bar fights per night in the scummiest bars in town would be considered “quiet.”
Seems like a little perspective is in order. There are many, many bars in this town where you can get oiled up without the threat of violence.
So where are these “many many” bars then? I’ve been here almost 3 months and I still haven’t found any.
Never heard of a fight at:
watersheds
sean’s pub
the tavern–(prove me wrong, but I never heard of one there)
saints and sinners
Q-bar–(again, prove me wrong)
etc etc
and the drinks are stronger at a couple of those places too, hmmmm, could be the atmosphere is more civilised.
Dammit, Sot, one of the reasons those places are worth visiting is because they’re not overrun with American college-kids.
At least you left the best places off the list.
oops! sorry sandman.
the best places?
you mean, like
the well-lit Cafe Odeon which has an amazing selection of belgians and quebecs?
never seen a fight in there either. but who wants to go there and sit down and drink like a civilized person?
sandman, they (fresh off the boat) wouldn’t like those places listed anyway. the clientelle is as old, and older, as you and I. There, people have intelligent conversations about the state of the world while they toss back devilish 10% beers.
Hi…Sot
where can I find out the locations of these
‘upscale’ bars ? No fights and great beers ?
With all the discussion on bars and such, the wife and I went out for a few drinks on Saturday. DV8 would have put us to sleep if it were not for the uncomfortable seats and horrible music, kilie Minogue anyone ?? From there we hit Rock Candy on Bada Lu…and fifteen minutes later we were in a cab home.
I’m just too old for drunk college kids and middle aged men hunting teenage girls.