Taiwan is one of the most pro-American countries in the world. There are a few bad apples. Mainly crusty old deep blues who have always been anti-American like their leaders in the KMT. It’s related to their identity as Chinese nationalists and the long history of distrust and resentment on the part of the KMT toward the U.S.
But parking, traffic, and even public transportation disputes have nothing to do with xenophobia or US-Taiwan relations. They arise because of competition with unknown strangers over scarce resources like parking space or room on the road. Taiwanese lose their cool over these things all the time with other Taiwanese. The language barrier can add to the frustration.
If Americans end up dying to help protect Taiwanese, it will be to secure American interests in the west Pacific. Is the U.S. going to meekly withdraw from the western Pacific where it has been the dominant power since the end of World War II? That is what is at stake. Protecting Taiwanese is a secondary consideration at best.
If, God forbid, there is a war, far more Taiwanese will die than Americans.
I think way too much is being read into a slang term that many people here don’t even know how to use correctly. Here, the term is misapplied to a parking dispute and then used as a basis for geopolitical justification.
Sadly I have seen a lot of this too. A lot of work goes into avoiding situations that might lead to the formation of grudges. That’s why Taiwanese are very sensitive to all the relationships and interest that may be at work in a particular context and try not to disturb them unless it is really necessary unless one really has overwhelming power.
Many foreigners tend to read this as conflict avoidance or the reflection of negative characteristics imputed to ‘them’ as a group. Taiwanese get frustrated because the foreigners are so clueless about what is really going on. It’s not pretty when these mutual resentments blow up.
Just to be clear, I am not a fan of how thin-skinned a lot of people in Taiwan are and how easily permanent grudges can be formed. Also, Chinese has a rich vocabulary for describing these problems.
I think the difference is in Florida or Texas, if you go too far you are far more likely to get your ass beat for freaking out in public
Although in America the freakouts that are the most damaging tend to be groups of teenagers working together which is harder to stop by force without law enforcement intervention
In my last job back home, I’d get called out on it loud immediately when the mistake was found, sometimes in ways Taiwanese might hold grudge for the rest of their lives, but I’d also get help and the manager or some of the colleagues would go through the procedure with me to teach me.
The better ones would even print out or write down the instructions (some of the procedures were kind of complicated and not intuitive) so next time I can do it well alone, therefore we are more efficient.
This Chinese culture habit to let someone down by letting them make mistakes without warning is not only toxic, but also very detrimental for the company itself as well.
As I said before, if you think the term is misapplied, show us how instead of holding us in suspense. Unless you have nothing positive to contribute as I have noted before and your job is just to attack posters who disagree with your Party line.
You are mistaken. It wasn’t a bald extrapolation from a parking dispute to geopolitics.
The parking dispute stems from an individual. But the cultural background from which it sprang is important also.
Naturally the gold standard would be an impartial statistical report on the prevalence of the Taiwanese glass heart syndrome, and comparing it to other countries. Do you think such a report will exist? Absent that, the best we can do is anecdote.
The incident resulted in the good portion of the night in the expat social, with us talking about what we’ve experienced or what we’ve heard others experience.
Here is a reasonably good explanation. One thing it leaves out is that is is a highly gendered term. It is usually (but certainly not always) applied to women. It can be understood partly as a way of negating and controlling how women feel and express themselves.
This precisely what I am warning against. Taking a slang term and using it to explain or generalize about a complex society and culture (usually in a negative and reductive way). It’s very similar to all kinds of hoary pop psychology about the importance of ‘face’ in Chinese societies.
There are plenty of insecure people in American society who overreact to criticism and don’t believe praise when they get it. I’m sure we can think of slang terms to describe them if we think hard enough,
Does the term ‘ho’ speak to some deeper truth about American society? What about ‘Karen’ ?
Sure we live through metaphors. But sometimes a metaphor is just a metaphor.
I’m more minded to think that ‘glass heart’ describes a universal human condition rather than go down dark speculative alleys about xenophobia and prospective lack of gratefulness to justify abandoning Taiwan.
Here’s a very famous example complicated by irony and satire. The song’s English title ‘Fragile’ is an excellent rendering of what this is really about.
A guy who comes after you with a baseball bat in a traffic dispute because you flipped him off is not generally someone with a glass heart.
Here’s the English translation of the relevant section:
What is a glass heart?
A glass heart is a way to describe a state of mind in which people are easily hurt emotionally.
It may be an imperfect tool to extrapolate with but it is what we have. For example, on a scale of 0-100, do you think Mainland Chinese or Taiwanese politicians from these cultures would have zero, some or a lot of “glass hearts”? Do you think they have the capability or awareness to separate personal matters from decisions which would affect their countries?
I would maintain that a trigger for a cross-strait conflict or outright war could be something as “trivial” as a perceived slight. Thus Taiwan should focus on things which materially make a difference to defending itself.
Culturally, Westerners are more likely to talk about issues up front and be less worried about causing offense over small things.
There are lots of examples of this: Taiwanese refusing to rent apartments to foreigners, black people being told “Oh I didn’t know you were black”, foreigners coming to Taiwan on job offers which are then unilaterally changed to their detriment, and so on.
I would say that there is alignment between the Trump Administration and my point of view that Taiwan is, at the very least, not pulling its weight when it comes to self-defense.
Furthermore, I don’t think you’d find any local who will say that Taiwan can defend itself without US or foreign intervention. Meanwhile, you will find xenophobic Taiwanese. So how can the xenophobic Taiwanese hold such views simultaneously without cognitive dissonance?
You are mistaken. Do you think some guy comes after you in a traffic dispute with a baseball bat because he is trying to practice his swing? Or because he was offended over something small/stupid? Hence glass heart applies, QED.
Clearly the status of Taiwan whisperer is reserved for only the most distinguished of furriners. By conflating glass heart with thin skinned or people going ballistic in public, means you haven’t studied enough Chinese culture to really grasp the mysterious intricacies of acting like a child in public. How dare you use that colonizer mentality to criticize this refined society of ours.
We have many, many other ‘tools’ or kinds of evidence we can use to build up a thick interpretation of Taiwanese culture and society. Inferences based on flimsy ‘data points’ like a slang term are risky because there is no rich data set.
Do you think they have the capability or awareness to separate personal matters from decisions which would affect their countries?
Yes. Taiwan’s leaders and decision makers are highly competent and intellligent people. China’s leaders are also clearly extremely intelligent. I’m far more concerned about ideas that the Chinese leadership may have adopted about the ‘West’ being in permanent decline than I am about them triggering a war over a perceived insult.
I would say that there is alignment between the Trump Administration and my point of view that Taiwan is, at the very least, not pulling its weight when it comes to self-defense.
I’m sure there is. I think there are a number of competing factions in the Trump administration with respect to China/Taiwan policy. I fear that the one you are ‘aligned’ with will win. One possibly good outcome is that pressure from Elbridge Colby et al. will give the Lai administration the political cover it needs to increase defense spending. But one bad outcome would be if Colby et al. are in fact setting impossible requirements (10% of GDP) that Taiwan will not be able to meet so as to justify cravenly not coming to Taiwan’s aid. I truly hope that is not the case but who knows.
My personal view is that Taiwan would spend more and be more motivated to fight if it had a guarantee that the US was coming. Otherwise, the risk is that we fight for nothing. This ambiguity damages the Taiwanese willingness to fight. Reasonable people can disagree about this.
There are lots of examples of this: Taiwanese refusing to rent apartments to foreigners, black people being told “Oh I didn’t know you were black”, foreigners coming to Taiwan on job offers which are then unilaterally changed to their detriment, and so on.
There we go extrapolating again. The reason that employers feel free to renege on job offersis that they are pretty confident the foreigner will not sue them and receive an effective economic remedy at an affordable price. The problem is not xenophobia but weak employment laws that protect employers and the economics of litigation and damage awards in Taiwan.
The methodological problem I see here is that you want to go straight to culture rather than look at explanations based on analysis of social institutions, laws, and economics. I see this a lot. It’s easy and habitual to reach for a lazy culural explanation instead looking at other possibilities.
Not about every case of road rage like this. But the perpetrators are usually pretty similar. They are tough working class Taiwanese guys who often have extensive criminal records. They don’t give a shit if they get another assault charge. They like to fight and show off how tough they are. If it’s a foreigner, so much the better.
My main point is that this is not how people with ‘glass hearts’ react as the term usually used. They may get angry but will react will siltent treatment, sullenness, being difficult, and cutting comments. They are overwhelming passive agressive. They do not go aggro with a baseball bat.
I just hope he/she isn’t so broken up about it as you’ve made me feel right now 
