It seems that swimming safety here is very important. Actually i have come to the conclusion that most life guards are over zealous. Considering that it is very common to see whole families driving around on motorcyles when the children have no crash helmets;no one bats an eye lid, but if a young person goes a little bit above chest height into the sea then the whistles blow. In fact this can even happen in swimming pools. I have seen life guards shouting at kids for jumping into water when hardly anyone else was in the pool!
It is weird but I have come to the conclusion that the Taiwanese are paranoid about water and swimming, but when driving motorcycles almost anything goes.
All swimming is a bit dangerous and unfortunately tragedies happen with swimming from time to time, all over the world (as they do riding skate boards and all the other risky things kids do growing up); but the life guards here seem very over zealous as compared to other countries.
Has anyone had any experiences of over zealous life guards around Taiwan’s beautiful coastline or even at a swimming pool ? I don’t think being over zealous is a good thing, surely small risk taking is just a part of growing up and being a kid, right ?
I used to swim in rivers as a child, and even knew someone that drowned, but that didn’t stop us continuing to swim.
Yup, paranoia where water is concerned is everywhere here. Someone drowning in a pool is enough to get it closed; guess it’s the pool’s fault. The community where I now live has a beautiful outdoor pool. Trouble is, it’s barely more than waste deep. I’m told it used to have a deep end with a diving board, but this was filled in because deep water is dangerous. My former community had a pool, but it was closed and filled in completely. I’m told this was because someone drowned in it. There’s a lot of irrational fear surrounding swimming and drowning here.
When you consider that so many people here can’t swim, it’s probably a good thing. Pain in the ass for someone like me who grew up on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, Aust and have spent my whole life in the water. But probably a good thing for Taiwanese.
But I can see it changing. The anqinban at the school I work, which is the biggest in the city, took all the summer school kids to a swimming pool. They had to be able to swim to go on the trip - roughly 90% of the kids went. That’s more than went to an amusement park the week before. My boss’s kids (9 and 11) have 2-3 hours of swimming classes a week. That’s more than I had as a kid. When the generation that are now kids grow up and start families, the demographics of who can swim and who can’t will be a lot different than they are now, if the kids I know are anything to go by. And that is a good thing. A lot of people drown every year here in knee and waist deep water because they don’t know what to do.
The number of drownings in this country is far greater than most imagine. It isn’t a case of a kid drowning in a river every now and then but the same fucking swimming holes each claiming dozens of lives every summer.
Last year I was taking to the park’s board at Taroko about including a few swimming spots in the new Lonely Planet and they asked that we didn’t encourage foreigners to swim as when Taiwanese people see others in the water they assume it must be safe (even if they can’t swim or swim well). Many have no idea about treading water so if they see your head above the water they think you are standing up. Crazy but the paranoia and zealousness is in response to a real danger.
Now yes, if this would only rub a little onto the driving culture…
I know of someone that drowned in Taiwan as a child. It is a common occurance, unfortunately.
Lifeguards are annoying in Kenting. I like to play in big waves. I was raised by a lake and I am an excellent swimmer. I can hold my breath for over a minute under water. But when the waves are big and fun to dive through, the lifeguards’ whistle are going off. Very annoying indeed.
The chances are they are actually held accountable when there is an accident. Given that many Taiwanese can’t swim for shit, they are probably working under a “better safe than sorry” mindset.
As a sidebar, a students’ dad, a swimmin coach, is now teaching my wife and son to swim for free, and all he wants them to do is join a swim club once they can. He simply wants more Taiwanese to know how to swim.
Another sidebar, we went to Fulong beach this weekend. There were some knarly waves and wicked undertoad. The gaurds were not overzealous, but the whistle did blow a few times when people went a 75M out. Good life guarding IMO.
They seem to be paranoid about escalator safety too. How many ads for escaltor safety does the MRT really need?
Here at Sanyuan Beach in Taidong they certainly were. Same thing- a couple of teenagers were killed playing in big waves (in the winter when the beach was officially shut and no lifeguards on duty) and the whole place was shut down for six months.
We had a running fight with them for years. The beach is almost a km long and very safe- sheltered bay, usually calm in the summer, no currents or riptides- but the lifeguards would insist you only swim in the roped-off two hundred meters in front of the pavilion, squashed in with everybody else, blasted with mandopop over tinny speakers and enjoying the stench and noise of jet-skis.
Meanwhile, the rest of the beach was quiet, clean and empty, and if you so much as stuck a toe in the water they’d come screaming up on quads to herd you back.
It is a pain in the arse, but it is needed.
I think the problem isn’t just that they can’t swim it’s that they have no idea of basic water safety.
The kids at my school have weekly swimming lessons from age 4 til they finish school, but they are never taught about water safety. Things that may seem like common sense to me and you, but Taiwanese people who have been brought up being told that “ghosts of people who have drowned will pull you under the water” have no idea.
I did suggest that they teach the kids water safety in their swimming lessons instead of letting them warm up for 20 minutes then beasting them up and down the pool for 20 minutes. They weren’t interested.
A lot of Taiwanese I know can’t swim. Which is pretty ironic since they live on an island AND some of my friends live directly on the coast.
But agreed, with weird superstitions like - Don’t swim in Ghost Month because ghosts have extra powers in the water, and lack of any safety mentality… for anything, it’s better off if they are stricter.
Just wish they would leave the rest of us alone to enjoy the beaches and oceans. It’s bad enough we have to have nuclear power plants on the best beaches in Taiwan.
[quote=“Jack Burton”]A lot of Taiwanese I know can’t swim. Which is pretty ironic since they live on an island AND some of my friends live directly on the coast.
[/quote]
I never get the logic of this. Most fishermen can’t swim either. They stay with the boat. That’s the safe thing to do.
Taiwan is an island. Taiwanese can’t swim or can’t swim well.
Where’s the connection? I grew up around countless ponds and lakes and rivers. We inner tubed down the river, and swam the ponds and lakes. Who swims in the ocean? Most people go there to get bashed by the waves, not to swim. From a scuba divers POV, I HATE swimming on the surface. It’s too rough and tiring.
Taiwan’s rivers are, for the most part, dangerous as hell to swim. There are few lakes and ponds to speak of that can be swum. Except for the big yearly clusterfuck swim at SunMoon Lake, and no one swims in the ocean.
Taiwan is an island. Many people don’t learn to swim here because it’s too GD expensive to go to the pool.
Everyday someone is injured on the HSR due to escalator’s. Its the no.1 cause of injury.
Everyday someone is injured on the HSR due to escalator’s. Its the no.1 cause of injury.[/quote]
Ever notice how timid Chinese are when they take the first step onto the escalator. They act as if the escalator is gonna swallow their feet or something. especially the geezers and women.
I dunno Jd. It always seemed to make sense to me. BC has rivers and lakes and oceans. Damn cold too, but we were swimming anyways. But I do see your point. There’s gonna be a lot less toddlers learning if the pools aren’t affordable.
Everyday someone is injured on the HSR due to escalator’s. Its the no.1 cause of injury.[/quote]
Ever notice how timid Chinese are when they take the first step onto the escalator. They act as if the escalator is gonna swallow their feet or something. especially the geezers and women.
I dunno Jd. It always seemed to make sense to me. BC has rivers and lakes and oceans. Damn cold too, but we were swimming anyways. But I do see your point. There’s gonna be a lot less toddlers learning if the pools aren’t affordable.[/quote]
Okay this has made me complain about something in Taiwan that irks me. And it is unusual for me to complain about Taiwan. A young person can buy a pack of cigs for 50NT$ but has to pay a lot more to go swimming. No wonder some of them are so unhealthy. Cigs are cheap and exercise is expensive. Unless of course you are into jogging through the parks (going the right way around the circle of course).
The mainland Chinese are fantastic divers and have world class swimmers, it’s a pity Taiwan cannot get its own swimming situation sorted out. It is hard to find any pool that goes above my chest height( i’m 6’1 yes tall, but not that tall). Then my local pool closes in the winter because they say it’s too cold to swim. You are not allowed to swim at beaches wth any freedom. The local indoor winter pool is 250 Taiwan dollars a pop plus 30NT for the lockers.
Now I can afford the 250 but i resent that I have to pay that much, and that many young people can buy a pack of cigs for 55NT but have to pay 250 to keep swimming in the winter at their local pool.
This situation should really get onto a TV program and perhaps embarass the government into doing something. Especially now that China will probably do so well in swimming events this olympics.
Is there anything we Wai Gwo Ren can do about it that might help both the locals and us ?
Does anyone know a deep pool in Taipei that is reasonably priced ?
Why do they force you to wear swim hats in Taiwan? They’ll make men who have shaved heads wear swim hats, too. It’s kind of overboard on the swimming dress code at the indoor pools.
The zeal of lifeguards with respect to Taiwanese swimmers isn’t limited to just Taiwan.
Back in 2003, I traveled to Thailand with Taiwanese co-workers as part of a firm retreat. We stayed at a beautiful resort on Phuket that sat on part of a mile long stretch of beach. Once we landed at the resort, I quickly changed into swimming gear and ran to the beach for a dip in the sea. What did I find when I got to the beach? Signs declaring the beach closed to swimming. I stood there looking at the signs, then looking at the fairly tame water, then looking a 1/4 mile down the beach to my right where I saw plenty of people swimming in front of the next resort, and then looking a 1/4 mile down the beach to my left where I saw plenty of other people swimming in front of another resort.
Hmm? What gives I thought? Well, it turns out that the resort we were staying at was mostly populated by Taiwanese vacationers, who apparently had earned a designation from the locals as the world’s worst swimmers. The other resorts on the beach had mostly European vacationers. Our resort preferred to keep the Taiwanese swimming in the pools just off the beach, all with about waist-deep water, and the Taiwanese seemed content with this arrangement.
I ignored the signs and went swimming in front of our resort (why walk a 1/4 mile?). It couldn’t have been 5 minutes before lifeguards from our resort were freaking out, blowing their whistles and waving their arms for me to come in. It seems that they didn’t want me to encourage any Taiwanese guests to ignore the signs and test the waters. I was welcome to swim, just as long as it was away from this Taiwanese-filled resort. 
I was up in Pinglin this weekend again and the river there was really high. So high that we decided to not take any tubing groups at all.
This didn’t stop me from swimming but of course just on safe places with reading the currents first and taking more care.
Some friends came up and had bad luck with the weather and the water level, still they wanted to try out the river and swim a bit. So I went to the lower camp before Cloud9, no Taiwanese was crazy enought to even think of swimming anyway (kind of rainy weather, much too cold for swimming with just 25 degrees or so, etc.) but there was still a group of life guards there. I was just one step in the river when they run down whistling like police men at rush hour and shouting at me.
I went the step back and started to talk with them, after explaining that I usually take people down the “wild river” and that I know the river well, that I don’t want to cross it or anything like that and that I actually just scout it out for a safe place to swimm they had no problem to let me go along.
I tested a bit the currents, checked where it was safe and "guarded"my friends there than. The life guards were fine with this, just came down with a camera to take some photos of this crazy wei gou ren’s swimming in this weather and conditions, was really fun than.
A bit later the sun came out and the group pf life guards decided than to join us and exercise a bit. To be honest, half of them mad us worried that we might have to rescue them than.
They even had 2 girls with them who came down to the river with umbrellas to protect themself against the sun, just stepping a bit into water. I guess their way of helping you would be loud shoutings of “jia jiou” from the river banks. 
It is also really scary how many people want to do all kind of outdoor activities in wild water without beeing able to swim at all. But at least they get tempted and see a sense in learning how to swim now.
Still have to think of a running club stopping by some weeks ago. They held a kind of cross country race there with the final task of crossing the river (which was really low at that time) till they realised that about 95% of the runners couldn’t swimm. So we had to stretch a rope across the river, give them some tubes and float them over. That was funny yo watch.
Coming from the world’s biggest island, I’m astonished the Taiwanese can’t swim, and even more so that people would elect to swim in a river or a lake when there’s a sea handy.
The salt gives a degree of buoyancy, after all.
HG
[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]Coming from the world’s biggest island, I’m astonished the Taiwanese can’t swim, and even more so that people would elect to swim in a river or a lake when there’s a sea handy.
The salt gives a degree of buoyancy, after all.
HG[/quote]
SO WHAT JOINT ACTION CAN WE TAKE TO IMPROVE THE SITUATION OR AT LEAST TRY AND IMPROVE IT ? :help: