This is something I never ever got a unified answer on from the locals.
Maybe one of the long dwellers here might have more insight.
When asking to many why the Taiwanese put metal bars in front of their windows, majority responds “cause of Safety” No burglars welcome.
When asking why they put them on the 5th , 7th or 10 th floor of an apartment, I got the same answer
I f referring to the possible protection against flying debris in a typhoon, they look at me like :ohreally:
Were the Jap’s the reason of this (protecting the females) Did it started thru marketing techniques? Can burglars climb 10 floors ?
For god sake, for once I want an answer that I can tell my grand children 30 years from now that I did learned something here
When we first moved here we were told that, indeed, burglars have been known to scale buildings. Perhaps it was a phenomenon of bygone years? Many years now in Taiwan and we’ve heard of very few burglaries.
I was told that ‘some Taiwanese people like keeping large amounts of cash and gold’ in their houses and not in the bank for a variety of reasons, one being that ‘they don’t trust banks’, and another that ‘they are afraid the bank will go bankrupt and they will lose their money and valuables’.
Maybe this refers to the older generation mostly?
In the last six month we’ve had two break-ins in the area where I live and in both cases only cash was stolen.
debris, extra space to hang laundry. They have to make them with a little door these days, too many people burnt to death while stuck inside. I remember 8 years ago they didn’t censor any news footage…grimmmm.
I remember years ago there was a spate of burglaries in Taichung involving wangsters (wannabe gangsters) gaining access to buildings by buzzing random apartments and posing as a repair crew, then going to the roof and lowering one guy to an unbarred balcony several floors below who then opened the apartment door from the inside for his cohorts… I’m sure the actual incidence rate of this kind of ruse is incredibly low, but a little bit of fear mixed with the herd mentality goes a long way…
I would venture to guess that for 98% of those windows the reason is protection against burglary. I live in a 5th floor apartment and had a break in through the window by some kind of spiderman/burglar who went out the stairwell window onto our half-barred window, and in through an unlocked window. Needless to say, we put bars on the stairwell window. Each and every window that can be reached by even the most superhuman burglar in our neighborhood is barred for this reason. Violent crime may not be common in Taiwan, but burglary is very common.
The Taiwanese are paranoid as hell about burglars, and there are burglars who can get into multi-level floors through the windows. However, on tall buildings, it’s mostly a safety aspect. Although dangerous in a fire, it stops houswives from falling when they are hanging out the washing and keeps adventurous, daredevil kids from messing about on the edge.
It’s funny how, when the price of metal increases, the burglars often just steal the doors and the bars from the windows.
You know I saw a thing on Discovery channel about some guy making a portable plasma cutter for some weird capsized boat rescue thing… well if someone pulled that off then they can cut those metal bars like butter.
I think they look damm ugly too and really make the whole place look like a prison. I hope there’s ways of preventing burglary without such ugly contraption.
I thought the bars on all the windows at all the schools was to stop teh children from escaping, or even thinking of escaping. “Good morning children, welcome to Borstal, now sit down and shut up and remember your teacher is God.”
You know when I first saw the title of this thread I was thinking of places where I can meet other headbangers and listen to some loud obnoxious music (to locals) in Taiwan…
