Ever since I arrived in Taiwan I have noticed on many occasions that there products which are French or at least have French writing on them. Cups, lunch boxes, store names, sugar packets, clothes,the plastic cover they melt on over your green tea, etc… And often, the French is typically gibberish, which leads me to believe that it didn’t come from France.
So what’s the deal?
Does France export alot of these products to Taiwan or is it just that anything with the Roman alphabet is cool?
Taiwanese marketing 101:
France=Gourmet Food
French gibberish on the packaging=Crap product that looks good because it has French gibberish on the wrapper.
For other marketing fun, take a look at the slogans they put on scooters. My personal favorite: “Duke: The Super Scooter Citizen!”
CK
That doesn’t explain why Carrefour and Geant are two of the biggest hypermarts in Taiwan (after Tesco and Costco).
There is a lot of country-mimikri in Taiwan.
“Biedermeier” Caf
Even the real “Made in France” stuff isn’t really made in France, well sort of, sort of not. You can bet that bottle of Chanel perfume or Louis Vuitton bag was made in a sweatshop in some banana French territory so they can still at least label it “Made in France”.
I think you are right, the Roman alphabet is cool here. It is exotic. Just like we see European language gibberish lunch boxes, where we come from we also see people walking around with bad Chinese tattoos. Or lame Chinese sayings on T-shirts and stuff. It’s exotic in the west.
But I love it even though some of the phrases you find around town are incredibly ridiculous.
Prevalence or pestilence?
Well where exactly are these Louis Vuitton sweatshops then?
I’m only asking because I was doing some browsing on LV the other night and came across some study about the entry into Turkey. The study gave what it claimed was a complete list of their factories from around 1998-1999. There were about half a dozen locations, all in France.
That’s funny 
But regarding the exotic attraction of the roman alphabet here in Asia, and the exotic allure of Chinese characters in English speaking nations. I have to admit that I chuckle to myself at the absurdities of some of what I read here, but lo and behold I found myself up in Yinnge buying some ceramic Christmas gifts for the family back home, and when I asked why I had chosen to buy the ceramics with Chinese characters I simply replied, “cuz it looks cool.”
Flicka was probably referring to the fact that most of the LV merchandise sold in Taiwan are fakes. Some of them are pretty good fakes, complete with a Made In France tag and warranty card, but costs 1/10th the price.
[quote=“Canucklehead”]Ever since I arrived in Taiwan I have noticed on many occasions that there products which are French or at least have French writing on them. … And often, the French is typically gibberish, which leads me to believe that it didn’t come from France.
[/quote]
it’s just more decorative English, although in this case it’s decorative Fringlish, or “francais decoratif”…
The best i saw recently was a cookie package called APRES LA MIDI and inside were 4 strawberry cookies. go figure. this is asia, knuckelhead!
don’t ask, don’t worry…
The exoticness factor is true (you can’t find any club in DC that won’t toss in a little Arabic, Indian, Latin, or African music even if the club is hip-hop or rock or whatever), and it’s also interesting to suppose the correlation between the marketing gibberish and how it’s perceived. Western languages are meant more for show than actual usage except in a business or pop culture context. I routinely hear people speak in Chinese or Taiwanese and then spout out a few phrases to their friends or themselves when they pass me, the ‘waiguoren.’ This is also true back home; the girls in my high school always wanted to learn French and the guys usually chose German or Russian, and of course they sounded like asses when they tried to speak. When we go back our friends will of course ask us to ‘say something in Chinese’ and it doesn’t matter if we tell them we spent a few hours with their moms in a love motel. Language is power.