Can anyone give me a cultural reason that my friends here talk so much?
It seems that if there is a momentary lull in conversation they start asking questions. Even if you say “I don’t feel like talking today” (in either language) people continue to talk.
Is there some cultural reason behind this?
I’m sure this relates to the 30 minute conversations to say “Your job starts at 3 at this address” and the infinite discussions of where the office plants should be located… but I don’t really get it.
Why? Is silence a bad omen or somethin?
The only time I have seen Taiwanese silent in the work place is during their noon nap time…
A Taiwanese girlfriend of mine said, “No talk, no good.” I guess it’s some sort of thing that means that if you’re not talking that you have too many troubles on your mind.
[quote=“SuchAFob”]Can anyone give me a cultural reason that my friends here talk so much?
It seems that if there is a momentary lull in conversation they start asking questions. Even if you say “I don’t feel like talking today” (in either language) people continue to talk.
Is there some cultural reason behind this?
I’m sure this relates to the 30 minute conversations to say “Your job starts at 3 at this address” and the infinite discussions of where the office plants should be located… but I don’t really get it.
Why? Is silence a bad omen or somethin?[/quote]
I don’t know about you but I have a small selection of local eateries that I stick to simply because I can’t be bothered with the four hour ‘HOLY PANCAKES YOU’RE A FOREIGNER!!!’ routine that ensues whenever trying somewhere new. I could talk the hind legs off and back onto a dead donkey with pleasure but there seems to be some switch missing in the Taiwanese psyche that tells you when someone doesn’t feel like small talk. If it’s been a particularly long day I will head to one of the really grumpy nightmarket sellers who would be quite happy if I never spoke a word to them.
I also have a nerdy Taiwanese friend who acts like a clingy lover. No matter how many times I tell him that I leave MSN logged in on the office computer while very rarely being there, he still sends me ten thousands messages an hour asking where I am. Then when I don’t reply within 30 seconds I will get 6 phone calls, one after the other. The first few times this happened I thought there was some major emergency and called back despite being in the middle of a meeting. ‘Oh, just wanted to say hi. I bought a poster for my room.’ I feel kind of sorry for him or otherwise I would have told him to f*** off by now.
Some students once asked me why, in TV shows, they see foreigners going into a room and not immediately turning on all the lights. Same idea, I guess.
I have a Canadian friend who won’t stop talking either. Drives me nuts. Once she’d been out with me the night before and puked. She talked about it for hours the next day when I was trying to quietly and stoically endure a hangover. The funny thing was that she then told another friend about how I had given her shit for hours…
I think it’s just an insecurity thing. Bright lights and noise are normal, take them away and it feels like the world has ended. Got to fill the silence/darkness somehow.
There is a place downstairs from my house where the laoban STILL does that. And I have been getting food there once a week or so for a year.
Lady drives me nuts too. She always tells everyone ALL about me. But not a word of it is right. As she tells it, I am a Canadian English teacher… I am not Canadian OR an English teacher. Lots of other annoying shit too. I always tell whoever she is telling this to that it isn’t true.
[quote=“llary”]
there seems to be some switch missing in the Taiwanese psyche that tells you when someone doesn’t feel like small talk. [/quote]
Yes. But what about when I SAY I don’t want to talk… they keep on…
[quote=“Loretta”]
I think it’s just an insecurity thing. Bright lights and noise are normal, take them away and it feels like the world has ended. Got to fill the silence/darkness somehow.[/quote]
You might be right. My coworker asked why I always have a headache. I said because the lights are too bright. She thought I was joking.
Sometimes I have my local colleagues translate and they keep on “translating” while my sentence was perhaps made of 3 words only …
People here just talk too much and don’t know when (and where) to shut up, especially at the office. People even mistake my desk for a phone booth, making and picking up calls there to talk for ages and in the typical loud Taiwanese fashion (which is more of a yelling than talking).
And they wonder why I look “angry” when I am just trying to concentre on my work to get things done in such an environment; actually I find it highly inconsiderate and sometimes give them a hint by turning up the volume of my (internet) radio while they are on my phone. Usually works and they eventually transfer the call to their own desk.
I’m not sure if Ford Prefect ever visited Taiwan …
[quote=“Douglas Adams”]One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in “It’s a nice day”, or “You’re very tall”, or "Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right? " At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behavior. If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up.
After a few months’ consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favor of a new one. If they don’t keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.[/quote]
maybe because if there is no input, nothing computes 
I had this gf once who had this talking problem. Couldn’t watch TV with her. Couldn’t go on a motorbike ride with her. Couldn’t do anything at all without constant, incessant chatter. Drove me nuts! I generally don’t talk any more than I need to, preferring to listen. Anyway…
Another taiwanese friend of mine helped me get the place I’m in now. I took a look, said I would take it, worked out the details, and everything was good. I recieved the keys prior to move in date, so I took the chatterbox gf over for a look. The landlords were there cleaning up and moving thier stuff out of the spare room and such.
The gf decided to take it upon herself to (try to) re-negotiate (against my explicit wishes) a new lease terms. She decided to tell them semi-personal info about me, and what I did, and my status, and my family and anything you could think of. She Told them stuff that wasn’t true! All the while chattering away in taiwanese! I interrupted several times, getting angrier and angrier. My landlords were apparently uncomfortable with this psycho shiaojiae pinning them in her evil chatty clutches. I finally blew up, took her by the arm, apologized, and left.
I’m still finding out stuff about myself that I didn’t know about due to this stupid exchange.
It’s become a running joke but at the time i was so angry I dumped her. I don’t regret it.
So do women do it more than men? 
This is a particularly interesting thread. In my now 2 years + here on the island I have noticed these attribtes of the locals. Silence does sem to posess strange elements here. Maybe a fear of demons coming in during the lull…need to bang a few firecrackers, rattle some pots and drive them out.
And this…
[quote=“SuchAFob”]There is a place downstairs from my house where the laoban STILL does that. And I have been getting food there once a week or so for a year.
Lady drives me nuts too. She always tells everyone ALL about me. But not a word of it is right.[/quote]I can particularly relate to.
My first year or so here I would daily walk over to a nearby university to use their track/sports areas to walk/jog/shoot basketball/excercise, rtc. Coming back, sweaty ans all, I would go bye a food shop and always speak Howdy to the Loaban. Somehow this brief exchange with her translated into my becoming an “Engineer at the local University.” Of course this is incorrect. As time past, some other locals in my 'hood would ask me about the College and how I like teaching there, what kind of engineer I was, etc. Surprise to me! I woukld then slowly explain that no…I did not work at the college…I was not an engineer…No I don’t know a thing about engineering…Its nice that your son/daughter/brother/sister is an engineer and no I don’t want to meet them…blah blah blah.
It seems that the loaban was spreading the story faster than I could disclaim it. So I just gave up…Now if anyone asks I tell them I’m working on nuclear aircraft and its Top Secret. This has so far stiffled any further questions.
And still…no one asks why I’m always sweaty and in shorts and sport shoes when they see me coming back from the campus area… 
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]
And still…no one asks why I’m always sweaty and in shorts and sport shoes when they see me coming back from the campus area… [/quote]
and if they did, its because there’s been a minor accident and the leaked radiation is causing you to sweat.
Or that someone doesn’t feel like talking at all. One sign that I’m not in the mood to talk is when I have my headphones on and am quite clearly listening to music or a podcast. Should be an obvious sign to others that I’m occupied. But no! People still come up to me and start talking to me, headphones notwithstanding.
The person whose chattiness inspired this thread is a male…
My favourite (?) one was at Mosburger, Chinese-language chemistry textbooks strewn over the table with yours truly in deep thought. In the course of two hours no less than three middle-aged guys came to peer at what I was doing before asking, in very broken English and not a trace of irony, ‘can you speak Chinese??’ I reply, ‘no’, which only gets rid of one of them because the others immediately start telling me (in Chinese) about the X degrees they have from Y university and their son’s prestigious placement at Z.
Taiwanese guys: please learn that ‘do you speak Chinese/English’ / ‘are you American?’ / ‘HALLO!!!’ are not the only ways to open a conversation and do not make you sound intelligent. The day someone approaches me by saying something funny, sweary and/or insulting is the day I meet my new best friend.
Llary, your feet stink and you look absolutely dreadful in those open toed shoes and those knee high panty hose! 
Okay, does that count? Am I your new best friend (NBF)?
Bodo