Yeah, try not to judge all Taiwanese on the basis of one reaction. When my son was bitten by a dog we were overwhelmed with offers of help and one person, completely unnecessarily, called an ambulance. Those Taiwanese were lovely, but we might also have been ignored on another day. A white face sometimes engenders an overreaction one way or the other. I’ve seen plenty of instances of Taiwanese being kind to strangers in difficulty.
In big cities, I think people tend to avoid interacting with their surroundings because they’ve heard or seen too many cases of people trying to be helpful being taken advantage of.
There’s a scam that’s all the rage these days, it’s a new and improve “fake car accident scam.” Someone will pretend to be hurt, and when you rush to help the person, the person turns around and accuse you of causing the injury. I had several friend who ran into this. Some elderly man or woman falls flat on the road, they go and help the elderly get up, gets the elderly to a hospital, and the elderly calls the cop on them. These con artists are exploiting the fact that you have virtually no way of proving your innocence, and they can get any medical proof they want to back their statements from some sketchy doctor they know. They know the system is flawed, and that the police won’t do two shit to find out what really happened, and regardless of what happens in court, usually you end up settling one way or another.
All of that slowly wears out people’s helpfulness. However, most sane people still try to be helpful. Saw an old man carrying two huge boxes of recyclable garbage on his bicycle at rush hour. A milk bottle fell out in the middle of the road at a red light. He tried to pick it up and his bicycle fell over. At the point the light turned green, and no one rushed him. A motorcyclist rode up next to him, and the passenger helped him pick all the garbage up. So it’s not all lunatics on this island, just a lot of them.
The scam thing … meh. Not what’s going on here. It’s a white person thing. No-one wants to get involved because they don’t want to speak English and because they just don’t give that much of a shit about an outsider, especially a woman. Who wants to take charge of a potentially miscarrying foreigner? Nooooo-one.
But I’m not saying that’s a uniquely Taiwanese thing.
Btw some people in Taipei are friendly to kids, but a lot of older folk can’t really stand little kids and always telling my daughter to quieter down (she’s is a but boisterous). They don’t do it when I’m around though, only when my wife is there.
Have seen dogs getting hit and the cars driving off, or scooters/cars driving around accident victims, pretty standard in Taiwan. Just a case of rather ignoring things And hoping somebody else will deal with it, and yes avoiding getting sued. I’ve also been helped in a traffic accident , so not EVERYBODY is so calculating, just a fair percentage. I don’t know if small towns in Taiwan will be any better, I doubt it. Worth bearing in mind that dogs and people getting badly hurt was a very common occurrence and still is a very common occurrence in some Places. Not my family member and all that…wait for the ambulance crew…to be honest I’d think about touching an accident victim myself…last resort depending on situation.
But for somebody falling, I’ve seen it happen and peoplle help out, so I think the OP was just unlucky.
that sucks. i have seen some young guys help up an elderly lady who fell down before so they are not all assholes.
as for having your idea of Taiwanese being friendly shattered, well it couldn’t of happened in a worse way but why did you believe they were so friendly in the first place? they have their good and bad points. just step outside and observe the driving for 5 minutes and you will see a bunch of spoilt brat like behaviour which isn’t even close to being friendly.
Yes, I agree that there are dicks, mentally ill guys, rude people, and kind people found everywhere. I wasn’t extrapolating to all Taiwanese people. I was only offering a counterpoint to the extrapolation that Taiwan is friendly place.
I’m still curious to know what makes certain places earn a reputation for being friendlier than others? At least when it comes to Taipei, I’d rank its convenience way higher than I would its friendliness. Maybe that’s just life in a big city.[/quote]
I used to think people in Taipei were generally very friendly but this was 20-30 years ago. Now, they longer seems that friendly to me. But smaller towns around Taiwan still seem to be quite friendly even now.
People in Taipei are very rushed, and few neighbors really talk to each other. Big city mixed with modern Taiwan life. You need to join groups with shared interests or class background to get social interaction.