Three Advantages China Has Over Taiwan (Not The GDP Or PLA)
Taiwan’s democracy keeps getting better. People here can freely travel outside and understand how Taiwan fits into the world. The population size is under control — likewise air pollution. You can surf any website and publish any book without questions from the police. China, Taiwan’s ethnic cousin and political rival of seven decades, can’t come close and Taiwanese delight in pointing out these leads.
But China has fostered lifestyle and economic perks that elude Taiwan. I’m not talking about the world’s second largest GDP or third largest military. (Those are functions of a bigger population and massive central government budget.) Here are three lesser known but widespread advantages belonging to China:
ABC writing system: People throughout China use “hanyu pinyin” to spell Chinese characters phonetically and children start learning that Romanization system even before elementary school. Foreigners in numerous countries use hanyu pinyin to learn Chinese. Result: Names of people and places are almost always spelled the same way. The surname Ma is always Ma, not Maa, Maw or Mah. The city of Xiamen, to pick another random proper noun, always comes out as Xiamen, not Shamen, Hsiamen or Shiamen.
Taiwan follows the Wade-Giles system of character Romanization, but not strictly, and children learn pronunciation without the alphabet. The fallout: When Taiwanese write out Chinese words for foreign viewing, they do it inconsistently. It’s hard to know what’s right or wrong or if it matters.
Chinese culture, in your face: In Taiwan, you find a temple in every neighborhood and puppet shows pop up in public. People here go big on festivities for Lunar New Year and the Dragon Boat Festival. But other elements of the traditional Chinese culture that underpins Taiwan take longer to spot.
In China, you can order a pot of local tea from park vendors or in teahouses, a rarity in modern Taiwan. Not just older people drink tea. The teahouse may come with a Chinese chess set and if not you can find people somewhere else in the park playing it on their own.
In Taiwan, the Chinese-style sit-down restaurant with a multi-paged menu and plush seats smacks of special occasions. In Chinese cities, those full-scale restaurants are common and affordable, although prices for a family meal have roughly doubled over the past decade thanks to inflation. Wait staffers in the restaurants may dress in traditional Chinese apparel, but are seldom spotted in Taiwan. Chinese food in Taiwan tends to be fast and informal. Tea usually comes from a bottle or the electronic brewing equipment in a café.
Code enforcement: You can stride down most sidewalks of Chinese cities without banging into things (despite the odd illegally parked car). In Taiwan, pedestrians yaw from side to side and watch underfoot to avoid objects stored on sidewalks. They should mind ad-hoc vendors and stored kitchen equipment, for example.
In China, code enforcers known as the “chengguan” allow less occupation of public spaces, especially tight ones. You see newspaper and snack stands but they don’t cause clog and you see little else. Apartment buildings in China also sport fewer illegal rooftop units and the blocky DIY window extensions that are typical of older construction in Taiwan.
The take-away from a traveler’s vantage: China is neater and less crowded.
1.pinyin over zhu yin isn’t a benefit. its just a different system and might be less beneficial for learning tones.
2 . well i lived in china first then moved to taiwan a few years later and i felt taiwan had much more ‘in yer face extreme chinese culturez’. we all know the history, chinese culture got razed in china and it shows. and you might not be able to buy a pot of tea in the park in taiwan(never actually saw this in china) but you can’t walk a minute down a street without passing a tea shop. taiwan has developed organically. the culture is intact and authentic. the mainland can’t offer this sadly, the government shuts too many things down and then offers up fake feeling alternatives.
3 . china has had a lot more urban planning than taiwan. the citys have space and the streets are all pretty wide compared to taiwan. i don’t see how thats a benefit though when they are full of chinese people spitting, pissing and shitting all over them. and chengguan is a benefit? a group of thugs hired to give street vendors beat downs is a benefit? i don’t have a problem with street vendors. now if they hired some people to deal with all the scooters parked everywhere and bad driving i wouldn’t mind.
I think having standardized romanization is definitely an advantage. No arguments there.
Chinese first tier cities are much better planned. The streets are wider and things roughly work. Shenzhen is positively green for the most part. I mean they are not Venice, but i dont think there is anywhere in China that is as much as ugly a clusterfudge as Taoyuan.
Standardized romanization is an advantage, but not really one worth mentioning, much less topping a list of only three IMO. After all they’re just a support for people who don’t speak Chinese, and I presume those couldn’t care less what romanization is being used (mostly this concerns street names after all, which have one fixed, albeit randomly chosen romanization). Also, while in the south romanization still seems random, in Taipei it is pretty regular PinYin.
China’s first tier cities are a lot less crammed (i.e. wide streets etc) than Taiwan, but except for some XinYi-like area’s the parts I know mostly are pretty ugly and dirty. Much better outside the big city centers.
Either way, while his three points can be argued, his conclusion seems just silly.
Not always so - walk down 西門路 in Tainan and you’ll see Ximen, Simen and Shimen on various different street signs. As you say, it’s intended to help people who don’t speak Chinese, and you can see why that sort of thing might be confusing.
Oh wow, that sucks. How does that even happen?! Never seen that before, but I lived only in Kaohsiung and now Taipei (though I did go around the island before).
For an economy that revolves around international trade (whether import or export based), having standardized pinyin is one of those things like using the metric system. And even among native speakers, pinyin sometimes comes in handy.
i agree with compul, definitely not worth topping the list. but pinyin is actually used for more than just a romanization, its what china uses instead of zhu yin to start learning chinese.
IMO one more reason why Chinese have problems with English (or other European) pronunciation, and at the same time why foreigners have problems with English pronunciation. When learning you bring with you habits from your mother language to the Chinese spelling. Different when you learn ZhuYin just by remembering the sound in connection with an entirely new symbol. Less so when you just transcribe ZhuYin into PinYin…
Of course Taiwanese (and Japanese etc.) have the same issue since they often use ZhuYin / Katakana to learn English pronunciation. But it would not have to be that way…
Anyway, +1 for learning Chinese with ZhuYin instead of PinYin (always easy to learn PinYin afterwards).
And millions of foreign mandarin speakers, even those with much experience and good vocabulary, have a terrible accent. The same problem in reverse (e.g. Japanese learning English pronunciation via Katakana, or Taiwanese via ZhuYin) is very easy to observe from a western perspective. They are two entirely different ways of pronouncing things; using one’s writing system to spell the other is bound to result in confusion.
True. One street having three names is ridiculous.
My anecdotal evidence overwhelmingly supports the view that most westerners learning Mandarin have terrible pronunciation, but I haven’t noticed any consistent difference between those who learned with zhuyin and those who learned without. Native speakers often compliment me on my pronunciation, and I didn’t learn with zhuyin.
For Japanese, do the foreigners who speak it well really speak it well because of the kana or because they take it more seriously and get more enjoyment out of using it in everyday life? I reckon most foreigners who learn Japanese nowadays do it because they love the culture, whereas Mandarin is currently more of a business language. Also, Japanese pronunciation is relatively straightforward for speakers of English, Spanish, etc. Mandarin has more exotic elements, like vowels that are difficult to romanize.
The argument not whether Pinyin or Zhuyin helps to foster more natural pronunciation. Rather, Hanyu Pinyin is already the international standard. Its not the 80’s or 90’s anymore, millions are learning or have learned some Chinese and expect Pinyin
I’ve never been to Taiwan but there is no way it is more crowded than China. It just can’t be. Here, construction is a constant and the new districts and areas being built are very nice so this could be true.
I compare these districts to the new football stadiums being built all over Europe (the last 15 years or so). Yes, the stadiums are cleaner, more profitable and safer (probably) compared to the previous 50-100 year old stadium… but where’s the life? They’re all clinical. A bit boring.
I can walk down Tianhe in Guangzhou and I could just as easily be in Shenzhen or any other decent sized city in China. They all the look the same.
