More than 20 years ago I had a waishengren girlfriend here. Her family had disowned her older sister for marrying a Taiwanese. I mentioned something to my gf about maybe wanting to study Taiwanese and she went absolutely batshit. She and her family wouldn’t have used the phrase “yellow trash” but they certainly would have used “Taiwanese trash”…
Incidentally, she’s now a bigtime IP lawyer with offices in both Beijing and Washington, DC.
i just think the tai ke ism i have observed bears striking resemblance to Wt culture i have observed in my home state. so i was asking if it could be defined as such. i never asked if anybody thought i was a racist. i asked for definitions and opinions on the subject,not me.
DO YOU OR DO YOU NOT BELIEVE THAT TAI KE ISM IS A TRASHY CULTURE? i believe it is. it is keeping the taiwanese people down as much as ghetto culture is keeping black people down in america. black people who want their children to amount to anything abhor ghetto culture like the plague. that’s not to say they want to be an eskimo pie( white on the inside, brown outside) though they are accused as such by their own race. they just don’t want their children to become ghetto gangsta bitches and swaggering street thugs. so they move out of those neighborhoods and don’t allow that culture in their households. i support them in this.
one final thing from me:
i always believed this statement by Jesse Owens the famous track star who beat Hitler’s man in the 1939 Olympics (owens became friends with the man):
" we are people first, then black, white, brown…"
i’ve tried to live by that. but i go out into the world and what do i see? nationalism and racism. the governments of this world want us to think in those terms first.
I noticed you changed the title of this thread. Seems to indicate you’re backing off a bit from using whiteness as a standard for judging Taiwanese, and yellow as a substitute slur - at least on the surface. Before you universally condemn taike as “trashy,” however, I suggest you familiarize yourself with its meaning, context, and usage. Some time ago in another thread, Feiren linked this article in POTS. There have also been a number of editorials and articles about taike in the Taipei Times, most notably here, here, here, here, and here. And while we’re at it, here is a fairly long article on the subject that appeared in Taiwan Panorama. There is no shortage of blogging on the subject either.
I assume you mean tai-ke as in that pots article:
“BLUE AND white plastic slippers, chews betel nut, drinks energy drinks, smokes Long Life yellows, anywhere anytime keeps the diao-ga-aa shirt (the Taiwanese wife-beater) rolled up to let the stomach breath. When du lan (pissed off), it’s either “Kao bei ah!” (“For crying out loud!”), “Lim bei ah!” (“Your father!”), or “Lim bu ah!” (“Your mother!”). Every sentence begins with the word gan, fuck. At the KTV, he orders up some guang high, Cantonese hard house music, and blows a whistle like crazy. Or maybe the fashion is hip hop, bling-bling. Or maybe at the trance club TeXound - also known as tai ke shuang (台客爽) - he comes after the mei mei, the chicks, with shouts of yo-la! Yo-la! Shake it! Shake it! These are all elements of tai ke style, right? But if all that’s true, then what is tai ke?”
is that trashy? nooooooo! hate to tell you but you’re not exactly discovering the atom here.
if this is what you meant, how in the forking name of holy heck did you come up with that original title? nit-pickers lol. it’s even more insulting now that i know what your “INTENT” was.
so is that “class”? what i’m against is the total ignorance i see in taiwan. the frog in a well thinking. i’ll say this: taiwanese lie so much they think everybody is lying to them. even when you’re being sincere. only habitual liars think that way.
what i see in the tai ke culture versus those who want to rise above it is the same as chris rock’s landmark monologue " niggas vs black people" in which, i quote:
“who’s the most racist? white people or black people? black people! because we hate our own people! everything other people hate about black people, black people really hate about black people! there’s a war going, and there’s two sides. there’s black people and there’s niggas. and niggas have got to go!”
a lot of taiwanese HATE tai ke culture. so call them racist.
i know japanese in fact,who refuse to live with other japanese in the States because they feel japanese people are gossiping, back stabbing, group pressure devils, which most of them they ARE. i have a japanese friend here who thinks he’s a loser because so many japanese don’t know how to shut their fucking mouths. next time i see another japanese person insult him, i WILL shut their fucking mouth.
i have ZERO tolerance for cruelty to others, especially groups ganging up on an individual. i have never tolerated it in my children’s classes.
“ee dway ee tchai shr nan ren”
one on one is a man. if TW tai ke want my respect, they’d better not let me see them ganging up on anyone. otherwise i will list them as a new species of monkey in my book.
theposter,
I have not the energy to comment on your words for it would be a waste of time. You have done nothing but insult a race of people who I call my family here, which includes my unborn child who happens to be part Taiwanese. Actually, will be half Taiwanese.
My last suggestion to you is leave Taiwan and go back to the swamps in the states, shave your head, slap a hate symbol of your choice on your jacket and tie your combat boots up tight. Hopefully you will find like minded people who share your views.
I hope you do not find them here.
I am done trying to help you. Good luck.
clarification:
in my opinion, skinheads are monkeys too. any group that gangs up on an individual need not call themsleves human. are you getting my point?
one on one is human provided that it’s a duel of mutual consent. gangbanging is primate. that’s what i have against tai ke, japanese group think, black ghetto gangstas, and white skin head supremists. anyone who needs the group to think for him is not using the facilities which God gave equally to ALL PEOPLE if they’ll just use them and stop following CULTURE! i’ve always been the one picked on by the group. i therefore hate the group and everything it stands for. i can never understand how a group of people can pick on one person. and i hate cultural allowances that foster it.
spinoza? krishnamurti anyone?
dear glove,
i want to thank you for educating me. yes i can see there’s i LIKE about the tai ke culture (especially the cute girl stuff).it’s just that living down here in Nantou, the bad parts of it get hammered at me too. we have a lot of shiao hwun hwun down here and for me tai ke has always meant shiao hwun hwun culture and i wanna kick your white ass. but most of them are nice. it’s just that sometimes they don’t think for themselves.
Interesting thread… lots of people got their gotch in a wad…
I’ve heard the term “taike” before… at my kindy… by the Chinese teachers… in reference to what certain students would grow up to be like. I kinda had an idea what they were talking about and asked them if it was an offensive/derogatory term. They just laughed and said it wasn’t… people here use it all the time in a joking manner… probably the same way westerners throw around the term “white trash.”
If that’s the term to define a certain segment of the Taiwanese population, why do so many posters feel it is racist? Is it not an adjective, much like hillbilly, posh, republican, redneck etc…? If I call someone with a confederate flag tatooed on their shoulder a redneck, am I a racist? I can’t wrap my head around the argument that stuff like that is racist… it’s a description… not a term that equals: " I hate all ________________they are shit."
