Taiwan is a dump and its perfectly OK to complain about it, and a forum like Forumosa is a good place to let off steam about the shit that happens here day in and day out. Other people like to stick their head in the sand and ignore it. Other people quite like living in urban slums with concrete parks spattered with chewed binlang effluent.
Some people have a valid reason to stay even though they don’t like it, like joining family or working on short hardship posts.
I like being here, but I can’t say I like Taiwan, so I’ll complain about it just like I complain about my own country.
Luckily my job allows me to leave every few days.
I certainly agree with this sentiment. And I believe complaining doesn’t make the complainer feel any better either. Just the opposite is true, in my experience (besides making the complainers appear like whining losers, sorry OP). It happens to me too every once in a while that I feel like complaining about some people I come across. But complaining about them (or even sometimes to them in their faces) usually doesnt seem to provide any relief, instead I often felt worse for it. And making generalizations about a whole society based on random observations is just wrong on so many levels.
There also seems to be a tendency of many foreigners, not just those in Taiwan, but in general people in countries foreign to them, to think that everything must be better in their home country, and everyone is so much more friendly or cultured, etc in their own country. Thus they develop a habit of looking down on other cultures and people, sometimes only based on a few bad experiences. For example, Germans love to travel to other countries, especially places like Spain and Turkey, because these places are so different from Germany. But oftentimes coming back from their vacation they will complain bitterly about all kinds of things they think are “wrong” in these other countries. They may complain that people in these countries (in general!) are “slow” or “lazy”, “inefficient”, “stupid”, “disorganized”, “dirty”, “primitive”, etc. (I’ve heard all these examples firsthand when I was in Germany.) Likewise, Taiwanese travelling in Europe will sometimes complain about the food, the incovenience, the high costs of everything including going to public restrooms, the general “boredom” of living there, inefficient or unfriendly service, “complicatedness” of people, racism, etc. But they too will not feel better complaining about these things, especially if they think of themselves as superior.
Probably, what happens is that people are blind about the problems and issues in their own countries and like to conveniently forget about them. But often, these same things they complain about in a foreign country are also huge problems in their own country. For example, everyone on forumosa (including me, I must admit) loves to complain about pollution and lack of environmental conscienceness in Taiwan. Yes, I believe it’s true that too much pesticides are used in Taiwan and people tend to waste water, fuel and electricity which is truly a shame. But the truth is, countries in the West often have those same or perhaps even worse problems in the same areas. In America, there is widespread and massive pollution caused by pesticides, animal manure from factory farms, chemical plants, etc. It’s normal that cows and pigs are fed to the brim with hormones, antibiotics and other drugs (and people even eat this). I mention these things not to put down other countries or people, but to show it is foolish to keep comparing and complaining and becoming arrogant just because you believe you’re from a “better” country and therefore are a “better” human being for that reason and eventually even start to “hate” another country like the OP apparently does. Ok, I guess I’m ranting too now, haha.
Taiwan is a dump and its perfectly OK to complain about it, and a forum like Forumosa is a good place to let off steam about the shit that happens here day in and day out. Other people like to stick their head in the sand and ignore it. Other people quite like living in urban slums with concrete parks spattered with chewed binlang effluent.
Some people have a valid reason to stay even though they don’t like it, like joining family or working on short hardship posts.
I like being here, but I can’t say I like Taiwan, so I’ll complain about it just like I complain about my own country.
Luckily my job allows me to leave every few days.[/quote]
I only wish forefingers would complain here on the forums instead of every chance they get in my day to day life. Would be nice. It’s easy to take a break from here (which I normally do) than it is at work.
Life in Taiwan is great compared to my home country, America. Or for those nitpickers, “The States”.
I swear, can’t you guys go one fucking day without bitching? And some of you actually wonder why we are labeled so negatively. :loco:
Now don’t come at me with your panties in a bunch. You can complain, we all do, humans after all. But I’m talking about every-fucking-day and every-fucking-time I brush by a foreigner.
I love Taiwan as much as I hate it. That’s just the way it is. People are different and while it may not help you to complain on here or at any other time it actually does help me. Talking about bad stuff happening is always also complaining and communities like this do not only exists because people do solely want to talk about stuff that makes them feel good about being here. It bothers me and it would also bother me if the same thing happened in Germany… just here there is no one who understands that. I could try to explain it to my coworkers… but they would just give me an empty eyed stare, blink and then laugh about the weird foreigner. So I go here, vent a little and can talk to other people with similar experiences that can contribute interesting things about what just happened and that makes it easier to cope.
(Just because life here is great compared to life in America it does not make life here particularly awesome… simply means life in America is worse (for you) but since I am not from America I can bloody well say that life at home is a LOT better for me)
Almost everyone will feel culture shock and want to complain about a foreign country they are in - people even complain about aspects of a foreign country that are actually better than their home country. (For example, many of my South Korean acquaintances complained about how dirty Paris is. OK, looking at it as objectively as possible, it is dirty, but if you could have seen the hovels these people were living in in Korea! Paris should have looked like heaven on earth in comparison, but evidently it didn’t.)
Complaining, then, is perfectly natural. It is much better to complain here on forumosa, to other foreigners, or to other foreigners in person, than to complain to Taiwanese people you know. I’m embarrassed now to think of some of the things I said to Taiwanese friends and coworkers in the first couple of years I lived in Taiwan. I’m sure some of them could just laugh it off and think, “well, she’s just going through culture shock,” but still, I would prefer not to insult someone else’s country in their hearing.
I’m with you guys that like to gripe. I may not gripe all the time on the board, but I’ve got some mental gripes going on, and I sometimes enjoy reading your gripes that coincide or overlap with mine. And I think you have a right to gripe.
On the other hand, I think Savvon has a right to gripe about us gripers, and to gripe to us as well.
I posted this back in 2004, when I was using the name xp+10K:
[quote]During the Vietnam War, there was a man named A.J. Muste, who used to protest the war by standing in front of the White House at night holding a candle. A reporter asked him whether he really thought he was going to change the country’s policy in Vietnam by his one-man protest. Mr. Muste replied, “Oh, I don’t do this to change the country. I do this so the country won’t change me.”[/quote] Police Beating of Paul Clark (Part 2) - #123 by xp_10K
Now, I’m not talking about the Vietnam War, or even being anti-war. I’m talking about how people protest or gripe as a way of defending their mental turf, so to speak. That is, sometimes we may gripe because we don’t want an environment to change us too much:
But maybe people like Savvon, after having gone through a struggle to achieve a measure of calm about things (in fact, I think he’s posted a description of part of his struggle, and it seemed like a serious struggle), feel they have to protest or gripe to us gripers, so we, the gripers, won’t change them, the non-gripers.
Of course, we can always gripe about their griping about our griping so they won’t change us into shudder non-gripers.
Venting is healthy: it lets out pent-up frustrations and allows the person to become better adjusted to a situation. No matter where you go in the world, there will be things that irk you. Even back home, wherever that is.
Taiwan is a dump and its perfectly OK to complain about it, and a forum like Forumosa is a good place to let off steam about the shit that happens here day in and day out. Other people like to stick their head in the sand and ignore it. Other people quite like living in urban slums with concrete parks spattered with chewed binlang effluent.
Some people have a valid reason to stay even though they don’t like it, like joining family or working on short hardship posts.
I like being here, but I can’t say I like Taiwan, so I’ll complain about it just like I complain about my own country.
Luckily my job allows me to leave every few days.[/quote]
I only wish forefingers would complain here on the forums instead of every chance they get in my day to day life. Would be nice. It’s easy to take a break from here (which I normally do) than it is at work.
Life in Taiwan is great compared to my home country, America. Or for those nitpickers, “The States”.
I swear, can’t you guys go one fucking day without bitching? And some of you actually wonder why we are labeled so negatively. :loco:
Now don’t come at me with your panties in a bunch. You can complain, we all do, humans after all. But I’m talking about every-fucking-day and every-fucking-time I brush by a foreigner.
You guys are going to give yourself an aneurism.
Smoke a “J” and everything becomes humorous.[/quote]
You must be hanging out with a bunch of kids. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone bitch about Taiwan for years, but I hang out with people who are in the 30-50 year old age range (expect for sandman, who is somewhere near 60. I can’t keep track). With age comes emotional intelligence, with emotional intelligence comes the ability to adapt without moaning.
So do I. With the right people, griping can be an art form. And I positively believe in venting.
I feel that those who rant about people letting off a little steam aren’t making the distinction between a.) people who are happy for the opportunities, loved ones, and blessings (for want of a better word) they have in Taiwan and yet still (quite naturally) want to point out the oddities of their new country, and b.) those who are simply habitual whiners who would be complaining no matter which country they had set their sorry butts down in.
Racism and a propensity for habitual complaining are not among the qualities that I look for in dinner guests. But I’m also not that keen on those who call anyone making criticisms of another country ethnocentric. It’s political correctness gone crazy. I acknowledge the good and bad in my home country and acknowledge the good and bad in Taiwan.
I had the sad misfortune of living with some reasonably decent but spectacularly negative people when I first arrived in Taiwan. For them, everything about Taiwan was whack-de-whack. The kind of people you want to tell “Then, go back home”. Eventually, many of them did. I also met those people who came here, all-enthusiastic about the minutiae of Taiwanese culture. Many of them went back home as well.
Nothing wrong with a bit of venting, especially if tempered with appreciation of the good things.
i think most foreigners here fit into one of these 4 types:
Exchange Student/Shida: They live at Luxy and think everything about Taiwan is great, they want to stay forever (whole other topic).
People that are here for work/long-term school: Start getting pissed off about stuff on a daily basis, try to change things, then eventually just give up because there’s just no point. :fume:
Older, maybe retired or semi-retired people who are just here for fun, maybe doing some teaching on the side to relieve boredom.
People that have been here 5+ years or married to a Taiwanese person that just take Taiwan for what it is, they live out in Nantou and don’t give a fuck.
Me, I’m number 2. My venting gets out of control sometimes, and it really gets me down, but I’m approaching the ‘give up’ stage quickly, especially when it comes to dealing with the retarded people that run zhengda.
There are other types too, foreigners in Taiwan who come for 2-5 years and leave all happy and excited and then go on missing Taiwan. They live in Tian mou and spend 8 hours each day at ‘the club’, and then take hikin trips or hire buses to go to some ‘on display’ orange farm and luuuuurrrrrrveee it. Then there are people like me, who come for 3 years, live like the locals - a bian tang a day, walk the markets, take the buses, admire the place, miss the foods, hate the weather, love the people and yet never pine to go back. As much as it is held in awe, the tiny island that stands up to China, The real China, I mean whatever the label, for me Taiwan just doesn’t feel like a real place, the people and the country are just constantly trying to fulfill an ideal, a role, or an idea, like Disneyland and I just don’t want to go back. Thing is, I worry so much about having to go back to the Wan, that it might just happen, and that has me solidly worried. :loco:
While it’s natural to want to do so, I feel it’s misguided to try and group people into types. I’ve been here for more than 11 years, am practically married, don’t and never will live in Nantou, and yet do care very much.
What happens to Taiwan and the feelings and behavior of its people effects me deeply.
While it’s unhealthy to let rage and focus on the negatives here get the better of you (nobody likes constant moaners), it’s definitely healthy to look at things objectively (with a sense of humour if possible) and not hesitate to voice your opinion. That’s how things get done/progress is made in our universe.
Besides constant moaners, I equally cant stand people who look at you sideways with a nervous smile when you voice displeasure, as if they can’t relate, are afraid to speak, and/or truly think things here are a utopian paradise. Living in repressed denial to the point where you instinctively avoid any kind of conflict/friction/argument is incredibly unhealthy, not to mention unproductive.
[quote=“Super Hans”]
Some people have a valid reason to stay even though they don’t like it, like joining family or working on short hardship posts.
I like being here, but I can’t say I like Taiwan, so I’ll complain about it just like I complain about my own country.
Luckily my job allows me to leave every few days.[/quote]
I’d hardly say Taiwan qualifies as a hardship posting.
The people who group others and the people who don’t. :discodance:
Life is as good as you make it no matter where you are. Just wondering, why are you even in Taiwan if you think life is better in your home country? Not very productive staying in a place you are not happy. That is why I left America and came here. I did something to improve my life, I suggest you do the same.
To Super Hans… sounds like you don’t like yourself, Not Taiwan or your own country… people like you are unhappy and will bitch about everything everywhere. and if you don’t like where you live …LEAVE. Personally I love Taiwan, the people, cultures and traditions… and I’m tired of of foreigners bitching about Taiwan, while they make 3 times more money than the average Taiwanese!!
[quote=“Savvon”]
Life is as good as you make it no matter where you are. Just wondering, why are you even in Taiwan if you think life is better in your home country? Not very productive staying in a place you are not happy. That is why I left America and came here. I did something to improve my life, I suggest you do the same.[/quote]
I just can’t be here for too long before the bad parts of being here start getting to me and I love my home so much that I can’t stand to be away for too long. So these two factors add up after a time… When I am back home I will start missing Taiwan again but the thing is that I can’t handle it too well for more than about three months and this time I am here for a bit longer for personal reasons. I know why I am here and I know it’s worth it and I still can enjoy it for 80% of the time… but that does not mean I should just smile and be happy if I get to the office in the morning and my cup and desk have just been sprayed with pesticides…
I make as much as the average I’d guess… probably less… definelty not enough to get by without taking from savings. I also love Taiwan, the people, cultures and traditions BUT I also hate all those things a lot every now and then. Maybe I should have left within my “mainly happy to be in Taiwan” timeframe but there is something keeping me here. Also: Just because you can’t stand some aspects of a place where you are does not mean you have to leave. If you walk outside tomorrow and get hit in the crazy scooter traffic here you WILL bitch about it and not lie on the street and say… whoa I love Taiwans traffic, so glad I am here to be part of it.
The problem some of us have is that all we hear is complaining. Yes, it is normal to complain when something goes wrong. However, it is not healthy to complain all the time because you are uncomfortable. Many people are uncomfortable here for one reason or another and this is the core reason why people are unhappy here.
In my opinion, you need to make yourself more comfortable here. You need a release and complaining is not a release.
So do I. With the right people, griping can be an art form. And I positively believe in venting.