Very weird experience yesterday

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
1

Yesterday morning I went with my Taiwanese riding buddy to the trails behind my house to clear all the Typhoon fallen trees off the pathway.
For the 2 years that I have lived here, after every Typhoon ,I have gone up and spent the better part of the day clearing the trails, and usually once a month or so I drag a garbage bag up and pick up all the discarded water bottles and crap left behind by the weekend nature tourists.

So yesterday we were half way up the hill and had just spent four hours rebuilding a log bridge that had been washed away when a older ,40 plus, Taiwanese lady wandered down to our work site.

I have seen her a few times over the past few years and she has never replied when I greeted her, however this time she marched up to my friend and started to get very angry. I only understood half of what she was saying as she was speaking very fast and very angry.

My friend turned to me to explain what she was saying when all of a sudden she switched into English and started to scream at me, “you have no right to disrespect my country, you are not a Taiwanese!”

I and my friend calmly tried to explain we were trying to clear the path to make it safer and easier for everybody as we had been doing this every typhoon for the past 2 years.

At this point she grabbed my hand saw and threw it into the bushes and started to scream again.

“this is not your country, you are not allowed to be here in this nature!”

So there I am with my buddy bent over a fallen tree which is blocking the trail trying to move it and she grabs the shovel beside us and throws this at my friends bike.

Again I calmly said “this is for everybody to enjoy it is public land, we are trying to clean it up and make it better for everybody who uses it.”

More screaming, " I am calling the police you are destroying our taiwan nature, you should be ashamed!"

After 5 mins of calmly trying to talk with her I finally lost my patience and yelled “Allright call the fucking police here is my phone now shut the fuck up!”
She stepped into me fists raised and I calmly said, “lady, you better fuck off right now and shut up!”

Then she demanded I stay here while she called the police at which point she stomped off down the trial, which we had cleared, yelling “you are not allowed in taiwan nature you have no right!”

We finished clearing the trail did our downhill ride and had an otherwise great day, but I feel bad about yelling at her.

I tried to remain polite but her screaming in my face got the better of me and now I regret losing my temper. :s

2

Man, just goes to show, no matter what you do, someone always complains.

You shouldn’t feel guilty. You were doing something above and beyond the call of duty. Maybe she’ll go back there today, see what a nice job you’ve done, and realise what a fool she’s made of herself.

3

But probably not. :loco:

4

Taiwanese just love rubbish lying around :laughing: … or she had bad hair day (like in MP) … nutcase?

5

Sounds like it was more than typical anti-foreigner-ism. Maybe her cheese slipped off her cracker.

6

Shifty,

Are you British?

You are the victim of an unprovked attack. You have no need to feel regret, unless you wish to remain phlegmatic in all situations. You were performing a public service when you were verbally and racially assaulted. In the ‘Book of Bobby’ you have the right to a full on yell in such a situation. Or you could have ‘served’ her, to the tune of “It’s like that,” then when ‘it’s on’ you could have had yer fun. (Oops too many disco biscuits for Bobby)

In all seriousness, unless you were buidling the bridge in an unsatisfactory manner she should have left the f##k alone. I really really don’t want to imagine that everyone in Taiwan is an ignorant racist, but it is quite a task to separate the wheat from the chaff. I don’t want to imagine that the average person is thinking, “Get out of my country, jerk,” but testimony like that of Senor Shifty really colours my opinion of ‘local beliefs.’

Is it up to the foreign community to point out these incidents, or should racism be stamped out at grass roots level? How about a handy leaflet? “What is offensive to a foreign resident?” 1) Telling them to get out of your country. 2) Telling them that they have no right to enjoy the nature of Taiwan. You fill in the rest.

Serve the witch. When she shouts, do some body poppin. When she raises a fist, do the crazylegs. At the very least your ‘weapon of mass confusion’ should slow her down, and cause your friends to piss their sides laughing. :slight_smile:

It’s like that!

7

[quote=“BobbyTheRookie”]Shifty,

Are you British?

You are the victim of an unprovked attack. You have no need to feel regret, unless you wish to remain phlegmatic in all situations. You were performing a public service when you were verbally and racially assaulted. In the ‘Book of Bobby’ you have the right to a full on yell in such a situation. Or you could have ‘served’ her, to the tune of “It’s like that,” then when ‘it’s on’ you could have had yer fun. (Oops too many disco biscuits for Bobby)

In all seriousness, unless you were buidling the bridge in an unsatisfactory manner she should have left the f##k alone. I really really don’t want to imagine that everyone in Taiwan is an ignorant racist, but it is quite a task to separate the wheat from the chaff. I don’t want to imagine that the average person is thinking, “Get out of my country, jerk,” but testimony like that of Senor Shifty really colours my opinion of ‘local beliefs.’

Is it up to the foreign community to point out these incidents, or should racism be stamped out at grass roots level? How about a handy leaflet? “What is offensive to a foreign resident?” 1) Telling them to get out of your country. 2) Telling them that they have no right to enjoy the nature of Taiwan. You fill in the rest.

Serve the witch. When she shouts, do some body poppin. When she raises a fist, do the crazylegs. At the very least your ‘weapon of mass confusion’ should slow her down, and cause your friends to piss their sides laughing. :slight_smile:

It’s like that![/quote] :notworthy: :laughing:

No I am Canadian, as with everytime this sort of thing happens my Taiwanese friends always say sorry and feel shame.

I try to let it slide but I guess I regret being pulled into her web and allowing myself to get ugly.
However, it is not like I am going to stop, we have some great parks here but no public crews to keep them up, you know?

8

Quite a few people out there are simply insane. Occasionally we have a run-in with them. It’s too bad you were provoked, but the woman was obviously out of her head and shouldn’t be seen as in any way representative of the general (sane) populace.

9

Up on the hill, where I live, a few foreign residents went out after a typhoon and started to clear a big tree off the road.

I don’t think they were screamed at as such, however they made it into the newspaper as “The crazy foreigners vandalizing a tree”.
:loco:

Perhaps one of the road clearing residents could share a bit more about that with us? :help:

10

[quote=“Mr He”]Up on the hill, where I live, a few foreign residents went out after a typhoon and started to clear a big tree off the road.

I don’t think they were screamed at as such, however they made it into the newspaper as “The crazy foreigners vandalizing a tree”.
:loco:

Perhaps one of the road clearing residents could share a bit more about that with us? :help:[/quote]

Well of course they made it into the paper as crazy foriegners, to do something for your community because you care rather than because you are getting paid to do it.
That’s crazy :loco:

11

The Taiwanese men are just as crazy as the Taiwanese women. :wink:

12

Reminds me of the time when my dad and I were hiking in a national park in Utah, there was a big patch of mud in the middle of the trail that we had to circumvent by walking in the bushes. On our way back, we decided to bring a couple of flat rocks to place in the mud as stepping stones for other hikers. Before reaching the spot, a lady coming in the opposite direction sees us with the rocks and says to us sternly, “Sir, it’s illegal to remove those rocks from the park.” She was quite embarrassed after hearing our intention. If only your lady was as reasonable . . . :s

13

Sure she wasn’t a hiker? A lot of hikers get pissed off when they see bikers dicking around with trails to make them more bikeable. I remember a year or two back Outside Online magazine linked to a hiking message board that had several threads about ways in which hikers could fuck-up the fun had by bikers. This was in Colorado AFAIR and we’re talking about booby traps and bear spray, not verbals.
Maybe that was the reason she went ballistic? One of my elderly neighbours is an early morning hiker and she HATES bikers with a passion.

14

Shifty you are a very considerate person to do such a thing. Yet, in some aspects she is right, this isn’t our country and our “helping” isn’t really helping at times. IMO I think when we involve ourselves in the culture to do what we would do in our home countries, it’s almost akin to going into someone’s home and rearraging the furniture. Now if we were to assist-meaning provide our services when asked to enabling them to improve or reach the goals they desire, then I say by all means go for it.

If people wanna live in trash, so be it. It’s their right to live as they see fit. If the trash was in front of your house or blocking a way to your house you had a right to clean it up. Besides you should play a guilt trip on yourself because you defended yourself. She was rude and abusive and you handled yourself correctly. I love the fact you gave her your phone to call.Funny…

Then on the flip side of the coin of all this, is I’m thinking as I read your post shifty,bought to mind what I read in TT today. If China was coming to attack Taiwan, she wouldn’t have had much problem with you clearing away for the outside military forces to come in a save her crazy behind…

15

See - see what happens when you try to do something “right” in this country. Serves you right for trying to help and do some good.

It’s not for nothing that 99% of the locals have given up. :laughing:

16

Since Shifty was trying to clean up and do a good deed, and she freaked out, something tells me that this woman is insane; he could stop a train to save her and she’d still freak out.

17

Since Shifty was trying to clean up and do a good deed, and she freaked out, something tells me that this woman is insane; he could stop a train to save her and she’d still freak out.[/quote]

Idiots like this are everywhere. I was sitting in my own driveway having a BBQ with a couple of white friends and some dick tourists wants to know why I’m using somebody elses property?

Seeing as they had walked about 40m up the driveway to the house I promptly sprayed them with water from my garden hose and told them F off.

Turns out the main idiot of the group is a university professor who thought he knew better than to let a group of whities squat in some aboriginals house. :loco: :loco: :loco:

18

Since Shifty was trying to clean up and do a good deed, and she freaked out, something tells me that this woman is insane; he could stop a train to save her and she’d still freak out.[/quote]

Idiots like this are everywhere. I was sitting in my own driveway having a BBQ with a couple of white friends and some dick tourists wants to know why I’m using somebody elses property?

Seeing as they had walked about 40m up the driveway to the house I promptly sprayed them with water from my garden hose and told them F off.

Turns out the main idiot of the group is a university professor who thought he knew better than to let a group of whities squat in some aboriginals house. :loco: :loco: :loco:[/quote]

LMAOOOOOO…Oh why couldn’t this have been video tapped. Thanks for the mental laugh

19

I still think she was just a hiker that hates bikers, especially since the OP was with a local.

20

Did you worship the land god before hacking into nature? Some locals are picky about that.