We were assaulted in Taichung People’s Park

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
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21

[quote=“Baas Babelaas”]Problem with beating/slapping/ball-snapping somebody on the street, for whatever reason, is that you could be minding your own business the next day/week/month/year, when he spots you. And he’s armed, or he’s with his buds. Result - you get bottled, bashed with a bat, kicked around till comatose by a bunch of thugs.

That’s one my reasons for staying out of street scraps. I don’t want to walk around watching my back all the time…[/quote]

Absolutely right. Don’t get entangled with something like that unless it’s unavoidable, clearly necessary, or morally required. Once you cross the point of no return all risks are assumed. And if the point of trouble is near your residence or your regular turf the level of discretion needed just went up

On the other hand, if the local Taike threw down on me for the sake of face or just plain stupidity he better be rollin deep. Screw all that taking abuse out of fear of getting sued, deported, or jumped on later, YO! I’ve taken some verbal harassment and insults before, but that’s different

The closest I’ve come to laying the wood on someone was when a homeless guy grabbed my chest at the 2-28 park. But as it turned out, I was more disturbed with the fact it wasn’t as unpleasant as I would have imagined than actually having been physically violated

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[quote=“tommy525”][quote=“superking”]It was not a set up but an accepted sequence of events which both the police and the nutjob would be familiar with. The man took his son to the park to publicly beat him. The man had lost control and wanted to regain control. So he took his son out to regain control. Unsurprisingly the public were not up for that. So he went into the next mode of 'I’ll slap someone else instead. Who can I slap?" That is one of the nasty things about Chinese culture, all the slapping and spitting. It is like they can’t cool down once they choose to go rogue. But I see it in many other cultures too. For example, don’t rile up a drunk Brit on a train.

Anyway, so your man is out there and he has lost his cool and everyone can see that. So he decides to just be a prick to someone else to regain control. He fails. He has to go home and face his wife. That poor woman. He rants and raves and she and he both know he has not got face, he lost his face down at the park. Well, fuck, he wants his face back, and he wants his wife to see him go get his face back. So he marched her down there to watch him get his face back.

Now… Taiwanese police, what the fuck are they supposed to do? They have some fucking twat slapping the crap out of people and they have some people being reasonable. Taiwan police logic seemingly weirdly dictates that they are better off trying to get the people who are already being compliant to be even more compliant. They are aware that Mr Slappy has lost his shit and that Taiwanese laws are pretty, can we say, plastic. It is, to my mind, their way of saying, ‘look this guy is a fucking prick and if you dont drop it he will continue to be a prick.’ Of course they should crunch him to the floor in a headlock and scream blue fuck into his ears, like they do in the UK and then people would see that and think, ‘shit, I had better not ever get slap happy.’ But they don’t. Don’t ask me why, but they don’t. So it is a cycle really. The baby is pampered because it is honestly easier to just let the baby cry it out than smack it on the arse and tell it to grow the fuck up.[/quote]

very true, but the guy will get his one day when he messes with the wrong person. Just let that person be Taiwanese, guys. Don’t be the foreigner trying to teach him a lesson. Things can get all weird .

The only time you should actively defend yourself or people you are with is if your life is in danger. And then do what you have to do, worry bout it afterwards, like the Taiwanese do.

But dont pull that switch because its like jumping out of a plane. Theres no going back.[/quote]

Eight years in Taiwan and not once has a Taiwanese guy started on me.

It’s nice to have the advice on what to do should it ever happen, but I have a strong feeling that it’s never going to.

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[quote=“tomthorne”]
It’s nice to have the advice on what to do should it ever happen, but I have a strong feeling that it’s never going to.[/quote]

Have you ever seen a man take his son to the park and shout that he is going to beat him? What would you do in England if you saw that? I am pretty sure I would phone the police and I would step in. I would like to think I would. I would do the same in Casablanca or Chicago.

Last summer I saw two gangs of boys heading for each other in my high street. I was following one of the gangs and they were all talking about hwo they going to fight the other gang. I ran to find the cops (pretty easy to find in my town) and I pointed out what was going on in full view of everyone. Both groups of boys saw me. I wanted them to know that people in my town won’t stand for gang violence. Fuck them and their stupid fuckery. We have almost no knife crime in my part of London because we won’t fucking stand and be bullied.

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[quote=“superking”][quote=“tomthorne”]
It’s nice to have the advice on what to do should it ever happen, but I have a strong feeling that it’s never going to.[/quote]

Have you ever seen a man take his son to the park and shout that he is going to beat him? What would you do in England if you saw that? I am pretty sure I would phone the police and I would step in. I would like to think I would. I would do the same in Casablanca or Chicago.

Last summer I saw two gangs of boys heading for each other in my high street. I was following one of the gangs and they were all talking about hwo they going to fight the other gang. I ran to find the cops (pretty easy to find in my town) and I pointed out what was going on in full view of everyone. Both groups of boys saw me. I wanted them to know that people in my town won’t stand for gang violence. Fuck them and their stupid fuckery. We have almost no knife crime in my part of London because we won’t fucking stand and be bullied.[/quote]

I didn’t say what I would do, just that in 8 years here nothing like that has happened.

Of course, we all like to think we would do the right thing. I’m sure that we both would.

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[quote=“superking”][quote=“tomthorne”]
It’s nice to have the advice on what to do should it ever happen, but I have a strong feeling that it’s never going to.[/quote]

Have you ever seen a man take his son to the park and shout that he is going to beat him? What would you do in England if you saw that? I am pretty sure I would phone the police and I would step in. I would like to think I would. I would do the same in Casablanca or Chicago.

Last summer I saw two gangs of boys heading for each other in my high street. I was following one of the gangs and they were all talking about hwo they going to fight the other gang. I ran to find the cops (pretty easy to find in my town) and I pointed out what was going on in full view of everyone. Both groups of boys saw me. I wanted them to know that people in my town won’t stand for gang violence. Fuck them and their stupid fuckery. We have almost no knife crime in my part of London because we won’t fucking stand and be bullied.[/quote]

I’m not an expert on Taiwan yet, but what I’m getting out of this thread is that the cops in London might care, but the cops in Taiwan don’t care. And being a foreigner in Taiwan makes it much worse when dealing with the police.

26

When the natives be restless…simply walk away. The colonialists were right about a lot of things.

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It would be interesting to know if the guy saying he was going to beat his son has a track record for doing something like this and then suing people who intervene. Also, if he has, is it a sustainable business model?

A while back I was told by someone who then worked with a local government mediation committee that they’d advised in a number of cases featuring the same young woman. She’d hang around in bars etc, meet men, go back to a hotel/motel, then accuse them of rape. Each time the evidence was very very flimsy but the men didn’t want the publicity of battling it out in formal legal proceedings, so they’d shove a pile of money in her direction. It seems she eventually tried this with someone who wasn’t willing to pay, and got beaten up so badly she’ll not try any nonsense like that again.

28

I’ve been living in Taichung for like 5 years now, and never seen so much crazy (also I’ve never actually see the “mob” that I hear so much about). Not that I want.

However, if you even watch news here, you will learn Taiwanese tend to do big NEWS from nothing, and especially when foreigners are involved. I always feel like I have to be extra careful and diplomatic, because as Taiwanese mostly are nice to foreigners, they do get very nasty when they feel some foreigner is complaining or saying bad things about Taiwan. I even had my good friends taking some of my comments about Taiwan too personally and saying pretty racists things about white people.

That is why, if possible it’s better not get involved. I feel your Taiwanese friends really should have try do more to help you out. You say many people were recording, even if you as foreigners don;t have smartphones yet here, some of your Taiwanese friends probably had. Also, you should have left the park as soon as thing were getting bad.

And connected to mob or not, I totally agree the police here is useless. Good you guys did not hit the guy, or it would be all over the news and you would be the bad guys in it.

29

Well, I had the feeling the last weeks things are getting rougher for foreigners out there in Taiwan’s streets. I think keeping a low profile is advised. I had an old guy blocking the door to my block of flats here and then smashing the door closed almost into my face. I did not react. I had a guy blocking my parking lot and pressed the horn to make him unblock it. When I finished parking and was going back home, he pointed at me repeatedly, making a big deal of it. I should have just walked on but I asked him what’s the matter. He was seriously agitated and so I wished him a nice day changing to English. It ended with him trying to ram me with his car (I was on foot). Which he did not do because I held my key in between me and his car (he wanted to ram me sideways), so he would have gotten his paint scratched when touching me. He pressed his horn constantly and continued to block my way.
He escaped as if chased by hellhounds when I got my cellphone out. An old StarTrek-communicator style phone by Motorola, though it does have a functioning video camera. Not a handy little phaser though. Kirk still has the best stuff.
The other day I stood a second or so next to he wrong car, being parked next to mine and looking exactly like mine. Then I found I had the wrong old Nissan and entered my own. A guy came after me asking me what I want. He seemed rather on the edge in his behavior. Well, the situation should give people a smile on their faces instead he seemed rather keen on having the situation escalated. People love to do that obviously once they decided they found a reason to let their “keep face”-attitude slip. Like they are carrying around a kettle full of old boiling emotions, all gassy and waiting to burst out.
I smiled at him and drove away.

I am a happy camper recently, even having some success finally in learning Chinese. However I feel less and less willing to talk to the locals.
Walk away, stay silent, de-escalate. And that means staying silent I am afraid. Is the climate changing out there, maybe because of the Zain Dean case coverage?

30

Hello, I just wanted to send an update.
First of all, we actually did take videos and pictures. These made the man angrier, because he said we were defaming him. The police didn’t care about our videos because they were “too dark”. However, they also didn’t care about the video that the man’s wife took.

  1. The police told us that the man demanded they go to his home with him and reprimand his son, and they did so. So I think perhaps it wasn’t a planned scam, but the second time he came he tried to get us to hit him and make money.

  2. My Taiwanese friend’s father is a policeman. I asked her to ask him, and he said that it was the police’s fault for being lazy. We had to call them twice to come the 2nd time and they took 45 minutes to come to the center of town, despite having already been there and hearing witness statements corroborating our story. They refused to prosecute the man because they said there wasn’t “enough evidence”, despite witnesses telling them what had happened. Overall, my friend’s fathers and our opinions was that they were simply trying to do the least amount of work possible and didn’t bear any real malice.

I should remark that at least the police were polite and had a semblance of fairness. When my friend was attacked by drunks in Korea, he was told by the police that it was his fault for leaving his home country, and they were complete assholes.

  1. We will be contacting the embassy and are thinking of contacting media outlets (it’s already been on the Taiwanese-language news, apparently). However, MORE THAN ANYTHING, I just want to teach what I learned SO THAT THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN TO ANYONE ELSE. I had no idea what was happening, it was so unprecedented in my six-month experience in Taiwan. In retrospect, I wish we had walked away but we really thought the man would just give up and leave at first, and when he came back we wanted to wait for the police to prosecute him for hitting us.
    So, the lessons:
    Walk away from confrontations
    Don’t expect the police to behave anything like they would in the West
31

Do you consider Mexico to be the West? :slight_smile:

Actually, I agree with an above statement that it’s not about corruption at all, it’s about cutting corners and closing a case with a minimal amount of effort. To the police, this probably sounded like a really small incident and they just wanted to sweep it under the carpet instead of spending their time.

32

Do you consider Mexico to be the West? :slight_smile:
[/quote]

They’re still more useful than TW police.

Never been in that situation before, and used to hang out around in some Taike turfs… I think I was just very lucky.
The scolding the kid in English part is what keeps bothering me… Sounds very like Russian set-up scams, but targeted to foreigners.

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[quote=“Pein_11”][quote=“Hokwongwei”]Do you consider Mexico to be the West? :slight_smile:
[/quote]

They’re still more useful than TW police.[/quote]
Not in my experience. I’ve found Taiwan’s policemen usually friendly and varying between helpful and apathetic (but harmless), whereas Mexico’s policemen scare me.

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[quote=“grandfeller”][quote=“Pein_11”][quote=“Hokwongwei”]Do you consider Mexico to be the West? :slight_smile:
[/quote]

They’re still more useful than TW police.[/quote]
Not in my experience. I’ve found Taiwan’s policemen usually friendly and varying between helpful and apathetic (but harmless), whereas Mexico’s policemen scare me.[/quote]

If I were a Mexican policeman, I’d be scared too.

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[quote=“Pein_11”]
The scolding the kid in English part is what keeps bothering me… Sounds very like Russian set-up scams, but targeted to foreigners.[/quote]

Good point.

36

Well, I have noticed parents often change to English when talking to their kid when I just walk by. It always makes me gain speed. Also adults seem to change to English occasionally when I am around. Maybe it was just that, an attempt to gain face by the father. Not that I want to defend this inbred.

37

That’s true too. In the context of later events though, pein’s idea makes a lot of sense.

38

That was certainly my first thought. Why would a parent drag his kid outside to beat him, and then (instead of actually beating him) just ramble on in a foreign language, in front of some foreigners, that he was “going to” beat him? Especially in Taiwanese society, where doing such a thing would be a major loss of face. Beatings are done in private so that the beater feels no shame.

To those who advocate intervening in violent altercations, there’s a big problem: if you do this, you have to be prepared to go the distance. You need to leave the guy on the ground, unable to get up, and you have to be prepared to be arrested and fined (or imprisoned, or deported) for assault. Starting a sissy-fight without intent to inflict rapid, hospital-level hurt will just end in you getting beaten up. If there’s an exit route, and nobody’s life is in immediate danger, there’s nothing wrong with just walking away.

As someone else noted, Taiwan has no well-defined legal concept of self-defence (a woman in danger of being raped is expected to let it happen and then go to the police to report it). It certainly has no concept of defending others. I think if I actually saw somebody assaulting a weaker individual or an animal, and clearly intended major GBH, I’d probably be mad enough to wade in; I’d have nightmares about it if I didn’t. Fortunately, that has never happened, because I’d be in deep trouble. The law is on the side of the aggressor, and Taiwan’s underworld know this well. It’s the reason they rarely need to get violent to get what they want; it’s enough that ordinary people know the police will do nothing to protect them from their depredations.

39

The underworld is held in check because nearly everyone who is taiwanese is connected in some fashion.

I was with my friend who is a teacher. He owned a very nice restaurant. One day some gangster types came in. I was sitting with my friend. They said they just got out of prison and were back in “their” neighborhood. Said how nice this restaurant was. And they said there were rumors that “some” people were going to trash the place in the next few days, but they can help.

We both understood the “some” people meant them and that they wanted “protection money”.

My friend said, “oh , ok, why don’t you come back in tomorrow around this time and let’s discuss how you can help?” And “oh the coffee is on the house”.

The guys left. My bud said. Dont worry about it.

The next day i was there along with my friend again. And the two dudes came in all polite and apologetic and brought two boxes of expensive fruit.

They were invited to sit down for awhile, but they kindly refused saying they had to rush to a different engagement. And apologized profusely for any “misunderstanding yesterday”.

I asked my friend what the deal was.

He said, “oh they just found out who my uncle is, thats all”

I said “oh whos your uncle?”

he said “oh hes one of the bamboo union chiefs in San Chong, thats all”.

So the minor league players realized they were playing with the major league players pretty quickly in this case !!

In Taiwan, the MOB is the one whos got the control.

40

Yeah, I once walked past an accident side. Scooter and scooter rider on the ground still wearing the helmet. Motionless. Well, not really, as his opponent, another scooter rider was holding his helmed head and banging it against the curb. A long time. Lots of other scooter riders gawking, doing nothing. Me walking by, doing nothing. When I came back from Seven with my burger, both were gone.
I chose not to help, otherwise some Taiwan copper might have seen a foreigner in a colorful (then torn) silk shirt in a fight with a helmed local in leather gear and guess who the bad guy would be. Guess I would be charged for assault on both.

“Tribal affairs” sounds cynical, but the “do not interfere in them” rule is basically what I am following. Because the locals distinguish too clearly between us and them.