What is it actually like to become Taiwanese?

Like a pleb

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:grinning:

So, what, the big fella is renouncing his Taiwaneseosity and leaving?

Is this a one in one out strategy?

Or maybe he is just going on vacation?

I never get asked these questions, some people must look like complete newbs or dopey or something. :grin:

You don’t become anything overnight just by getting a piece of paper or it being taken away. Assimilation to a society is a long term process involving learning the language, the culture, the food, the work environment the social aspect all that jazz. Being able to sing some local song or having taken part in some significant social movement, .marrying the locals and having local kids with local rights and them growing up speaking Chinese properly…all that.

Like you can throw a passport at any immigrant who bought it or whatever And arrived into a country and they legally become a citizen but there’s a lot more to becoming part of society than that. Some Chinese guy going to Canada and barely speaking English isn’t going to fool anybody on their ‘Canadianness’.

And if a government takes away that piece of paper does it make somebody who grew up in those countries less Canadian or American at heart?

Letting the government constantly validate who you are is kinda dumb. Taiwan Luthiers you know what I’m talking about I think. @Taiwan_Luthiers

I knew a guy who was banned from Taiwan for decades after living here for decades and then he was allowed back again . I’m not even sure if they ever gave him a passport but it didn’t matter this guy was a true green Taiwanese at the heart of many of the biggest political events of the last 50 years. His name is in the Jingmei museum prison records. He didn’t crow about getting a piece of paper every two minutes , he was the real deal.

I would have thought all of this is obvious but seems not.

Well. People usually associate that piece of paper with their national identity. If you have the paper, you’re a citizen. I would say the minimum to claim a nationality is the citizenship.

What exactly is Canadianness?

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Yes stating the obvious there Marco but my point is clear, don’t let the government validate how you feel about your identity too much nor others for that matter. It looks needy when people need to constantly go on about it.

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Being able to speak Engliah or French would be a good start as well as knowing something about ice hockey and maple syrup wouldn’t it. Just having an ID is not going to get you integrated into society.

I hate hockey. I want nothing to do with it. I don’t get it. I dont care about it. It makes no sense to me.

I don’t like maple anything. I tolerate the syrup but I prefer Aunt Jemima.

Have you spent any significant time in Canada?

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It’s not really important to my point, I just threw out some common points of reference for Canadians.
The same could apply for any country.

Are you telling me most Canadians know absolutely nothing about ice hockey, maple syrup and can’t speak English and/or French ?

It’s not that I let the government validate myself, it’s that I don’t care what the haters say when they try to impose their view of my identity on me.

They don’t consider me Canadian enough? Oh well. I got the document and my rights.

They don’t consider me Italian enough? Oh well. I got the document and my rights.

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Not really. Canada doesn’t have a unifying cultural identity.

In Canada you can be anything you want, like whatever you want etc…

The ice hockey shit and maple shit are for mangiacakes. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. White as snow people.

Everyone is free to do whatever they want and nobody really gives a shit.

If you have the paper, even if your language is shit, people largely accept you as Canadian.

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One can look at it from both ways , but there are certain things such as not knowing the language and the history and the sports and culture that are going to make it very difficult to be accepted into society no matter the ID or not

Again an ID is something a government grants you, it depends on their whims, it shouldn’t drive the internal identity. So people crave external validation but you ain’t ever going to get it 100%.

That might be true for Nation-states like Ireland. But largely, people in Canada would accept you if you have the document.

It’s a paper nationality. A civic nationality.

Not a blood nationality.

My grandparents, both of them are(were) illiterate in both English and Italian.

My grandmother speaks a broken mix of Italian and Calabrese while barely holding onto English.

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I’ve met many Taiwanese with NZ passports but only a couple I would recognize as Kiwis. If I can’t hear the accent and I hear horrible American Englishes then sorry you don’t get to wear the gumboots and swanndri.

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Ireland is becoming extremely multicultural now , you would be surprised.

But the thing is nobody is fooled when somebody waves an ID and tells you I’m just like you in broken lingua franca. They’ll get a polite uh huh and see you later.

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But Ireland is traditionally viewed as an ethnostate.

Canada doesn’t view nationality the same way. The ID holds weight in Canada.

Ireland may be multicultural in practise, but multiculturalism is official policy in Canada.

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‘Traditionally’ , that’s not a point of argument lol.
And my point is not to say an ID ISN’T USEFUL, but becoming a local 'whatever ’ takes a lot more than that.

It is, because your argument is based on how people will view a person.

I’m just telling you Canadians are most likely just to accept the ID as proof enough more than other countries. Even if your English is shit. Even if you never watched a game of hockey.

Yeah until you apply for a job or want to date that person. Good luck then.

Don’t let others validate your sense of identity.