Not too sure about that.
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The biggest problem with “face” is one-sided information.
If you try to strike it rich in China and fail, you either (1) don’t come back or others will think you’re a failure, or (2) pretend you didn’t fail.
Consequently, people only hear success stories and think it’s all hunky-dory over there.
They’re up for criticism, but not from foreigners in a way that makes them lose face.
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True for me. But the cons are big cons which people aren’t giving enough attention to.
A good example of what we are talking about in the thread!
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I don’t think it’s a cover-up. I think journalists look at the big picture, particularly when writing for an international audience. When they look at Taiwan they see a stable democracy, functioning capitalism with a good economy, free speech, free vote, healthy population with subsidized health care, high literacy, need I go on?
Compared with complaints such as pollution, corruption, population decline, yes those are real problems, but they do not define Taiwan as much as previous paragraph does, nor do they cancel out the positives.
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Foreign journalists don’t really care about these local issues that may severely affect our life quality. They are looking for stories that will excite foreign readers or connect with international perspectives.
Actually there are important stories that aren’t covered but that’s just the way it is, they are domestic concerns.
Well the population decline one issue pops up quite often as it is a common theme for developed countries in East Asia.
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Lol London’s air quality reading is orange now and Taipei’s is green. Go figure. That’s not uncommon at all.
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I literally did google searches for best countries to be an expat when I was applying for jobs last year and focused on Taiwan specifically for this reason (COVID response and economic outlook were not in the articles but obviously huge plusses as well).
Thailand isn’t always a convenient place to get a drink
There are random days (Buddhist holidays, royal family days, election days) where alcohol is not to be served at all; if all the pubs were closed at 12am this could be why. It helps to know the after hours places, the hole in the wall bottle shops, and the pub that will pour a pint in a discreet plastic cup on such days. Or to know they are coming in advance and stock up at home. Also a couple of hours a day (when kids get out of school, like 3-5pm) when alcohol cannot legally be sold.
Whatever the problems people have with Taiwan are, and I can understand cultures of face can be very frustrating, from my read of this thread Thailand probably has many of the same problems. But not the vibrant democracy or healthy economy. Yes the food is amazeballs. The new king is a bit of a character, and I’d say more but they have laws about that and I might like to return to Thailand some day!
It’s not only the holiday days. I believe it’s stricter in the north (where I lived - in Chiang Mai) than in Bangkok and the south, but all the time I lived there essentially all bars closed at midnight every day.
As in, the police drove around a few minutes after midnight every single night to make sure bars had closed. There were a few exceptions - one or two night clubs and several bars that locked the doors and stayed open, presumably illegally and/or with “donations” to the police when they came round - but they were definitely exceptions rather than the rule. I think it’s a bit more relaxed in Bangkok and on the islands though.
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I think the press in countries most of you come from is too busy blasting the officials for being a sorry bunch of complete failures.
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Because people don’t really care about Taiwan enough to care about these issues. They don’t impact people enough, and they aren’t bad enough to get coverage. The mistreatment of ethnic minorties have been an issue in China for a long time, but it’s only recently that people even cared with the uighur camps for example.
Taiwan is a very young country, a young democracy. Democracy is by its nature, slow. Progress takes time, humans are more reactionary and slow to adapt. A lot of the issues you’ve mentioned are relatively new, and some of them have been slowly improving. We are still trying to figure it out. How fast do you expect a country with less than 30 years of democratic elections to began looking like utopia?
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Reminds me of expats living here in Canada and trumpeting how good the country is when there are still issues not being reported (our love afair with China being one of them).
The demographic issue in Taiwan… now this is concerning. I don’t see any easy way out of that slow emergency.
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In Taiwan’s case, setting up an actual immigration policy might be one.
Guy
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I think 99% of the reason is culture. People here only complain to those they know personally and have developed a “relationship” with. Complaining in a professional capacity is almost nonexistent. This is even more so for those working in front of the public.
That said, this site really does get too negative when it comes to certain aspects of Taiwan. Certain posts and certain posters might as well be shouting their sense of alienation from the rooftops. After an initial bitching period “Like it or leave it” really does apply.
Folks are sometimes letting off steam, perhaps frustrated by situations or actions that they can’t control.
I think the sense of pressure is also getting worse with the COVID crisis—it’s easy to get stressed about things, even in a remarkably safe place (pandemic wise) such as Taiwan.
Guy
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Seems to be a feature of those more expat focused forums. For Thailand, there is a similar forum called https://forum.thaivisa.com and there most people continually go out of their way to say how horrible Thailand is. Well, actually do so much much much more than here so that one really wonders why they live there
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Every Thursday night 9 to 9.30 pm round my gaff. Shout, shout let it all out.
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I don’t know why exactly but the air often smells bad here even when ‘green’.
Almost the whole country won’t be covered in bad air for large parts of the year though. Get real.
The air quality in Taiwan is very poor overall. That is a fact.
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