Who didn’t? He was awesome! We used to have a show called Wide World of Sports on Saturday mornings that showed all sorts of crazy stuff you didn’t see on the normal sports shows. Loved the WSM competition.
His hands? Real men use their penis:
[quote=“headhonchoII”][quote]
Unfortunately I think they DON’T KNOW what to do and therefore look to the past for answers instead of the future. Taiwan needs no less than a revolution of the mind, the discarding of old ideas and adopting of radical new ones, not this crappy iteration approach that makes no real impact. It must start from education and it must start from young people questioning their elders.[/quote][/quote]
Looking to the past is what all Chinese do. Blame Confucius.
I also got the feeling that the dependence on parents to the point that often adult Taiwanese are completely controlled by their parents (something not even as common in China but for rural areas, and not much in Singapore at all) stops progress. Old people should realize they “had their day” and their adult children understand the world better than them. In other words, they need to learn how to sit back and shut up, and let the new generation make their own decisions. I have met many Taiwanese with interesting ideas as far as business and social change who were first cut down by their own families, who they will not disobey even in their 30’s. This obviously slows down change.
This portion of the thread has been very informative (that’s not to knock the rest of the thread). A lot of it’s over my head, but I’m pretty sure I learned something today. Good stuff. Thanks, everybody.
Because they think it’s a bit of a shithole?
I agree with you, except the sad thing is it’s not just at the University of Nowheresville that this happens. My university, the University of Melbourne, which is supposedly one of the top universities in Australia (depending upon the poll, it rates anywhere from 1st to 3rd), and within the top fifty or less in the world, is right into this in a [strike]big[/strike] huge way. I bet it’s probably not all that difficult to get into a decent enough Ivy League or top state university in America either and pass knowing hardly anything.
Education is a business, and they have to pass students who paid big bucks to get into these university. Hate to say it but universities have almost become degree mills these days. If anyone have a lot of money, they can get into an ivy league university and pass. Furthermore the emphasis is on following instructions, not creativity. So as long as you can follow instructions and maintain a high GPA (by whatever means necessary) then you will pass. In the old days education, while still expensive was not unaffordable to the normal people. Also not everyone went to universities except for scholars. Now everyone goes there so it’s just becoming more of a “pay your money, and get your degree”.
sorry guys, can’t speak for your countries, but everyone can not just get into an Ivy League by being rich, trust me. There are many many a rich kid who could not get into Harvard, Yale, Brown, etc…despite there and their parents best efforts.
it is true that once you get in you rarely fail, but getting in is very difficult at these schools. There are plenty of diploma mills that Taiwanese go to all over the world, but the IVy’s are not included in that bunch, they are usually schools you never heard of, but the Taiwanese employers do not care. I know for a fact many larger employers filter resumes for two things “English ability” and “foreign university”…that pressure leads many wealthier Taiwanese to want to study abroad, so they can come back and be a drone at Acer or a big foreign bank like ANZ or UBS.
DragonHorse: Perhaps not Ivy League universities (though I’m not so sure about that, especially since there is a huge industry of people who help foreign kids get into U.S. universities), but I’ve certainly met some real morons who went to big, state/city level universities in the U.S.
It’s a massive business and the universities depend on the foreign students tuition fees, they turn a blond eye to all the shenanigans.
Being able to memorize and regurgitate for a test does not mean the person is creative, has self-initiative, etc. I have a good friend who went to Beida (Beijing University) and had one of the highest standardized test scores (top 5% in China), the guy is also extremely good at math, but if you ask him to think “outside the box” he will sound like a complete moron. He still expects to be told exactly what to do and think. He is basically a human-computer. That’s about it.
but then again in Chinese society (actually East Asia) being intelligent just means you can memorize and follow instruction better than everyone else. It means you are a human-computer. That is not how we tend to judge intelligence in most Western nations.
They ask coz they know it is bad here and they are testing how honest/ open straight talking you are.
You know the opinion expressed above, about human computers, is a common narrative that we hear all the time, but I don’t think the difference between California (my “hometown”) and Taiwan is as pronounced as people make it out to be – after high school. I do agree that up through age 18, the Taiwanese education system beats individuality out of good students, which often means it’s the bad students who become interesting people. It seems that schools are trying to change this, though, and I think that once people get to college they start to make up for it a lot. Obviously, this is going to hold more true of students who are not studying to become engineers, and I think that’s the case in most countries. Just my two cents.
As for why people ask why you came to Taiwan, imagine if you lived in Nebraska (or Wales or somewhere else that is not particularly well known outside of the English-speaking world) and you encountered a Taiwanese person who came all the way across the world to live and work there. You’d have to wonder, why not choose one of the more popular spots like New York or London? As a whole, I think Taiwanese people are very self-deprecating (and it’s probably because unlike Korea, Japan, or China, it’s really hard to define what a “Taiwanese pesron” is), and so they are constantly aiming to be like other countries.
I have an American friend who said he was shocked to see a TV special called 新加坡 台灣行不行 (Singapore: Can Taiwan do it, too?). He said that coming from the US, it’s almost inconceivable to him to compare his country unfavorably to more “advanced” countries. People here are just jaded with official ineptitude and the limbo of being a non-country, I guess.
hate to say but the feeling really rubs off on me. When I lived in the US I was proud to be an American, but in Taiwan it somehow feels shameful to be Taiwanese, so much so that even real third world countries (like Brazil) seem to have higher standing in everyone’s mind here.