THis is pretty funny…American thugs!!! And wasn’t it Confucious that said 'Don’t think too much?
What do you think about this? I agree with it to some degree…lack of creativity etc. But being able to play basketball has got nothing to do with physique…and Taiwan’s basketball teams are brilliant. I just can’t believe that Kojen would put something that bashes Taipei like this on the internet.
maybe the writer needs to go and take more walks along the river and see how many people here are taking their time to exercise, sit on benches, meditate etc…
Taipei is a crazy city, but so is any city that has so many people living on top of each other…
kojen-els.com.tw/gd/ch/web/c … art4-e.htm
Actually…I agree with a lot of it. The kids today are wannabes…wannabe Americans, wannabe gangsters, wannabe Japanese ‘dolls.’ They, however, seem to choose the icky parts of the things they want to be – eating at McDonalds, wearing oversized basketball clothes, (the Japanese fashion isn’t so bad…). In talking to some of my adult students, they said Taiwan created the “hip hop” style, and that maybe it would go to America as “Asian style.” Maybe they think they are being original…maybe?
This writer expresses her feelings about how the culture lacks creativity. She has the foresight to see that originality is what will move Taiwan into it’s next stage. Perhaps this writer needs to leave the city and refresh his/her mind of the other people and places in Taiwan.
I’m confused: Was this written by a teacher for students to read, or by a student as part of a contest/event?
[quote=“ichbinjenny”]
I’m confused: Was this written by a teacher for students to read, or by a student as part of a contest/event?[/quote]
Oh, I started reading other essays. They were written by a foreigner who has lived here for the past 40 years. He/She sounds jaded…maybe he/she needs to take a little vacation.
While we’re talking about these, take a look at kojen-els.com.tw/gd/ch/web/c … art3-e.htm – There are lots of quiet places to contemplate life. The parks, the tea shops, the universities…the city is noisy, but you take a train for 20 minutes and you’re in the middle of the mountains. Talk about quiet…
[quote=“ichbinjenny”]
Oh, I started reading other essays. They were written by a foreigner who has lived here for the past 40 years. He/She sounds jaded…maybe he/she needs to take a little vacation.
.[/quote]
I think it was written by a student – this one named “Natalia Lai.”
I mostly agree with the article. My feeling since coming to Taiwan last year has been that the Taiwanese (or at least the younger generations) are trying as hard as they can to imitate America. But as you mentioned, they’ve so far managed to imitate mostly the negative points and none of the positive.
Living here feels exactly like living in America, only with more pollution, ruder, more pretentious people, filthier cities and disgusting food.
yup, but isn’t it very stereotypical?
It was written by a 40 year old I think…I’m not sure if it is all the same writer, or different ones.
Like I said…I agree , but the way it was written is very stereotypical and bashing. Not something I would want representing my school.
[quote=“Battery9”]
the way it was written is very stereotypical and bashing. Not something I would want representing my school.[/quote]
It is pretty stereotypical. The comment about Taiwanese people not having good physiques for basketball was a bit strange, too. I’m about 6 feet tall and I sometimes feel short in this country – the younger generation is pretty tall.
milk. it does a body good.
As an essay piece it’s nice to see this as it encourages debate and critical and open thinking, too little of which is seen here.
Yep, plenty of the young folk are bean sprouts. I wouldn’t be too hard on them, at least they don’t beat up random people like in the west!
The truth is that Taipei itself as a city lacks any deep creativity as do most Taiwanese (pressure to conform is strong), they copy and are never the first at anything in general. They copy and change in very minor ways. They also don’t have any confidence or self belief in their country (especially the kids that live in Taipei), the ignorance of their own country can be astounding at times, this they learn from their parents.
The part about Taipei being better 20 years ago, very very hard to believe that. It has improved, the problem, it’s improving too SLOWLY. It needs whole sections of the city rebuilt and also pavements and trees put in in mass (I’m including Taipei County here too) and it needs to enforce a law banning motor scooters (gradually with zone moving out over 5 years with incentives for electric scooters) in the city limits and parking on pavements.
That with improved sewer systems and air and living quality would go a long long way.
Perhaps the person who wrote it meant that Taipei was so good twenty years ago because it had modernised so rapidly (especially in comparison to other neighbouring capitals or large cities), but that (again, relative to them), it has now stagnated and hasn’t moved beyond that to the next phase, which would include cleaning up the pollution, etc.
Usually, the only television I watch is on the Travel & Living channel, and infrequently at best. Anyway, of late, I seem to have caught a lot of shows involving European design (furniture, interior, fashion). There was one part of one show about Vienna and I remembered when I was in Vienna at just how incredible it looks, even only from the outside (though everything else is cool too). I recalled to my girlfriend how one night, I was waiting at a traffic light and there was no traffic in any direction. Many pedestrians were patiently waiting for the light to change. This, along with the physical appearance (and a whole lot of other things) reminded me of how Taiwan is pretty much the complete anti-thesis of much of Europe.
My girlfriend (who is in her final year of commercial design) is a pretty creative sort of person and she’s finding it incredibly frustrating this year because everyone is suddenly getting really square and wants to impress the professors at any cost. She constantly laments the lack of creativity of her peers, as well as the artistic compromises she must make to them in their group projects. She’s also wondering about how she’s going to cope in the world of work as of next year. I suggested to her that once she gets some experience under her belt and learns the extra things she says she wants to know after her studies finish, that maybe she should set up a website and freelance to people all over the world because they might appreciate her more. It also struck me that she would really love living in Europe.
Living in Taiwan is at times hellish for us foreigners, but to a fair extent, we chose/choose to be here, so we can make our peace with the bad things. For those locals who are remotely different and don’t want to follow everyone else, it must be simply terrible, especially since many don’t have the opportunity or ability to get out.
Funny how they’ve set it so’s you can’t copy and paste it… like they’re embarrassed about it or something.
There’s something about Taipei fashion being three years ahead of the west fifteen years ago… odd
I found that odd too. As well as the part comparing universities in Taipei to Ivy League schools in the U.S. Are they serious?
Oh, and I’m in the camp with the people who think the essays were written by students. The style doesn’t seem “native” to me: “inner school thugs,” “fashion[color=#FF0000]s[/color],” “ponder and deliberate,” “reverting to childhood.” Plus, the similarities in content and theme make it appear as though they were given a template to fill in with a list of useful vocab on the side.