Showing a little friendliness
I have been living here for almost three years now, speak Chinese well and have a two-year-old son with a Taiwanese woman. I’m a decent looking, intelligent, easy-going and friendly guy with my own successful accountancy practice, which I run from home. In other words, I’m not the kind of person you would necessarily expect other people to avoid or look down on.
Here in Taipei, however, I sense a deal of antipathy from other foreigners, usually in the form of them looking the other way when they see me, and occasionally in the form of a disdainful glance.
I have spent some time reading about this phenomenon, for instance in forums such as Forumosa.com. I have to concede that when I first came to Taiwan, I would try to avoid contact with foreigners, finding such situations rather embarrassing. After a year or so, however, I became much more open about speaking to other foreigners and even moved to Tienmu for this reason. I was very disappointed to find the attitude there was no better.
There are many great things about living in Taiwan, but one of the negative sides is the frustration of not being able to interact socially as one might do in Western countries.
It’s not part of Taiwanese culture to speak to strangers longer than is necessary. It would therefore be nice to feel more human once in a while by having a brief chat with another foreigner. Instead, foreigners tend to put each other down, usually in extremely subtle ways, which makes one appreciate even more the smiles of the Taiwanese.
I think it is time for us to face up to this issue. If we are stronger as a community, perhaps we can move from being isolated and fragmented to making a positive contribution to life in Taiwan.
PAUL GREENE
Taipei
As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) reach the point of confidence that they can start and win a war to destroy the democratic culture on Taiwan, any future decision to do so may likely be directly affected by the CCP’s ability to promote wars on the Korean Peninsula, in Europe, or, as most recently, on the Indian subcontinent. It stands to reason that the Trump Administration’s success early on May 10 to convince India and Pakistan to deescalate their four-day conventional military conflict, assessed to be close to a nuclear weapons exchange, also served to
The recent aerial clash between Pakistan and India offers a glimpse of how China is narrowing the gap in military airpower with the US. It is a warning not just for Washington, but for Taipei, too. Claims from both sides remain contested, but a broader picture is emerging among experts who track China’s air force and fighter jet development: Beijing’s defense systems are growing increasingly credible. Pakistan said its deployment of Chinese-manufactured J-10C fighters downed multiple Indian aircraft, although New Delhi denies this. There are caveats: Even if Islamabad’s claims are accurate, Beijing’s equipment does not offer a direct comparison
After India’s punitive precision strikes targeting what New Delhi called nine terrorist sites inside Pakistan, reactions poured in from governments around the world. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) issued a statement on May 10, opposing terrorism and expressing concern about the growing tensions between India and Pakistan. The statement noticeably expressed support for the Indian government’s right to maintain its national security and act against terrorists. The ministry said that it “works closely with democratic partners worldwide in staunch opposition to international terrorism” and expressed “firm support for all legitimate and necessary actions taken by the government of India
Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) has said that the armed forces must reach a high level of combat readiness by 2027. That date was not simply picked out of a hat. It has been bandied around since 2021, and was mentioned most recently by US Senator John Cornyn during a question to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday. It first surfaced during a hearing in the US in 2021, when then-US Navy admiral Philip Davidson, who was head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, said: “The threat [of military
RSS