Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chen Ching-hui (陳菁徽) urged the Ministry of Health and Welfare to work with the Ministry of Transportation and Communications to allow more flexibility in Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp’s (THSRC) new “quiet carriage” policy.
The policy — which was implemented on Sept. 22 and is undergoing a three-month grace period — requires passengers to put their mobile phones on silent, use headphones when watching videos or listening to music and move to the vestibules when taking phone calls.
Inspired by regulations on Japan’s Shinkansen bullet trains, the rules are meant to guarantee all high-speed rail passengers can experience quiet, restful journeys.
As is the case with any new policy, it attracted criticism within a matter of weeks — in this case for seeming to single out families with children.
Critics say that the rules are hostile to families, after online anecdotes surfaced from parents of crying children saying they had been approached by staff holding up signs. A social media post by a passenger using derogatory language against children and parents further inflamed the controversy.
Advocates of the system say that the rules are meant to target disturbances caused by noisy adults, not unavoidable sounds from young children or those with special circumstances.
There are two extremes to this debate. One insists that passengers must accept all noise from children as a natural characteristic of public transportation, while the other asserts that the rules must be applied strictly and to everyone, with no exceptions. Both sides miss the point — the policy aims for balance.
THSRC data show that most noise disturbances on trains are not caused by children. Between Sept. 22 and last week, staff issued a total of 13,000 reminders to noisy passengers — more than 70 percent of which involved adults talking on phones or playing media without headphones.
This indicates that the new rules already address the bulk of preventable disruptions. Adults can reasonably control their own noise, while infants and toddlers cannot. That being said, reasonable expectations matter. Infants cannot be expected to remain absolutely silent, but parents of older children should ensure they do not scream or invade others’ personal space. While this might be difficult, it is one of the responsibilities that comes with parenthood.
One potential solution would be to establish designated family-friendly carriages. Families traveling with children under certain ages, or those traveling in large groups, could be given priority for tickets in these carriages with the understanding that some leeway would be given for soft conversation and occasional unavoidable noise from children.
At the same time, strict enforcement of “quiet carriage” rules could be reserved for specific carriages, providing passengers who prefer to ride in silence a guaranteed quiet environment.
On the rest of the train, pragmatic regulations — such as switching phones to silent, requiring the use of headphones and taking calls in vestibules — could still be implemented to guarantee all passengers a base level of comfort.
Adults should be held to consistent standards, while passengers traveling with very young children should be expected to exercise discretion about whether they can realistically comply with strict rules. Other countries have made similar policies work effectively.
Ultimately, the goal is mutual respect. Passengers deserve a peaceful journey, while parents of very young children deserve practical accommodations.
With reasonable expectations, designated spaces and understanding from all sides, the policy could achieve its purpose without punishing families or disregarding the comfort of other travelers.
On March 22, 2023, at the close of their meeting in Moscow, media microphones were allowed to record Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) telling Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin, “Right now there are changes — the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years — and we are the ones driving these changes together.” Widely read as Xi’s oath to create a China-Russia-dominated world order, it can be considered a high point for the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea (CRINK) informal alliance, which also included the dictatorships of Venezuela and Cuba. China enables and assists Russia’s war against Ukraine and North Korea’s
After thousands of Taiwanese fans poured into the Tokyo Dome to cheer for Taiwan’s national team in the World Baseball Classic’s (WBC) Pool C games, an image of food and drink waste left at the stadium said to have been left by Taiwanese fans began spreading on social media. The image sparked wide debate, only later to be revealed as an artificially generated image. The image caption claimed that “Taiwanese left trash everywhere after watching the game in Tokyo Dome,” and said that one of the “three bad habits” of Taiwanese is littering. However, a reporter from a Japanese media outlet
Taiwanese pragmatism has long been praised when it comes to addressing Chinese attempts to erase Taiwan from the international stage. “Taipei” and the even more inaccurate and degrading “Chinese Taipei,” imposed titles required to participate in international events, are loathed by Taiwanese. That is why there was huge applause in Taiwan when Japanese public broadcaster NHK referred to the Taiwanese Olympic team as “Taiwan,” instead of “Chinese Taipei” during the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics. What is standard protocol for most nations — calling a national team by the name their country is commonly known by — is impossible for
India is not China, and many of its residents fear it never will be. It is hard to imagine a future in which the subcontinent’s manufacturing dominates the world, its foreign investment shapes nations’ destinies, and the challenge of its economic system forces the West to reshape its own policies and principles. However, that is, apparently, what the US administration fears. Speaking in New Delhi last week, US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau warned that “we will not make the same mistakes with India that we did with China 20 years ago.” Although he claimed the recently agreed framework
RSS