King Chang (張欽) thought he had seen it all when someone drove up to his “honesty store” in a car, loaded up on goods, left a few coins and took off. But when a thief broke into one of the cash boxes, he was so overwhelmed that he closed the shop for a few weeks.
Opening in September last year in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義區), Tree Top Milk Honesty Fridge (樹梢上的奶瓶之誠實冰箱) has no staff watching the store. Customers simply take items they want and deposit money into a corresponding cash box.
So far, Chang says the majority of customers have followed the rules — but the few “Pinocchios,” as he calls them, have caused him to remain in debt.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
Despite his losses, Chang reopened the store last month and is intent on continuing his “honesty movement,” which he hopes will inject some positivity into society.
“People tell me that Taiwan is not ready for this kind of store yet,” he says. “I ask them, ‘At what point will we be ready?’ If we don’t start right now, we will never be ready.”
SELLING HONESTY
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
Chang says that aside from promoting honesty, he also wanted to provide small vendors with a physical space so they wouldn’t have to sell their merchandise in the street or online.
“It’s like having a street fair in the store,” he says.
The store contains two fridges, which are divided into eight sections for different vendors, who use the space for free but donate a portion of their profits to Chang. There are also two shelves that contain various handicrafts. All items are either locally handmade or for charity, and the vendors can also set up a pop-up shop to personally hawk their wares.
Chang rotates the vendors every two weeks to keep things fresh, but notes that it is hard to convince people to join because of the risk involved.
Tien Chung (田中), who sells homemade soy milk, says that he does most of his business online, and losing a few bottles at the honesty store will not affect his profits much.
“I came fully aware of the risks,” he says. “I like the concept of the store. Also, my products will get more exposure.”
Selina Lin (林莎莉), who sells French pastries and other delicacies, sees it as a “test of humanity.”
“Taipei is an advanced city, and people should have some public morality,” she says. “If we are afraid of [our products being stolen], we would not be here.”
DEALING WITH PINOCCHIOS
Cheng Tzu-leong (鄭自隆), advertising professor at National Chengchi University (政治大學) says that honesty stores can be seen as a measuring stick to a society’s progress. He points out that one could sell expensive merchandise in one city without problems, while in another, people will make off with the cheapest items.
For Taiwan, Cheng believes that honesty stores will only be profitable if the prices are no higher than NT$20.
“People here probably wouldn’t sacrifice their morals to steal something that cheap,” he says. “But try putting something that’s NT$200. I’m sure many won’t be able to resist.”
After several months of selling products that are way higher than NT$20, Chang has mixed feelings. On one hand, the number of honest people is much higher than he had expected. On the other hand, he found that even just a small number of Pinocchios can seriously affect business.
“They say good always triumphs over evil, but that does not seem to be the case here,” he says.
Chang says the Pinocchios are mostly regular people between 20 and 40 years old. Most have been reported to him by other customers.
He is still thinking of how to deal with the thieves. He’s confronted some of them, but doesn’t want to call the police just yet. He will start posting warning signs in the store, and perhaps add photos of repeat offenders.
“I opened this store to make society more harmonious,” he says. “There’s so much antagonism these days, and I don’t want to add to it. Instead, I hope that they do some soul searching after being warned and repent.”
Chang understands that there’s no way to completely eradicate the dishonest customers. But looking ahead, he also thinks the store is a good educational opportunity for the next generation.
“I’ve seen parents bring their kids in, tell them what honesty means and hoist them up so they can insert the coins into the box,” he says.
He’s also received a message from another store who decided to follow his model after reading a news report.
“I was very happy to hear that because if there are more stores like this in Taipei, our moral character will slowly but surely improve.”
Last week, Viola Zhou published a marvelous deep dive into the culture clash between Taiwanese boss mentality and American labor practices at the Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) plant in Arizona in Rest of World. “The American engineers complained of rigid, counterproductive hierarchies at the company,” while the Taiwanese said American workers aren’t dedicated. The article is a delight, but what it is depicting is the clash between a work culture that offers employee autonomy and at least nods at work-life balance, and one that runs on hierarchical discipline enforced by chickenshit. And it runs on chickenshit because chickenshit is a cultural
My previous column Donovan’s Deep Dives: The powerful political force that vanished from the English press on April 23 began with three paragraphs of what would be to most English-language readers today incomprehensible gibberish, but are very typical descriptions of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) internal politics in the local Chinese-language press. After a quiet period in the early 2010s, the English press stopped writing about the DPP factions, the factions changed and eventually local English-language journalists could not reintroduce the subject without a long explanation on the context that would not fit easily in a typical news article. That previous
April 29 to May 5 One month before the Taipei-Keelung New Road (北基新路) was set to open, the news that US general Douglas MacArthur had died, reached Taiwan. The military leader saw Taiwan as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” that was of huge strategic value to the US. He’d been a proponent of keeping it out of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hands. Coupled with the fact that the US had funded more than 50 percent of the road’s construction costs, the authorities at the last minute renamed it the MacArthur Thruway (麥帥公路) for his “great contributions to the free world and deep
Years ago, I was thrilled when I came across a map online showing a fun weekend excursion: a long motorcycle ride into the mountains of Pingtung County (屏東) going almost up to the border with Taitung County (台東), followed by a short hike up to a mountain lake with the mysterious name of “Small Ghost Lake” (小鬼湖). I shared it with a more experienced hiking friend who then proceeded to laugh. Apparently, this road had been taken out by landslides long before and was never going to be fixed. Reaching the lake this way — or any way that would