I really enjoyed this post by Jade on Wai-Taiwan: “Someone Else’s Stew.” It’s a nice piece about the cultural appropriation that all visitors take part in and how it can go wrong.

An excerpt:

Occasionally, it felt like they were speaking as “experts” about the country that they had (briefly) lived in and were outsiders to. At one point someone said, “I don’t know why, but [ethnic group] just loves to eat [type of food] with their meal.”
I cringed.
Several times.
Throughout the entire dinner.

Being mixed but also somebody who comments on Taiwan and its culture a lot, I think I stand as both an outsider and an insider. I come up with lots of theories about the way things work here and try to guess their motivations and history, but basically, my perspective is that of an outsider. I have done my fair share of cultural appropriation during my time here, but I think my experience here and my heritage helps me to seek out the least ridiculous of explanations.

That said, I think cultural appropriation is a process of learning about a culture. Our first instincts are to map a new culture to our own understanding of the world, in order to find parallels. This is a flawed process, but I believe it allows people to “fail forward,” leading to better understanding each time a dissonance is exposed. I think the problem is when you’re early in the process of learning about a new culture and you have to share what you know with others without really understanding that new culture – that leads to lots of cringe-worthy moments.

In part one of this series, I gave some background about web design in Taiwan. In this part, I will expound on why I believe Taiwanese web sites always strive to have a very busy homepage with as many colors, animated widgets, and images as you can cram. This stands in stark contrast with Western design thinking which emphasizes simplicity and focus.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying sites can’t be busy. If there’s a lot going on in the site (Taiwan’s Yahoo! portal is a good example, as is the technology forum mobile01.com), you need to surface that content on the homepage. On other sites for small businesses or small organizations however, focus is important so that people are able to get the information they need or do whatever tasks they need and get out. Unfortunately, it comes back to point 2 I made in the first post: Web design in Taiwan is focused on business image, rather than users and business goals. And one day a few years back, I came to the realization what that image was: the night market.

The Taiwanese night market is an orgy of colors, smells, sounds and people all crammed together in a narrow street. Up until ten or so years ago, this was the main nighttime entertainment besides sitting at home watching TV. A stall at the night market will have one or more of the following features:

• A long queue of eager customers
• Scores of products
• Something moving to catch your eye
• Something fragrant to catch your nose
• Something loud to catch your ear
• Colorful display

The real drivers here are population density and competition. Everything is squeezed together in a small area and stalls which offer similar goods are very competitive. The pressure to stand out amongst the cacophony and the competition means for a never-ending game of one-upmanship.  If you try to map this type of thinking to web design, you get:

This series of posts are going to focus on how I rationalize what I consider to be poor design choices in Taiwanese websites. Before I begin with the first topic, I’ll set up the series with some background observations that I gained during my time as a developer in a small web design studio here. Most of our clients were small businesses, so that has a huge impact on my experiences. These are just my opinions and would love to see some discussion below in the comments to see how they hold up against other people’s experiences.

Screen capture taken from the Taiwanese government site Culture.tw

1. Design is not respected in Taiwan

This attitude may be changing slowly thanks to the impact of Apple products in Taiwan, but basically being a designer in Taiwan means lots of work for very little money. Design here is treated the same as commercial artwork – it’s seen as a commodity with little importance (“drawing pretty pictures, anybody can do that”). How does that translate when you’re dealing with clients?

• They don’t listen to your informed guidance and often will push to have their design changes implemented even if they go against the goal of the design (“the boss’s girlfriend likes pink” -type stuff)
• You can’t charge by the hour here – this is a particularly painful point, because the client believes it’s her right to make as many changes over the course of the project thereby diminishing your already meager hourly average. I did have a client where we did charge for extra changes, but this was agreed beforehand and even if the extra charge was minimal, it did help to reduce the number of changes. However, most clients here don’t get that paradigm and just think it’s their right.
• They don’t really understand what you do, so you’ll get comments from clients like “I want more design” which just boggles the mind.

The worst part about this first thing is that there are a lot of low-cost web design providers that charge less than 50K NTD (~1600 USD) for a site and use cookie-cutter templates and other ways to reduce their costs. The drive towards the bottom means that the quality of most websites in Taiwan is pretty shocking and will continue that way until general understanding of design improves. The guys working in these el-cheapo web-shops are focused on quantity and speed, and don’t normally have the time (or onus) to study better methods.

2. Web design in Taiwan is focused on business image, rather than users and business goals

When you talk with clients about their website, it’s always about their business and the image they want to project. You’ll also find that your clients rarely have any business goals in mind when deciding to get a website (our competitor has one, so we need to get one, too). As a designer, it’s your job to bring the focus of the client back to the user and on the business goals they want to pursue. Normally, they’re thinking: Flash intro, lots of colors, visitor ticker, and any other bright, flashy widget they can stick on their page. You need to rise above this kind of thinking and put the focus on the right track, otherwise, there will be a lot of time wasted and frustration after they realize that the website doesn’t get them a return on investment.

3. Taiwanese web developers don’t love web standards

This is improving as more Taiwanese developers are working for companies like Yahoo!, but for a long time, Windows was the only OS in Taiwan. A lot of prominent local websites (even government ones!) only work or “work best” in Internet Explorer and up until the smartphone explosion and the rising adoption of Macs, that wasn’t a problem. However, this is a new day and age, and when your site’s navigation uses Flash (as a lot of bar, restaurant and hotel sites do) – say goodbye to your iPhone user who’s trying to get information while they’re on the street trying to decide what’s for dinner. There is a growing group of talented front-end engineers in Taiwan, but the vast majority of web-site builders here don’t have much awareness of standards, especially semantic HTML. They don’t really get what the tags are for (granted, they are markers for English language constructs), and it shows in their tag selection.  It also means that if you are writing solid, semantic HTML for a Taiwanese website, by default you’re going to boost their search engine ranking because a lot of sites are still using table-based layouts and Flash.

I will be adding to this list as I think of more, but until then, I’m looking forward to reading about other people’s experiences in the comments section.

The “Things I Hate About Taiwan” posts (#1, #2) have generated quite a lot of vitriol in the comments section, so I’m going to balance some of it out with a positive post about Taiwan.

After living in Taiwan for more than seven years, it has become apparent to me that one of the main drivers of public and private decision-making in Taiwan is convenience. Convenience dominates in almost all parts of life here, and is probably best represented by that all-night friend: your local 7-11 store.

The open-all-day-everyday 7-11 chain has a ubiquitous presence in Taiwan, allowing you to complete the following tasks (this is not exhaustive, feel free to add more in the comments):

1. Buy cold food, hot food, cigarettes, alcohol, batteries, groceries, coffee, tea, condoms, toiletries, HSR tickets, computer games, electronics, magazines, books
2. Pay bills, parking tickets, other government fees (like auto insurance)
3. Pick-up and send packages (with some e-commerce providers, you can select your local 7-11 as a delivery point for you to pick things up later – this is especially useful when you don’t live in a gated community with a front desk)
4. Print documents, photos
5. Fax documents
6. Use the internet
7. Use an ATM

Whenever I visit Australia or America, I feel the bitter pangs of estrangement from my local 7 (Taiwanese just use the English word “seven” to refer to a 7-11 store). If you live in Taipei, you are rarely more than a 5-minute walk from a 7 or other convenience store.

Other Examples of Convenience in Taiwan

Public health is a great example of how convenience is implemented well in Taiwan. When you go to a public hospital here, you can see a specialist, have a test or an an x-ray, go back to that specialist where she’ll bring the results up on her computer, have a diagnosis, pay and then pick up your medication in a single afternoon. Contrast that with Australia, where you’d have to go to an x-ray provider (likely to be a car ride away and on another day), then go pick up the x-ray yourself and bring it back to the specialist on another day, then go somewhere else to pick up your medication. You’d have to pay the bills separately, as well.

Public transport is also very well implemented in Taipei. The 悠游卡 (you1 you2 ka3, public transport payment card) is a fantastic example of an efficient, scalable payment platform. Starting with the MRT system, the plastic, rechargeable card, which you swipe when entering and exiting a station, was later expanded to include the bus system. Now, the 悠游卡 can be used to pay for things at 7-11 and to pay for rides on special tourist attractions (like the ferries that go between Danshui and Bali). The Melbourne train system pales in comparison with its paper-ticket-based platform. Even though you can use the Metro tickets on trains and trams, you need to keep a paper ticket in good shape, even if you have an expensive long-term ticket (disclaimer: this may have changed in the last few years). In addition, in Melbourne you are punished if you don’t have the correct ticket or if you don’t have enough for the trip. In Taiwan (and in Korea and Japan), you can just pay the difference at the destination stop before you exit through the turnstiles.

Convenience Gone Wrong

Sometimes the penchant for convenience plays out badly, and nowhere worse than on the roads here. If one stood at an intersection and observed for only 5 minutes, they would be witness to:

Taipei is the most convenient place I’ve ever lived. It’s a small metropolis where almost everything is available within a 15-minute drive. Widely-used public services are designed with convenience in mind and the benefits are obvious when compared with Australia. That said, when taken to the extreme, especially in individual behavior, it can be annoying or downright dangerous.

Working in a Taiwanese company has provided me with great insight into how things work here. I get to witness and participate in group decisions on a daily basis. On one hand it can be particularly frustrating because people are not forthcoming with their thoughts, or when they do say something, they try to say it in a way without rocking the boat. On the other hand, one can witness the deeply rooted attempts to maintain harmony at work: the principle of “不好意思” (bùhǎoyìsi). One example occurs daily at lunchtime, the question being “where should we eat lunch?”.

Then the following cycle occurs: one person makes a meek suggestion. Then the normal answer by the members of the group is “都可以啦” (dōu kěyǐ lā) which means “Yeah, sure, whatever.” My issue with this answer is that it carries no information concerning the person’s preference and does not help to bring the group closer to a decision.  In reality though, the real decision has subtly been made by whoever has chosen the direction that the group is walking in. As the group continues to walk in one direction, the choices for restaurants become fewer and fewer (some are full, others have been passed), until finally the decision has been made by somebody pointing out the obvious or making a safe suggestion based on the few remaining acceptable options.

While this way of decision-making is non-confrontational, do people really eat what they want to eat? Or does that really matter? After being here so long, I can feel that the harmony of the group is definitely more important socially than personal preferences, so much so that I feel like some significant part of my personality has faded away, relegated to the background like some embarrassing Halloween costume. I have become part of the “都可以啦” (dōu kěyǐ lā) crowd, conquered by the all-powerful “不好意思” (bùhǎoyìsi).

If I was to pick one thing that really hurts the image that Taiwan projects to foreign visitors, the one thing that sticks out above the lack of standardized romanization of Chinese, the relative lack of English and the general lack of organization and consistency, it would be the airport. In particular, the customs line for incoming foreign nationals.

Every time I come back to Taiwan from other countries, the airport really lets me down. Last night, as I came back from a short trip to Japan, I strolled up to the customs area and was once again shocked at the incredibly inefficient and unwelcoming way of handling incoming foreigners.

Where the locals got about 10 short lines, foreigners were herded into a snake-line. The difference? My Taiwanese workmates got through the line in about 10 minutes. It took me 45 minutes to get through customs. Why the different handling? I’m not sure, but compared to other international airports in East Asia, Taoyuan is almost laughably primitive. The new Korean airport in Incheon plans for large influxes of passengers, preparing a battalion of customs officers to handle the load. I think the longest I’ve waited to get through customs there was 3 minutes. Narita isn’t bad either, taking around 10 minutes to get through.

There’s a new terminal being built at Taoyuan, let’s hope the new building brings not just nicer digs but more importantly, a better process.

Being here for a few years, I’ve just attended what has to be at least my tenth wedding here in Taipei. Though each wedding has its nuances, just about every wedding I’ve attended save one has followed a simple formula. I’m writing this guide as a record for myself and also as a tip sheet for others who are less familiar with weddings here in Taipei.

I should first stress that I draw a distinction between weddings here in Taipei and weddings elsewhere around Taiwan (read: the south). Weddings down south are a whole other animal and I’ve only been to one so far. Even though the one I went to was pretty tame, from what I’ve heard, they can get wild and crazy (strippers, pole dancing) and are completely different from your average ceremony in Taipei. That’s another blog post and one I’m not “qualified” to write.

0. Dress Code

What should you wear? Well, traditionally in the West, weddings would require your best suit. In Taiwan, it’s more like smart casual or even just casual. I went to my first few weddings dressed formally, until it just seemed to be overkill. Now I just dress smart casual.

1. Arrival

OK, so you’ve received a wedding invite from a friend or colleague. If you can read Chinese, you’ll notice that it specifies a time to arrive. Nobody ever arrives on time. If it’s says the 入場 (entry) is 6:30pm, you don’t need to sit down until 7pm.

2. Hong Bao (“red envelopes” / cash)

How much do you give? (Many thanks to Sophie for her insight into how much to put in the hong bao) Well, this depends on five factors:

1. whether or not you are going to attend the wedding,
2. how close you are to the bride or groom,
3. how many people you are bringing,
4. where the banquet is being held, and
5. lucky / unlucky numbers

First off, if you’re not going, but you’ve received an invitation, you should still give a hong bao. How much? Well, I’ve heard anywhere between 600 and 1200 NT. This may depend on the next factor: closeness.

Obviously the closer you are, the more you may be inclined (or expected) to give. My friends say 1200 NT for acquaintances, 2600 – 3200 NT for close friends.

If you bring somebody else, add at least 600 NT to what you plan to give.

If the banquet is held in a very expensive (or cheap) venue, be sure to factor that in to your gift as well, since this gift helps the bride and groom cover their costs.

Finally, as with any major milestone in a Taiwanese person’s life, superstition rules, so never give odd denominations (1300 NT, for example) and no amount containing a 4 (considered unlucky because it sounds like 死 (si3: death). As Sophie states in her comment, even the old go-to number 8 can be considered bad luck since it sounds like 別 (bie2: separation).

So, you’ve prepared the money, now who do you give it to? Well, you need to find the table at the front just before you walk in. One side will be the groom’s, the other the bride’s. Give it to the side that you have a relationship with. Write your name on the book (in Chinese or English) and grab some of those wedding photos / glamour shots that look like trading cards. You are set to walk in.

3. Sitting down / Short video sequence

If you’re a foreigner, it’s likely that they’ve arranged for someone to escort you to your table. Take a seat and within a few minutes, the room should darken and a video will be projected on the wall. This video (probably between 5-10 minutes long) will show, in chronological order, pictures of the about-to-be-wed couple: as kids, how they met, pictures of them during their courtship and finally, the present day.

4. Newlyweds entrance

After the video is over, the couple is ready to enter. You may be provided bubbles or those little plastic snap-pop things that spray a little confetti to “welcome” the lucky pair as they walk up the aisle between tables. The MC will introduce them, ask for applause and then the couple will sit down.

5. Meal time

Once that formality is over, the real reason why everyone’s there makes its entrance: the 9 or 10 course meal. Make sure you pace yourself and take it easy. It’s a long meal and there is normally way too much food.

6. Dress Change #1 / Activity

About 15-20 minutes into the meal, the bride and groom will disappear and the bride will change into a totally new outfit. They make another grand entrance, everybody claps again and then turns their face back to their plate. Normally, entertainment of some sort happens at this point. First a short speech from the newlyweds, thanking their parents for all they’ve done for them, etc. and then perhaps a game, or some sort of activity where the bride and groom invite their single friends up to the stage for an embarrassing, awkward “chance” to meet other singles, or even a performance. I’ve seen couples sing songs at this point, and recently, the groom even brought his rock band on stage for a live two-song set. Whatever happens, the patrons may or may not watch, perhaps more interested in their meal.

7. Toast the bride and groom

Once the entertainment is over, the bridge and groom and both families go from table to table, toasting their guests. Most of the time, the groom is drinking grape juice, but I’ve been to a wedding where the groom drank anything and everything. This is usually not the case, as your average Taiwanese guy is a weak drinker. Be sure to fill your glass with the house wine that is on your table, stand and tip your glass to the newlyweds when they make it to your table. This marks the beginning of the end; it’s safe (and not rude) to leave after this point.

8. Dress Change #2 / Farewell

After all guests have been toasted, the bride and groom will disappear once more, the bride to change once again, this time into a gown to bid you farewell with. After they change, they will wait by the door to say goodbye, take photos and probably present guests with a small gift. This is your chance to congratulate the lucky couple and make your escape, if you’re able to even walk after the heavy meal.

Congratulations, you’ve survived a wedding in Taipei, with a full stomach and some grog in your belly. Any thoughts? Have I missed anything or gotten anything wrong? Let me know and I’ll update this post.

While in Kending during the last weekend of the Lunar New Year, I witnessed the boldest manifestation yet of that crudest and most-desperate species of the Taiwanese cock-block family: the Brokeback Attack.

Here’s the scenario:

There was a group of guys and girls dancing together, probably a high-school reunion or something. Some Filipino and African guys jump on the dance floor and start to rip it up. These guys are really enjoying themselves and start to dance with the Tai-girls. Not just dancing, but freaking. The guys are digging it, and the girls are enjoying it as well.

So, to protect the girls from the dirty and dangerous immigrant folk, or maybe to protect the girls from themselves and their intended harlotry, the Taiwanese males jump in to save the day, going where no man should go, namely in between the gyrating hips of the colored men and the local girls.

It happened over and over again. I suppose the sailors were used to it, because they played it cool, but the Taiwanese women looked more and more frustrated at their male counterparts. It really surprised me that the whole situation didn’t break down into a fight, because the Taiwanese males were unusually aggressive during the cock-blocking. In addition, the women’s reaction to the interruptions was quite telling: their friends’ “help” was really a good micro-representation of male-female relationships here: being a man is protecting and controlling your woman, who by extension can’t protect or control herself.

I don’t know what it is about senior citizens here, but they simply refuse to oil their bikes. I’m guessing that they have to leave their bikes outside and they rust up. I ride frequently around Taipei and at least once every time, an oldie will come screeching to the corner I’m at, raising the hair on the back of my neck and damaging my already-damaged hearing.

I participated in the Olympic Day 8K run this morning behind Da-Jia Elementary School, just by the riverside. There were a lot of people there, many groups and societies.

The most amusing bit had to be the warm-up sequence, led by a woman who had to be an aerobics instructor. The music started out with “Chariots of Fire” of course and then ended with a bizarre, Disney-fied rendition of “Amazing Grace.” We started out doing some easy movements, but it just got weirder with everybody holding hands and jumping left and right.

The motivational warm-up over with, the race began. In my case, this was a perfect example of slow and steady wins the race … I burned myself out and had to walk after two-thirds through the race. This old guy who I passed way at the beginning (and then who passed me and then I passed again) passed me and finished the race probably a couple minutes before me. Finally, in homage to the Taiwanese penchant for lining up for free stuff, I jumped in line for five minutes to grab a free cup of honey-water.

A nice morning and an enjoyable experience.