Taipei

Taipei

18Feb09

It wasn’t until I arrived at the airport on my way out, that I realised I hadn’t seen any other non-Chinese person in the 2 days I spent in Taipei recently. I also noticed that there aren’t many English speakers there either. Or perhaps I wasn’t operating in the right circles. But even at the airport, there are signs in English but the public announcements are only in Chinese, expect for a “test of the announcing system”.

Taiwan people seem very happy and content. Their island is crowded. 23 million people fit into a space off the coast of China that’s I think is about the same size as Victoria (I may be wrong). There is still space for tracts of farmland and forested hills. Signs of wealth abound and poverty, if it exists, doesn’t display itself in the places I visited or drive through. There’s a sense of business and urgency and it’s seasoned with an unfailing politeness and courtesy.

The Taiwanese have an air of healthy pride in being Chinese. They are pretty sure of themselves. It was hard to engage anyone in the sort of political discussion that might occur between locals and visitors in Australia or Sweden or the US. It also seemed impolite in a land of deference and politeness. Only one of my hosts ventured a political comment and that was on the back of a question about our Prime Minister Rudd. He commented that about 75% of Taiwan’s people voted. Half of them want to link with China and the other half think Taiwan should stay pretty much as it is. When I suggested it would perhaps be difficult to merge with a country that doesn’t elect its leaders, the response referred to the pragmatic issue of market size. I wonder if that’s a fair representation of Taiwanese opinion. It does strike me as an essentially Chinese response.

In my dealings with Asian people, I have an expectation that great importance is placed on making money, sometimes as if it was a primary purpose of life. Except that family and face seem to qualify for that. So maybe the pursuit of wealth is just a very close second. Of course in western society there are many who appear to rate money as the most important thing in their life. There’s more about us that’s the same than there is that’s different.
Life has taught me this. I’ve been fortunate to travel and work in many places; getting to know people. In every case, the people I have met are the same as me in at least three things; they want their children to have a better life than they’ve had, they want to succeed at the work they do, and they want to be left alone – in the sense that authority doesn’t interfere – to raise their family. A fourth thing is that they all know the song “Happy Birthday” in English, and all know the work “Okay”.

So even though I met only a very few people here who speak English, perhaps even fewer than those who speak Chinese where I live, I know they are all essentially the same as me.