tTaiwan as a country is pretty fascinating. From a foreign point of view, it's a study in contrast. It sounds cliched but it really is a clash of the old world and the new. Our friends live on the 18th floor of their apartment building in Jhunan and the view from their place kind of gives a picture of Taiwan.
Out one window, you can see the sea and all the natural beauty that accompanies it. The other side shows you a mass of grey buildings as far as the eye can see during the day and what seems like a city of lights at night, at least to me. The funniest part is that all of this is overlooked by two temples set high over the city.
As well as these two temples, there are countless others, big and small, that you can see mixed in with the scenery. The influence of Buddhism is clear for anyone to see: every town has at least one big temple and a host of smaller ones. As well as that, each Buddhist's home has a temple room in it. This means that at night, if you look down a random street you can see squares of red light shining out from each house.
But, above all else Taiwan is capitalist to it's core. I don't mean that in a bad way but I've heard people say that the Chinese were capitalist entrepreneurs before those words were even invented and from what I've seen so far that's totally true.
(History is the other aspect of Taiwan that is really interesting. It basically has a mad history of occupation and unrest, to the point that martial law only came to an end in 1989 and the first peaceful hand over of power was as recently as 2000. The relationship with China is tense but most people in Taiwan are regarded as 'Chinese'. Only two percent of the population is actually indigenous Taiwanese and their language has mostly been forced out by Mandarin. The whole distinction between Taiwan and China is really complicated and confusing, so I'm not gonna go too much into it for fear of causing an international incident!)
The reason I mention the whole capitalism thing is that everyone here has something going. They all want to make money but not in a greedy or devious way. People are all above board about making money and I genuinely don't think it's to the point of screwing people over to get there. Obviously, there's always gonna be the people who want to make 'easy money' and screw people over but we haven't encountered the hoards of scam artists which I hear are rife in tourist Asia.
The work ethic is intense - there's basically no weekend and they don't seem to understand the term 'holiday'. People work all hours of the day and night to make money but it almost seems more to give their children better lives than to just have money or more stuff.
It seems like every house you go past has some sort of business going on. You can walk down the street and go past a furniture shop, a convenience store, a restaurant, an electrical shop and a barber's - all with the whole family sitting watching TV as if it's their front room. And that's because it IS their front room.
There's a real 'entrepreneurial spirit' (to use political speak) that could teach us a lesson or two. The people complain about the weather and in some ways are really lazy when it comes to physical exertion, but they work themselves to the bone and don't say a word about it.
The Taiwanese teachers in my school work longer hours and get paid less than me but they're always on time, well presented and in good spirits. Not like the foreigner, coming in grumbling every day because I have to teach and can't drink every night of the week!
Working as an English teacher actuality gives a unique insight into the capitalist culture here. That's because we kind of see it from different sides. What I mean by that is that we see all these parents dragging their children to cram school every day to learn English. Don't forget that cram school is on from 2 - 9 every evening and 9 - 12:30 on Saturday mornings; so this is extra classes after regular school and as far as I can see, every child does it.
The reason they're brought in every day, by parents who mostly can't speak English, is so that they can go on and do business with (you guessed it) America. The promised land. They all want their kids to learn English, go to University and work for a company that does business with America. Then they can make lots of money.
The fact that some students might not want this future doesn't always feature. I asked one of my co-workers if many people studied history in college because it seemed like Taiwan has an interesting history. The reply was along the lines of 'parents would prefer their kids to study something which they could get a good job from'. So, history's out the window for most then.
The other point of view we see is from the owners of our cram school. The school we work in is a big franchise so has a the reputation of being kind of the cheap one but each of our schools have 250 kids at least. The owners are loaded; they've got 4 cars and cars are not cheap here. But the school is run just to make money. The exam results are massaged so that kids can keep moving up through the levels, they over fill their classes and sometimes put new kids in whatever level is available even if its inappropriate.
But competition in cram schools is fierce. Off hand I can think of 7 or 8 large cram school franchises. Apart from that, there's the local schools that operate in each town. Every kid goes to learn English so they can make money later. Which means that EVERY kid now needs to learn English just to keep up, not to get ahead. It's kind of a cultural phenomenon and sometimes I'm not sure if there's a bit of "Keeping up with the Jones'" at play.
But it does make Taiwan a pretty scary prospect because the workforce can now speak Mandarin and English, are willing to work themselves to the bone and have massive ambition. That's probably why there's no sign of a recession here and the economy just keeps growing.
Greed is God here at the end of the day but it seems like people aren't willing to accept to accept it in a Wall Street way yet.
