That sounds spot-on for China (and by extension, Taiwan). There's a strong element of "there I fixed it" over there -- not that things are fixed, but that they have the appearance of being fixed.
I get the impression, though Taiwan is not quite like your descriptions of the PRC. Road chaos is a thing and I've nearly gotten clipped a lot, but there's an attempt, at least in theory, to follow the rules. People will break it if it seems more efficient, but otherwise it's not that kind of madness. The crosswalks are actually functional and usable, for example. Nobody wears seatbelts, though. Also, the red lights have countdown timers, which is a great idea.
It seems like practically nothing is illegal here. The drinking age being 18 instead of 21 would be the obvious thing, but there's also the fact that you can drink alcohol in the streets without issue. Alcohol isn't always exactly marked, either. Hard apple cider and soft apple cider are sold side-by-side, and the only indication that hard is hard is that it's marked as "original". A less obvious thing I noted is that 800 mg ibuprofen tablets are OTC here, and as I recall that dosage is prescription in the US. Haven't observed much else. Further, there isn't a lot of emphasis on saving stupid people from themselves, you have to keep your savvy for obviously bad ideas open in a way that the US doesn't really demand. When I first arrived, I was told by an American who was here long term that there was, quote "no cops and no crime". I was obviously skeptical of this at first, but so far its been turning out to be true, at least with crime relating to crimes that have victims. According to him, a lot of people are superstitious of stealing because of a story about a woman who died without marrying, resulting in her father leaving out valuables as bait and forcing the marriage of the thief to his dead daughter.
Food wise, I've found a few interesting things. Sugar being standard instead of corn syrup is a godsend. I'm drinking almost nothing but Coke because I can get sugar in all of it now. The exception is milk tea, which is so good I'm shocked it isn't a thing in America. It pleases my Southern taste buds perfectly. I've also had an egg and ham sandwich with peanut butter on it, yet another good idea.
I could get used to the society here. I know exactly two Mandarin phrases: Ni Hao and Xie Xie. This has been more than sufficient for all of my interactions with Taiwanese people, the gaps in understanding being filled by complicated body language. Pretty much everybody here is really friendly, at least to Americans. Chain workers still have that glazed-over dead-inside feeling about them, but hole-in-the-wall shops have gone out of their way to figure out what the strange giant white man wants from them. On that note, I'm taller than at least 95% of people here, probably more. We've only spent a day in Taipei, and foreigners don't often go elsewhere, so we get a lot of stares. Some of these people have definitely never seen white people in person before.
Patriotism doesn't show up often here, but when it's there it's pretty strong. The changing of the guard at the Martyr's Shrine has probably been the most powerful example. I've never seen an honor guard go through such complicated motions before. There are actually rust stains from the iron soles of the guard on the path they traverse because of how many times they've done it.
Also, for some reason, American and British flag patterns are really popular on clothing for younger people. At least I think they're younger. Everybody here looks fairly young unless they're old. Everybody between the elderly and college students looks the same age, the college students look like high schoolers, the high schoolers look like middle schoolers, and everybody between middle school and infancy looks the same age too.
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Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!) (Read 15786030 times)