This is a story from a Taiwanese junior high school student. He spent some time living in Canada and wrote an article comparing certain aspects of life between Canada/the US and Taiwan. He has a good sense of humour and the article is a good read.

A comparison between Canada and Taiwan

Taiwan is a crazy place. Take my advice, if you’re not coming for religious purposes, to learn Chinese or if you have no other choice, don’t come.

Traffic

Canada is a nice place, there is little traffic and everyone follows the rules (even when nobody is looking). Half of the drivers in Taiwan don’t know what traffic lights are, or maybe they just don’t care. Here it’s illegal to turn right when there is a red light, but everyone does it, so it’s OK. It’s illegal to park near corners, but since everyone does it, it’s OK. It’s illegal to park in narrow alleys, but since everyone does it, it’s OK. In Canada, you rarely see people park on the sides of the street, not to mention double-parking. In Taiwan, you not only see double parking, you see triple-parking, quadruple-parking and my personal favorite, parking in the middle of the street. In Canada, when the traffic lights go out, people take turns at crossroads. In Taiwan, people try to squeeze forward resulting in a deadlock. In Canada, when there is a jerk on the road, blocking it, everyone tells the person to move away, but in Taiwan, it’s a different matter. Sometimes, people murder other people just because they drive too slowly or they shouted (Cun Dan) “混蛋” (Jerk!) at them.

School

In Canada, the population is much less dense, so schools usually have about 500 people in suburban areas. In Taiwan, some schools have 5000 people. An average class in Taiwan has 40 people, down from 50 thirty years ago. It’s crowded! In Canada, the teacher teaches classes whichever way she/he likes to, making the teacher very important in education. In Taiwan, the ministry of Education hired some professors to make standard textbooks for grades 1-9. The textbooks were very detailed and thorough, so no matter how stupid the teacher is, a student can learn the things in the textbook and still have an OK grade. On the other hand, Canadian education allows the smarter types to study on and on after they have finished the basic lessons, while in Taiwan, the textbooks sometimes restrict these “geniuses”. Recently, the textbooks have been remade by corporations, so the new textbooks now have much inferior quality to the old ones, resulting in students getting dumber and dumber.

Crowds

In Canada, people take turns and line up. In Taiwan, people push run, elbow, fight, brawl… just to save 50 NT dollars (about 1.5US) on a pillow (or any other thing). When a line is split in two, people don’t take turns, whoever runs faster gets to be ahead in line.

Robberies

It happens everywhere, but in Taiwan it happens in broad daylight and even on police officers. In the US, since everyone has a gun, a thug with a gun can’t do much. In Taiwan, nobody has a gun, so if you’re a thug with a gun, you’re extremely dangerous.

Pollution

In Canada, you don’t notice it unless you go to a dumpster or if you stand behind a truck. In Taiwan it’s everywhere.

Drugs

In Taiwan, it’s just like everywhere else, teenagers use them a lot. A slight difference is that people use it at much younger ages.

Gangs and mobsters

You don’t see much of it in Canada, unless you go to strange places in the middle of the night. In Taiwan, teenager gangs roam the streets on motorcycles while holding baseball bats and rods with a leader holding a katana (a Japanese longsword). They’re just looking for some fun, so if you even look at them in a way they don’t like, they beat you up. Some small gangs might attack and kill a cop for the guns that they carry. Other times, gangs have small wars in which people bring knives, bats, iron knuckles, iron rods, swords, katanas, homemade pistols, etc… They smash up the place, kill a few people and leave. They’re usually arrested in a short time, but still, watch out! In Taiwan, there are loads of phone calls telling you won the lottery, your son/daughter has been kidnapped, your loans at the bank are overdue… 99.9% of these calls are just traps to steal your money. The funniest thing about these things is that people will always fall for them, even if they are told that these phone calls are just scams. If you want to know more about these things, just watch the news.

Politics

In Canada, the candidates tell about what they want to do for the country, what they hope to do, and problems they want to solve to win the election (though most of them lie). In Taiwan, candidates don’t even bother to tell you what they hope to accomplish, instead, they hang lots of posters and tell you what party they belong to. All politicians lie, all of them are corrupt, and the ones that aren’t lose elections. It’s just a perverted rat race for power, if anything.

Internet Cafe’s

These shops allow people to access the internet wherever they are. In Taiwan, these places allow teenagers to get addicted to online games. These places are also places where lots of drugs are used. Go in, and you’re not likely to come out.

Sex Industry

It’s illegal in many places to prostitute. In Canada, these things are usually hidden underground and barricaded. In Taiwan, they have store fronts and signs that tell you, though not directly, that they are whorehouses. Everyone knows where to find a brothel, everyone except the cops, especially the cops that are on duty.

News

In Canada, at least they have the decency to not play scenes from “arresting lots of naked prostitutes”. Not to mention the weather reports. The accuracy is actually lower that 10%, even lower than if they just drew cards to predict today’s weather (which they probably do).