Stuff White People Like

It's not an anime or a comic, and it's not even an animated series featuring kung-fu fighting delivery orphans or kung-fu fighting chickens hunting down a villain with a Japanese name. But I'm gonna mention this anyway.

The Lonely Planet Taiwan (2007) guidebook is deeply amusing in its cluelessness, despite alleged improvements from the previous edition and the supposed insight of its resident Anglo expat writers Robert Kelly and Joshua Samuel Brown. To be fair, the authors hit all the appropriate Lonely Planet notes: they cluck disapprovingly over Snake Alley and the appearance of elephant tusk ornaments in a hotel lobby, and they give their stamp of approval to animal welfare and environmental conservation efforts. They shake their head at the onslaught of modernity:

Just a few years ago the place had a great remote outpost feel to it and we highly recommended a stop there. But those days have gone. The 'old street' now has a shiny 7-Eleven on it, completely ruining the atmosphere...

Fortunately, there's no such danger of anything similar happening on the east coast:

For years, people have been saying that the time to visit the east coast is now before its backwater charms are lost forever, but we see no danger of that happening for a while yet.

We can only hope the Taiwanese inhabitants of the east coast will treasure and preserve their "backwater charms" for years to come! Modern infrastructure and conveniences just spoil the view. It'd be such a shame to disappoint the Anglo tourists, and the Taiwanese are nothing if not a friendly, relaxed folk. Not like the Japanese or Koreans, who the book notes are often described as "industrious", "polite", and "reserved", most notably right there in that sentence. Yes, the authors continue, you can keep the Taiwanese people down with colonialism, martial law, dictatorship, threats to invade, and refusal to grant political recognition, but by gum, those folks just keep on smiling! (Except for, y'know, the ones who went into political exile, or were victims of the aforementioned martial law and dictatorship, or...) The guidebook bandies around a couple of theories for why this is--maybe it's the weather? Or,

...maybe its [sic] because Taiwan has been blessed with a mixture of Buddhist philosophy and hefty (although somewhat underestimated) contribution of relaxed Polynesian DNA to the overall gene pool.

And you know how those Polynesians are. They can't help it; it's in their genes. It's true because we the authors just said so. But wait, there's another theory. Maybe the Taiwanese are "so genial" because "a foreign visitor is recognising (in some sense at least) Taiwan's legitimacy to control its own borders":

Or maybe there is something in the theory of collective national hunger for recognition from world community ... Perhaps when a Taiwanese person is especially nice to a Western visitor (as often happens), following some random act of kindness with the commonly spoken words, 'Welcome to Taiwan,' they're only telling part of the story.

Maybe what they're really saying is, 'Thank you for realising that we are here.'

Yes, massa! We're ever so glad you could come and give our happy-go-lucky li'l lives meaning with your white gaze! It means so much to us, especially because your Western countries won't grant Taiwan formal recognition as an independent democratic nation. Thank you. Thank you so much for realizing that we are here and you'd rather we shut up and not do anything about it that might upset buddy China. Welcome to Taiwan. You smug fuck. Now gimme an Aegis cruiser.

Still, there's no denying that the authors have a keen grasp of the island's tangled history. They can see the lighter side of cultural annexation and suppression:

Taiwan had been in the imperial sights of the Japanese empire long before her colonisation [read: take-over] in 1895. Though conventional wisdom holds that Taiwan's neighbour to the north was seduced by the island's abundant wood, coal, and metal deposits, we think the real reason (in part, at least) might have lain elsewhere. For a people as wenquan (hot spring) crazy as the Japanese, the thought of having the world's finest hot springs so close to home yet not under imperial control must have been discomforting to them to say the least. And of course, there's the issue of prestige; for the rest of the world to discover that the finest hot springs in Asia were anywhere else but in Japan might have implied an unbearable loss of face. Clearly Taiwan, and her amazing geothermal waters, would have to be incorporated into the empire.

The wit, gentlemen. The wit. And also, the filling up of a big paragraph for which you had nothing at all useful to say except for a clumsy stab at humor. Bravo.

But anyway. Should you be faced with a Taiwanese person who, inexplicably, is not full of islander joie de vivre and doesn't knock themselves out to help you--especially a person who doesn't understand the clear and simple English words "non-dairy creamer"--never fear! The guide advises that you have a "Cultural Compassion Moment":

Also common among Westerners visiting Taiwan is an experience of the following sort: You are at a bank, a restaurant, or someplace else, desperately wishing that the local with whom you're briefly interacting could understand just a few words of simple English. But they can't; in fact, you seem to be making them visibly uncomfortable by your presence. Perhaps they're fidgeting, or stammering something unintelligible, [like their native language?] or just giggling nervously. They certainly aren't helping you get your money changed, your coffee sweetened, or whatever it is that you came for. You find yourself wondering, 'Does this individual dislike foreigners?'

The guide's authors advise that you bear in mind the possibility that this stumbling native before you may have been traumatized as a child by being forced to practice English on Westerners in the past. Or not, is the other possibility. Either way, they advise you to smile and practice "the compassionate patience of the Buddha". Yeah... practicing Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka or Japanese would probably be more useful, but whatever. It's not your problem, it's theirs; that native's got issues.

More multiculti wisdom abounds, probably because they needed to pad sections out and didn't want to come up with actual content. A sidebar in the Food & Drink section describes Joshua Brown's culinary experiences with his first Taiwanese girlfriend, who asked him near-daily whether he wanted rice or noodles for dinner:

New to Taiwan and somewhat unschooled in the culinary culture as I was at the time, I took this as a sign that everyday Taiwanese cuisine was none too diverse. It took me a while to understand that this question would actually lead to a variety of meal choices...

So really, you have to feel sympathy for the poor fella and his acute visual disorder. Not only has he apparently never had any experience with the variety of East Asian food in general, he was also physically unable to perceive any of the restaurants, food stalls, snack stands, night markets, cafeterias, supermarkets, groceries, bakeries, specialty stores, and related advertising that are everywhere on the goddamn island. This sidebar, by the way, is all of three sentences that come to the realization that actually, there is a lot to eat in Taiwan! Wow! Really? Thanks for putting that in the Food & Drink section, never would've figured it out otherwise. Like... from the rest of the text.

What other insight can these expert writers provide? Well, in the listing for a restaurant whose name translates as Cat Mouse Noodle, they take special pains to note:

The shop's odd name arose because the owner's nickname sounds like 'cat mouse' in Taiwanese and not because of anything you'll find in the food.

Good thing you emphasized that, 'cause you know how those people are--you never can tell! Alas, no such clarification is forthcoming for, say, the Train Head Original Food Restaurant, which is unfortunate because I draw the line at cannibalism and crunchy cogs are bad for my dental work. Then again, East Asians don't have a reputation for eating trains. They do have, in certain circles, a reputation for eating cats, and again, thanks to the authors for pandering to that angle. Quality work, guys.

They also have keen insight into the characteristics of Taiwanese towns. Take their lengthy sidebar discourse on municipal sanitation and the town of Puli, a sidebar that starts with an anecdote about the author watching a dog poop on a sidewalk:

Odd as it may sound, I sit in my car to see what will happen next. The dog is a stray so I'm not expecting an owner show up [sic] and lay claim to the prize, but I am expecting the 'Puli Poop Patrol' or some-such entity to come and clean up the mess. When they don't, after a considerable wait, I leave in disgust...

Other places the author has been forced to leave in disgust at the lack of satellite-guided poop disposal squads: every city and town in the world that has dogs in it. But surely one couldn't expect much more from Puli: "Puli, which yes, does sound like 'poo village' ('li' is village in Chinese)..." You're paying up to $25.99 plus tax for the privilege of seeing these words in print, by the way. Well, fortunately, the government is on the poop-scoop case:

Truly, in Puli's defense, however, I did only see the one dog get away with leaving his lunch remains behind ... If progress continues like this, there may come a day the town will have to consider changing its name.

Because the syllable "pu" sounds like "poo"! Yeah, it means something completely different in Mandarin, but so what? Puli! Get it? Get it! Change its name? Get it? ...yeah. One of the authors proudly claims that he's been living in Taiwan for 11 years. And this is the best they can manage. Is there any hope for cross-cultural understanding left?

But I kid the authors. They really have spent a lot of time and effort on this book, effort that extends to every ethnographic detail. Why, Joshua Brown once lived with a Hakka family! And based on that one family, he is now prepared to give you a sidebar discourse on "A 'Typical Hakka Family Home'". Let's see... there's a garage and a living room on the first floor, and there's an aquarium with lucky fish. Oh! And next to the living room, there's a kitchen. Bedrooms are on the second floor. The third floor has another bedroom, and a parlour, and the fourth floor was where Joshua Brown lived, and also there was a family shrine... there you have it. A typical Hakka family home. Leaving aside that all it takes is five minutes in Taiwan to realize that this is the same basic layout as any "typical" family home in Taiwan, regardless of ethnicity--all I have to do is reconfigure it a bit to, say, put in a home theater instead of a "parlour" and I can submit essentially the same crap as "A 'Typical Ho(k)lo Family Home'" based on relatives' digs in Kaohsiung--well, alright, there is nothing after the leaving aside.

That's all there is in the sidebar, by the way. A floor-by-floor description of a house. Did I mention this book lists at $25.99 retail? Oh, and it has a picture of people in white uniforms doing tai chi on the cover. Because really, that's what you should think of when you think of Taiwan. Not hey, a country that has ads in its airport proudly advertising the manufacture of computer components, or even damn, that's a lot of bubble tea stands, but a bunch of people in old-fashioned clothes practicing leg extensions. No matter how advanced you may be, East Asians = martial arts/tai chi forever. Joy.

So yeah, the book is a joke. But at least the Rough Guide to Taiwan put Taipei 101 on its cover. Modernity! Squeal! It's almost as if Taiwan is a nation in the 21st century! Oh, Rough Guide. Thank you for doing that much, at least.