Eye On Taiwan
Op-Ed
Date: May 29, 2016
By: David Wang

News in Taiwan regularly cite the seemingly frightening statistic that the island’s birth rate being the lowest worldwide, to suggest that Taiwan faces the dilemma also besetting many nations elsewhere of declining birth rate compounded by graying society.

Such thorny issue that impacts Taiwan’s social welfare system including the national medical insurance plan, pensions of various kinds seems intractable to cast an ominous veil over the country. But the underlying assumption, especially embraced by human rights activists, the religious right, and those who can’t or refuse to remove their rose-colored glasses, is that all the newborns will grow up to be productive members of society without burdening the same, are wanted children under planned parenthood of responsible parents.

And those in isolated Ivory Towers, think tanks, government institutions insulated from the real world actually but enigmatically believe that Taiwanese schools are training just the right number of qualified people to supply the local job market. But news reports in Taiwan frequently disprove not only the assumed supply and demand balance in the job market, where factories in southern Taiwan sometimes dispatch managers to parade on streets with want-ad placards to fill positions that forever lie idle, but also anecdotal observations show that many 20-something Taiwanese are not being hired in careers with promising future. I’ve seen tiny breakfast diners in Taipei manned by at least 3 young men who seem to be drastically under-employed. While plenty of 20ish youths in Taipei set up, perhaps as second job, pop-up stands in a suitcase or street vending ops to peddle costume jewelry, knickknacks and fruits.

And there are frequent reports of buyer’s market for airline cabin attendant, post office, bank jobs, as well as various civil service jobs as street cleaners where thousands show up to scramble for a handful of openings.

Such scenario, coupled with daily news reports of all kinds of crimes major and minor in Taiwan as drug trafficking, patricides, matricides, scams obviously point to one aspect of the human condition that most optimists and politically-correct politicians simply would not address nor touch with a 10-foot pole.

So the assumption that as long as Taiwan, as is the case with other nations, achieves a so-called replacement birth rate, then all earthlings can expect to ride off into the sunset singing Oh What a Beautiful Morning!, is obviously out the window. Especially when a woman from a government agency in Taipei said recently that some 3 percent or 690,000 (based on a population of 23 million in Taiwan) Taiwanese have some kind of genetic and birth defects, many of whom are seriously retarded, born with Down Syndrome and cerebral palsy that have to be hand held throughout life by parents, caregivers and unwilling relatives.

And it’s widely taken for granted globally that about 40 percent of people are morons, with such proportion easily being similar in Taiwan, who simply can’t enhance productivity of any kind to saddle the earth, already reeling from overpopulation and resource depletion, by merely being consumers to emit greenhouse gases.

While plenty of news reports quote employers of all stripes who typically lament the difficulty of finding well-qualified staff and scratch their heads to cope with incompetent workers. Just watch episodes of Kitchen Nightmares for anecdotal proof. Also I’m sure all those who place want ads in Taiwan, some of which being urgent, can easily offer more argument against the self-delusional view adhered to by the likes of anti-abortionists and anti-euthanasia advocates.

While Greenpeace and other do-gooders simply focus on eco-issues and cleaning up refuse dumped by mankind, they, politically-correctly, neglect one of the most ruinous forms of wastes: human trash. The kind that homo sapiens instinctively believe must be produced, regardless of quality screening as most of us would demand in say a Honda CR-V or Ford F-10 pickup.

According to a report dated May 26, 2016 by a writer of NOWnews who referred to a relevant story in the Apple Daily, a 40-year-old Taiwanese man in Tainan of southern Taiwan on May 24^th burnt charcoal to take himself, wife and 3 kids to the Better World, reportedly due to having run out of money for even utilities.

As traditionally in Taiwan the funeral operator accompanied by a “priest or shaman” (aka sometimes politically-incorrectly regarded as snake-oil hustlers), as would any highly-intelligent human as those running temples across Taiwan who burn carcinogenic incense as tradition would demand, tried without success to toss crescent wooden pieces to achieve the “divine combination” to somehow find the spirits of the deceased.

Maybe they would have had better luck to call the Ghostbusters.

Without any surviving relatives who would normally toss the wooden pieces to find the spirits, the ceremony took some 40 minutes to complete by the funeral operator.

The man, who obviously believed in the value of harikiri (the Japanese practice of terminating a loss decisively by suicide as a show of honor), was reportedly a philanderer and often harassed his parents for handouts. The funeral home has offered their services for free because the parents pleaded poverty.

One can bet one’s bottom dollar that those parents have never even heard of the concept of “human trash,” screening and disposal of that they and plenty of forward-thinking, altruistic Taiwanese would rethink about amid the countless socio-economic issues exacerbated by the mostly uncontrolled production of such “human debris” that undermines life quality on the island.

Eye On Taiwan
Op-Ed
Date: May 29, 2016
By: Jeff Lang

Most ordinary folks may never understand why some well-heeled high-fliers would fork out millions for oil paintings that sometime look like bird cage liners. And why would the super-rich pay princely sums for gems (aka intricately cut and polished rocks mounted on precious metallic lattices) that sit inside vaults 99 percent of the time? Why would some spend untold hours and dollars to assemble massive train sets to mimic the real thing traveling in their basements? Why would the mega-rich buy a condo in a high-rise with a special elevator to ferry their Ferrari to be parked in full view of their living rooms? Why do scientists continue to squander resources to look for ways to set up colonies on a planet in the next galaxy when they know it’s essentially mission impossible? And why do men (most likely) splurge enough dollars to equal a Filipina overseas contract worker’s monthly pay in Taipei for few hours in one of the many lounges or nightclubs with presumptuously tacky names as Bulgari, Cartier, Tiffany in the seedier parts of Taipei to be entertained by hostesses or bargirls?

It’s the latter question that begs one to delve into the mindscape of such patrons, not by carefully arranged, peer-reviewed, double-blind scientific experiment but anecdotal observation of one Taiwanese bargirl’s monologue, who apparently trolls dating sites perhaps out of boredom or maybe with ulterior motive.

This Taiwanese lounge hostess (as shown and likely of Eurasian ancestry with possibly breast-enhancement surgery) seems in her early 20s and confessed with a scripted, tear-jerking outpouring as original as microwaving TV dinner to quell hunger, that she is from impoverished background and hence has to work in the skin trade to make ends meet, without trading her shapely body for money of course to elevate herself above mere prostitutes.

Her time-honored profession has been reported in Taiwanese media more than once, with one report that focused on the racket in central Taiwan that had a stable of dozens of gorgeous women who were organized and lived like troops. The skin trade in Taiwan is often seen in the public eye (and often proven) to be linked to gangsters who are in cahoots with the law (of course never openly documented or published in media), with some forms of the trade allowed to thrive with the permission of the government, which categorizes such enterprise under the moniker “Special Business.”

There also has been reports on Taiwanese TV exposing scams using callers in boiler rooms in China conspiring with lounge operators in Taiwan to snare gullible hearts of men, who are egged on to visit bars where hostesses slowly befriend them to gain their trust and then ask for money to bail them out of various problems, as relatives in need of medical treatment or debts due to poor investment. These unwitting knights with chivalrous tendency sometimes end up being fleeced of their golden armor as well as life savings.

Amusingly when the law actually clamps down on the skin trade in Taipei, where hookers are regular patrons of taxis, hair salons and dry cleaners, a whole segment along the food chain feels the pinch.

The following is the translation from Chinese this bargirl’s one-sided conversation over a couple days on one of the chat apps. She casually gives out her ID to anyone willing to take the bait on a dating site so as to begin a monologue that likely duplicates the following. This self-professed unfortunate soul deserves certain admiration for being patient enough to key in Chinese characters dripping with syrupy and insipid content.

But is she as innocent, naïve as she portrays herself in the monologue? The answer lies in the italicized, bold line near the bottom.

It’s safe to assume that patrons as the one who probably drooled upon seeing the bargirl’s provocative stunt using her décolletage are not looking for intellectual stimulating distraction that would inspire one to apply to a world-renowned PhD program to devise means to eradicate global poverty. And could the noggins of said patrons be actually as vapid as the monologue and this bargirl? After all, birds of a feather stick together.

I’m all dressed up.

OK. I’m off to work…muah…

If you don’t send me a thumbs-up sticker, then you don’t miss me.

Hey there. I just arrived at the company.

I tell you…my mobile phone has a “read masking” software that hides that I’ve read a message, which works unless I turn it off…so I’m sometimes blamed by people of being impolite because they think I’ve not read their messages.

I’m going for supper.

Actually you’ve not really looked at my pictures closely.

You’ve not said that my room looks creepy when it looks that way.

I’m going outside for a while now.

Just now I had customers next to me so I could not use my mobile phone.

I’ll talk to you later ok?

Oh…sorry…sorry.

Got up too late today…that’s why I am just texting you now.

Work gets busier Friday so you behave yourself.

I’ll send you some hot pictures later.

Chu…chu…(a seemingly Taiwanese expression of endearment)

It’s thundering out…scary…

I must get on with work…think of me.

Chu…chu…

I’m finally getting a breather now.

Hey…I was really proud of myself just now…I had to bring something into the booth but could not hold it with my small hand.

So I simply squeezed the champagne glass in my cleavage instead.

You should have seen the customer pick up his jaw off the floor.

Wait…got to get back to the booth…that customer is probably still straightening his slack jaw.

You have to think of me…I’ll miss you.

Let me set my phone down or I’ll get reprimanded again.

Do you also talk to other girls like you do me?

I think I drank too much today.

I just woke up today…

Gosh it’s boiling hot today.

I am dying for a Popsicle.

My air conditioner is down so I slept over at a coworker’s place. Where did you sleep?

Hey. Listen. I am the jealous type…so you’re dead if I catch you in bed with someone.

Time to make up.

You’ve not said you miss me…you’re on my mind.

You’re the first one that I text as soon as I wake up.

I’ve already put on my makeup.

It’s Saturday so I’m going to have to work like a dog.

Actually it’s that that I don’t chat with you from my heart…but this is my life…for you to be a bit more understanding would make me think you’re so considerate.

You must behave today and miss me…muah.

Time to go to work.

Arrived at the office…so hot.

My friends say darkening the brows with makeup helps to keep off the sun…so you know I hate to tan.

You’re allowed to visit me at work today…free Popsicles!

OK…got to get busy now.

Don’t forget to have supper…I’ve got to go to work now.