Taiwanese Hospitality

A couple locals who befriended Wendy and me at a little restaurant.

After spending time in Taiwan and Mainland China, I often wonder how Asian visitors to Canada or America find us as hosts. When was the last time you approached people on the street looking at a map and asked them if they need directions? Have yo ever walked up to a table of people speaking a different language and tried to start up a conversation, regardless of whether you spoke that language or not?

If you're like me, the answers to the above questions are "never" and "no."

I've mentioned the hospitality of Mainland China in previous posts, but it's even more pronounced here in Taiwan. We've been here a month and we've already lost track on the number of times people on the street have offered us help without a request from us. It will happen when we're reading a bus schedule, or looking at the subway guide, or standing on a sidewalk looking at our map.

"Hello! Can I help you?" is something we've heard many times since arriving in Kaohsiung. On one of those occasions Wendy and I were trying to get our Taiwanese cell phone numbers. This is incredibly easy in Hong Kong, Macau and Mainland China, where you just hand a vendor the equivalent of $20 Canadian and he gives you a SIM card with a local phone number. It's a little more involved in Taiwan. When looking for a cell provider office, we stopped at a TGI Friday's where we knew the staff spoke English and asked for directions to a place where we could buy a SIM card. The host gave us directions and even wrote the name of the place in Chinese so we knew what sign to look for. We didn't have any luck finding the place he told us about and we kept retracing our steps, thinking we had missed the place.

As we walked by TGI Friday's again, one of the hostesses who was getting off work noticed we were still looking for the Taiwan Mobile office. She looked at the address we had and realized the first guy gave us directions to a location that had moved. This young lady had difficulty giving us directions we could understand, so she actually went out of her way and took us to a store...then she actually stayed and did the interpreting for us!

Getting away from receiving help on the street, I'm even more impressed with basic hospitality from locals who just start talking to you out of the blue. This often happens in a little mom-and-pop restaurant that doesn't have any English menus or pictures of what they sell. These are the places where I try to muddle through in my survival Chinese skills and hope to hell I get what I think I just ordered. If I can't get through with my Chinese skills, I usually end up in the kitchen, pointing at ingredients and playing charades trying to demonstrate how I want the stuff cooked.

In those situations, someone in the restaurant - sometimes the owner, other times a customer - will come to our table and start a conversation, usually beginning with "Welcome to Taiwan. Where are you from?"

They usually only speak a couple words of English, and more often than not, the "where are you from" part is in Chinese. I muddle through with the little Chinese I have, often referring to the Chinese-English phrasebook in my pocket, and before you know it, a few other locals have joined us at our table and we all share a few laughs on how we butcher each others language.

Broken English or broken Chinese may not be the most effective way to communicate, but never underestimate the power of either of them!