|
EDITORIAL: Clash of
cultures and personalities
It is wrong for anybody to attack somebody else with a weapon, no matter what
that person said to anger the attacker. For that reason alone, Slawomir Starok,
a Western father married to a Taiwanese woman, deserves sympathy.
In a letter to the Taipei Times, Starok, a father of two, described an incident
in Taipei in which he told off the driver of a scooter who was giving children a
ride without taking the precaution of making them wear helmets. Lots of angry
words ensued, many of them xenophobic or outright racist, according to Starok.
Then, after Starok thought the incident was finished, the scooter rider and two
of his friends allegedly attacked him with a brick in front of his children.
Thatˇ¦s unacceptable, and unfortunate for Starok.
However, the last thing one should do is to then make xenophobic statements
about Taiwanese. Taiwan is a complex society like any other, with both good and
bad people. There are criminals here like everywhere else, and people with bad
character and no morals.
However, there are also generous people, who will drop what they are doing to
help a foreigner on the streets. Simply classifying all of Taiwan as dangerous
because of three bad eggs is not right, especially when this society is
generally one of the safest ˇX especially being as densely populated as it is ˇX
in the world.
A response in this newspaperˇ¦s letters section to Starokˇ¦s letter from Kuojung
Ni in Hsinchu City pointed out that Starok would be just as likely to get a
negative response in a country like the US, France or Russia if he were to get
in the wrong personˇ¦s face over an issue that he felt compelled to point out.
Ni is right. It takes good judgement to decide when it is the right time to
intervene and when to keep oneˇ¦s mouth shut. It would be interesting to know
what kind of person this was that Starok confronted. Was he a gangster, was he
drunk, did he look like a reasonable person? And how did Starok confront him?
With his finger in his face? Smiling or yelling? Did Starok use any swear words?
There are too many variables in this equation to get a clear picture of who
provoked whom.
Here in Taiwan, as safe as this society is, there is a tendency for some people
to overreact when strangers ˇX not just foreigners ˇX tell other people off in the
streets. These overreactions can range anywhere from loud screaming matches to
assaults of multiple people on one person, as in Starokˇ¦s case. Fights on the
street here are an exceedingly rare sight, but when they happen, they are
usually vicious. For that reason alone, itˇ¦s a good idea to mind oneˇ¦s own
business when scootering or walking the streets of Taiwan unless the provocation
is too severe to ignore.
However, if somebody is doing something that just bothers one so much that one
has to intervene, itˇ¦s a good idea to figure out first whether that person is
high on drugs, is a gangster or is carrying weapons before mouthing off.
Itˇ¦s too bad that Starok had to experience this, but Taiwanese for the most part
are still some of the friendliest, most helpful people in the world.
|
