Tag Archives: Taipei

The Eternal Question: To Mask or not to Mask!

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If you’ve been outside of Taiwan anytime in the past year, you’ll notice a substantial difference in masking practices. In the US and the UK, I rarely saw anyone in a mask, but in Taiwan, the mask industry is still going strong. As I was walking back home one day, however, I spotted this random sticker on a lamppost, suggesting someone is not happy with the lasting fetish with face masking in Taiwan:

It reads:

「口罩臉
不好看
打扮病夫
很詭異」

“A masked face
is not attractive
Dressing up like a sick old lady
is very weird”

To be fair, for the past couple of months, it feels like the entire city of Taipei has had a cough or a cold and do you really care whether other people wear masks or not?

What do you think? Time to expose our chins to the gods?


ABOMINATIONS! Adulterated Chinese characters in the wild!

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Just as in English advertising you’ll see some letters substituted with images, the same happens in Chinese, and you’ll often see parts of characters replaced. I’ve captured a few examples below, but let me know if you spot any yourself!

In what we’ll call questionable taste. A kid with an open mouth takes the place of the 「口」 component of 「吃」 in this sign (and yes, 吃 has most if not all of the connotations of the word “eat” in English). It reads 「吃我 早午餐」 (Eat Me – Brunch).

This congee shop has creatively substituted the central 「米」 component of 「粥」 for a stack of steaming bowls of congee.

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Chess in Taiwan: Brian Tseng and playing for Team Taiwan

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Although I dabbled in my youth, I’m pretty much a post-Queen’s Gambit chess player. I’ve really gotten into it over the past few years, although I’m still at around 1000 ELO (Daily), so just thought I’d provide a bit of info on the scene in Taiwan and some useful vocab in Mandarin.

via GIPHY

Most of my interactions have been online, but there are some meet-ups in Taipei, also happy to play over-the-board with anyone in and around Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall over lunch times.

If you want to play for Taiwan, you can join Team Taiwan on Chess.com (you can only play for one country at a time, but they’re flexible about the flag displayed in your profile). Also, feel free to add me and play me.

Although Xiangqi (象棋) is more popular here, there is a growing community of chess players too, including stand-up comic, presenter and podcaster Brian Tseng. He’s yet to disclose his Chess.com username, but he’s mentioned chess a good few times in his podcast, particularly in the King’s Gambit (王翼棄兵) episode, where he talks about applying the lessons of chess to everyday life.

You can find some cool stickers on Instagram, by searching for “rvdtor.”

You can also follow the progress of World Chess Champion Ding Liren (丁立人) on Weibo, although he seems to be playing less these days. And check out this Taichung-based chess YouTuber!

Chess Vocab:

西洋棋 xī​yáng​qí chess
棋盤 qí​pán chess board
一盤棋 yī​pánqí​ a game of chess
下棋 xià​qí to play chess
下一步棋 xià​yī​bùqí to make a chess move
隻 zhī measure word for piece
國王 guó​wáng king
皇后 huáng​hòu queen
主教 zhǔ​jiào bishop
馬 / 小馬 / 騎士 ​mǎ / xiǎomǎ / qí​shì knight
城堡 chéng​bǎo rook/castle
斜線 xié​xiàn diagonals (measure word: 條 tiáo)
兵 / 小兵 bīng / xiǎobīng pawn
黑格 hēigé black square
白格 báigé white square
黑 / 白格主教 hēi / báigé zhǔ​jiào black / white-square bishop
吃 / 敲 chī / qiāo to take (a piece)
翻騎士 fānqí​shì to move a knight

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Need Some Charge on the Run – Convenience Stores Now Offer Power Bank Rentals in Taiwan

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You can now borrow a power bank at any 7-11 and leave it back at any other branch. The rental fee is NT$12 per hour, with a 24-hour max charge of NT$36 and a 72-hour maximum rental period. They will hold NT$300 on your card until you return it. If you want to cancel a transaction, you can also return it within 10 minutes without charge. You can check out a list of participating stores here! Wireless and wired charging are both available for Android and Apple.

First, check to see if the Ibon machine at the 7-11 you’re at has any power banks inserted at the bottom. If not, they might all have been rented, or it might not be a participating store. If you do see power banks, you can follow the steps below to rent:


Step 1: At the Ibon Machine main menu, hit 「生活服務」 (everyday services)

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Taiwanese besties: 「換帖的」and 「麻吉」

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The use of Taiwanese in this Ministry of Foreign Affairs post struck me as interesting. As the term 「換帖」 exists in Mandarin too, they used romanized script to ensure that it is read in Taiwanese. I guess this makes it harder for people in a certain country to work out what it’s supposed to mean, but I also wonder how many Taiwanese people would catch on:

「可以說是台灣的uānn-thiap–ê 的柯寧參議員」

You could say Senator Cornyn is bosom buddies with Taiwan.

“uānn-thiap–ê” describes a close friendship formed by a blood-brothers style pact, wherein two friends exchange cards with information on each other (name, age, place of origin, family history), to forge a kinship. Now it’s used to describe good friends.

Another, more common term to describe a close friend is 「麻吉」. The term is pretty common and was even used for the title of the film Ted in Taiwan 《熊麻吉》:


There are several folk morphologies for this term, from the stickiness of mochi cakes (pronounced similarly in Taiwanese/ muâ-tsî) to a corruption of the word 「默契」 (though no clear reason for the corruption is given). The most convincing theory is that it’s a corruption of the English word “match” in Taiwanese. Whatever its origin, it’s a pretty handy word to use and will let everyone know that you’re in touch with the popular culture references of 10 years ago.

How do you say we’re fixing the road surface in fancy? 「路面銑鋪」

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I came across these spray-painted messages on the road on the way to my local 7-11 last night. Messages sprayed on to the street are common in Taiwan, and they can be written by car/motorbike tow trucks telling people what number to call to get their vehicle back or construction companies or the city government telling people not to park in the street as construction is about to take place.

I could see that it said 「路面xx勿停車」 (“road surface XX, don’t park), but I was a little puzzled by the third and fourth characters, as they both looked like they had 「金」 as radicals. I assumed that as they were repaving the road, it’s likely that the second one was 「鋪」 (to pave), but I’d never seen the character 「銑」 before. So I wandered down the street a bit further to see another of the messages:

The 「鋪」 was a bit clearer in this pic, so I tried to look up the characters 「銑鋪」 (xiǎnpū), and came across this old video from the China Times, suggesting that I wasn’t the only one to be puzzled:

According to this video, the original meaning of 「銑」, milling, has been extended here, to mean “to roll flat/steamroll.” It seems to be a more technical way of referring to resurfacing roads, but a more common and colloquial way to say this is 「路面翻修」 (lùmiàn fānxiū).

Ay Chung Flour-Rice Noodles and their Passive Aggressive Neighbours

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Photo credit: Chi-Hung Lin

Although not to everyone’s taste, this noodle shop is one of the most well-known in Taipei and you’ll have to line up in a quick-moving queue to get your order in. As i was waiting for my friend to get his order, I noticed these signs on the pillar that separates the store from its neighbour:

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As well as the English-language sign on the left which states rather directly: “Don’t eat noodle here”, there’s a Chinese-language sign on the right. For those lacking super vision, here’s the enlarged version:

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This sign reads as follows:

愛吃麵線的同胞們，垃圾不要落地，不要造成困擾，謝謝！

Compatriots who are fans of flour noodles, don’t let your rubbish fall on the ground. Don’t cause people problems, thanks!

Although the word 「同胞」 technically means simply “compatriots”, it is frequently used by people on both side of the Taiwan Strait to refer to the other side, more frequent when Chinese people refer to Taiwanese people.

For example, the permit (as their passports aren’t officially recognized) that Taiwanese people have to get to enter Mainland China are called 「台胞證」(Taiwan Compatriot Permit) a more casual way of referring to the 「台灣居民來往大陸通行證」 （Permit to allow residents of Taiwan freedom of passage to and from Mainland China).

In my mind this suggested that the sign was probably aimed primarily at Mainland Chinese tourists, many of whom visit the noodle shop while in Taipei.

Aggressive Notes: Taipei Parking Battles 台北停車：瘋了嗎？

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I previously posted about passive aggressive notes in Taipei related to parking.  But this post couldn’t really be described as “passive aggressive” as it is pure aggression from start to finish:

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You can see the shutter of a shop in the reflection of the car window, which reads 「請勿停車」, which means “Please do not park”. And here’s a close-up of the note:

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The note reads:

「刺破輪胎已違法！ 

今日已”報案”調盤視 

畫面.限3日出面調解

否則依法辦理.

敢做敢当君自重.

不誠意処理.不要

後悔絶不善！

85-7-留

人·物證皆有」

Or in English:

By puncturing my tires you’ve already broken the law! Today I already went to report it as a crime and we’ve gone through the CCTV footage. I’ll give you three days to own up and come to an agreement, otherwise I’ll proceed through legal means. If you had the guts to do it, have the guts to behave like a gentleman about it. If you don’t deal with this honestly don’t regret the unpleasantness that comes!

85-7-Liu

We’ve got witnesses and evidence

It’s interesting that the author used the shorthand 「当」 for the character 「當」, which is the same as the simplified version of the character used in China. They also use the shorthand 「処」chu3, which is a variant which differs from both the standard version of the simplified (处）and traditional character (處）:

chu3
Taken from the Ministry of Education Variant Dictionary, a useful resource when you come across characters that don’t seem to exist in normal dictionaries.

This explains that 「処」 is a variant of 「處」（as is the simplified character）.

I don’t know what the situation is exactly and if the car belongs to the person who put the “no parking” sign on their shutter or someone else. I’m also not sure what the 「85-7-留」 means, thought it might be a license plate or a reference to a law, but it doesn’t seem to be the latter. Let me know if you know!

Protests in Taipei: Uber vs Taxis; Land Rights and Illegal Buildings

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Last week I saw taxis besieging the Executive Yuan (between Shandao Temple and Taipei Main MRT) over the government’s failure to crackdown on Uber quickly enough.  Taxi drivers were protesting because of Uber’s refusal to be subject to taxi ‪regulations in‪ Taiwan‬ and it’s refusal to clarify its tax status. My colleagues at work had a related discussion last week over whether existing (over?) regulation is strangling‪ disruptors‬ in the interest of maintaining the status quo. While there were a wide range of opinions as to whether ‪Uber‬ is, in fact, bringing anything new to the Taiwanese industry as a disruptor or whether it’s just trying to dodge consumer protection regulations and tax, the conversation can be extended beyond Uber to the financial sector and further afield. Some of my colleagues thought the government was being too cautious when it comes to providing legislative flexibility to innovative industry disruptors while others thought existing legislation was just common-sense protection for industry players and consumers? The government announced that they are going to launch “diversified” taxis, but it’ll be interesting how the story develops beyond just the Uber issue.

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About a week prior to the taxi protest, I was passing by the front of the Executive Yuan when I saw this protest placard, along with a single protester. It reads:

政府無能，     [When] the government is inept,

百姓受窮，     the ordinary people are forced to live in poverty;

竊盜私地，     Stealing private land

罪大惡極，    is an extremely pernicious crime.

天理難容。     [which] the heavens cannot tolerate.

哀！     Woe!

I’m not sure if it was a specific grievance as I didn’t stop to chat, but maybe someone can help me out in the comments section.

I saw the banner below outside my friend’s housing development when she invited me for a barbecue/pool party there (near Qizhang MRT – opposite Carrefour):

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Common facilities (of a residential complex) are illegal buildings, the residents have been lied to

From what I’ve gleaned from the internet, this is a controversy over certain common areas of a residential complex which were built without planning permission by the developers. The city government then demolished or plans to demolish these areas and the residents are protesting because they were sold their apartments under false terms.

If you’ve seen any disgruntled looking peeps holding signs let me know in the comments section!