On my way to an appointment yesterday I had to pass by Taiwan's MOTC (the bureau in charge of transportation). As I got closer to the building there were more and more police officers and as I got near the front of the building I could see there was a wall of police officers in front of the building.
I still didn't know what was going on until I heard the loud engines of motorcycles. I then saw that there were maybe a hundred motorcycles parked on the street, and bikers (ordinary looking people, not stereotypical western biker gang people) standing in a crowd in front of the building.
After awhile a small stage popped up and the protest started. I tried to get a good picture, but it was just too packed, so this picture from across the street will just have to suffice. Just imagine that you can see an ocean of parked motorycles and a sea of bikers. There were speeches, chants, screaming, and of course a lot of engine revving. I am not sure what the protest is about. I do know that the laws regarding motorcycles seem to change every few months. They are always changing the license needed for "heavy motorcycles" (those 250cc and above), and the rules about if these heavy motorcycles can go on the highways or not (scooters and smaller motorcycles can not go on highways).
Whatever it was, I do support their protest, as I would also like to protest the MOTC. The reason is their english language written test for the driver's license. Many of the questions are wrong, and i don't just mean the translation, the actual answers are wrong. I took the test twice and was just one answer away from passing both times. After the test I spoke with the workers and showed them that the answer was wrong and they admitted that it was wrong, but still couldn't/wouldn't change my score. The response each time was just "come back and try again and hope you don't get those wrong questions."
Since you have to pay each time, I wonder if this is a scam to tax foreigners who can't speak Chinese. About a half year later I met somebody who works there and she told me that they have had many foreigners offer to edit their test and correct it for free, but that the government has never accepted these offers and never gone back to fix the test. Which is crazy cause I remember one which was a picture of a sign, if i recall correctly it was a picture of a merge sign, but they had the answer being something completely different, like "free parking on sundays" or something like that.
So protest away! Vroom Vroom, my brothers, Vroom, Vroom!
Edit: So my guess was pretty on the nose. The protest was about how heavy motorcycles were allowed on highways, but then a few days later they changed the rule back. Basically the rule was to be that they can be on certain parts of highways at certain times, but no consensus could be reached as to which parts and what times, so they took back the rule.
