There is an unspoken game that foreigners will sometimes play in Taiwan. The way you play is by making up some ridiculous story about your homeland but having it be believable enough that Taiwanese will think it is true. You may guess that the winner is the person who gets them to believe the most outlandish thing, but really such a good time is had by all so the winner is everybody! Yay!
Although the rules stipulate that later you must tell them that it was just a joke and then a good laugh is shared by all. However sometimes people forget to say that they were just kidding. Every now and then I will meet somebody who will talk about some super crazy thing that we do in the west, and it takes me awhile to figure out what is going on and let them know that a foreigner was just teasing them.
Us foreigners are not immune to these game and that is what today's picture is about. This symbol with the three umbrellas is what you see outside of some pharmacies. It's the logo for a brand that sells medicine and other medical supplies. One day while walking, a friend told me a story about why the symbol is three umbrellas. I don't remember the story at all, but I remember it was interesting.
Recently I saw this sign and tried to remember what the story was. Since I couldn't remember it, I asked some friends about it, and they had no idea. I then put my crack team of analysts on it to research what it means, but they also came up empty. The best they could come up with is that there used to be a commercial for this brand which would end by saying if a woman bought this company's medicine for her family, she will be a good wife, mother, and daugther-in-law. (Ugh yes being a "good" daughter-in-law was/is considered an important thing here...yuck!).
So I think I've been hoodwinked, and whatever story I was told before was just a sneaky local pulling one over on the innocent, wide-eyed foreigner. Now if you will excuse me, I must extract my revenge by going out and spreading some extravagant fib about Westerners. Did you know that in one small area of America the people of a town were exposed to a government chemical and started to age backwards? This is why we have daylight savings time, to commemorate those people. It's also what inspired the story of Benjamin Button.
