As I begin to write this, I can't help but think that I wrote all this before, however skimming through my blog i can't evidence that i have, so forgive me if this is a rehash of something i wrote before. Seeing as the year is almost up, I'm surprised I may have gotten this far without a repeat.
A game I like to play is "If I were president of Taiwan, I would...." to talk about what changes people would like to make to Taiwan. I myself have a ton of necessary things I'd do if I were the president. All serious things involving education, the economy, etc. However when playing this game I prefer to keep it light and talk about sillier ideas.
The silliest of these is the law I would make that every high school student has to have at least five boyfriends/girlfriends before they graduate from high school. It sounds absurd, and well it is absurd, but it really could benefit Taiwanese people. Allow me to explain...
With getting good grades being so important, and with the great amount of control that parents have over their kids, it's rare that students have boyfriends/girlfriends. In fact many high schools even have a rule where students are not allowed to date (ok serious deja vu that i've written this before, my apologies!). This means that people only first date when they get to college, although some even then are still so controlled by grades and parents that they aren't "allowed" to have a bf/gf then either.
This in turn leads to some people not dating until they graduate and get a job. With the very poor availability of social events in Taiwan and the inability to talk to strangers, it means pretty much the only place you can meet somebody is in your office. While this is already a bad idea, it's made worse by the fact that quite a few Taiwanese never break up.
Yes because many don't have their first relationship until they are "adults" they don't have much experience of dating nor breaking up. Since they haven't dated before, they don't know what makes a good or a bad relationship, so they view their relationship as normal. In their minds why break up if any other relationship will be the exact same as the one they are currently in.
There is also society's pressure. In Taiwan a relationship is only viewed as successful if you get married. I think most of us would view are relationship as a success if we learned something from it, either good or bad, which helps us to know more about what we are looking for and who we are in a relationship. But here it's viewed as marriage being the end goal of any relationship. Especially since parents will quickly talk about you and your bf/gf getting married and your future together, even after just beginning dating, no matter how young you are. Granted in their generation you usually did marry the only person you ever dated.
Which leads us to the big problem. That people will end up marrying the first person they date. I think most of us would think it's a punishment to marry the first person we ever dated, however here it's a common practice. They date, then the relationship turns bad and they should break up, but they don't know how to break up. There are many people I've met who want to break up but they just don't know how to do it. It's especially troublesome if you work with your bf/gf as they can't picture having to still see them everyday after a break up, so they just decide to stay together. After maybe ten years of no passion and being like strangers, they think that they are finally too old to find anybody else, so they give up on life and get married.
So I think that my high school mandatory dating plan could work. It would allow people the chance to see what different relationships are like. It would show people that marriage is not the end goal for all relationships. It would give people practice with being broken up but still having to see your ex. Most importantly it would greatly increase people's social abilities. Culturally Taiwanese are not very social and not so good at interacting with others.
As and added bonus it may increase the birth rate in Taiwan which is dangerously low. But I would hope that it would improve the sexual education in Tawian, and get the right information out there. As it stands the sex ed in the schools here is full of lies and misinformation.
Whew. If this was all a retread of past info, I greatly apologize. The whole reason I wanted to bring this up is because of the picture above. It's of tools which the aboriginal Taiwanese used to get tattoos. The reason this is relevant in Taiwan is because there is one group in Taiwan which disproportionally gets tattoos....women who have gone through a break up.
Yep women in Taiwan much more than men get tattoos. It has quickly become common practice for women to do two things after a break up. One is get a tattoo, the other is to become a christian. Sometimes they do both, but there is a great possibility that they are going to do one of those two. So having a tattoo is almost like having a brand that shows you have broken up. Which actually is kind of a good branding to have. It shows that you don't just follow society's pressure on what relationships are, and that you want more from a relationship instead of just staying in a terrible one.
@handmade Hey Thanks for the question. It made me realize that there is a lot about tattoos that I didn't discuss. So i went ahead and answered your questions and some other ones in tomorrow's post and put it up early.
Yay! thanks for the day off from writing tomorrow!
November 15th, 2012
Leave a Comment
Sign up for a free account or Sign in to post a comment.
Yay! thanks for the day off from writing tomorrow!