Watch What You Say

While Taiwan is a democracy, there is not freedom of speech here. Yes you can say bad things about the government, but that's actually it. You can not say bad things about or to a person, product, or company.

I can see you are confused, how can any human follow this law? well it seems to only be in two specific areas.

1. No reviews. I believe I've touched on this before, but in Taiwan it's illegal to say bad things about a product or restaurant. Which is why there are no such thing as product or restaurant reviews in Taiwan. Being critical just isn't allowed. Although some institutions have found a way around this. They may give something a bad review, but then give the score as 4 out of 5.

I've talked about Ducky Lady before and her show where she goes around eating food. Sometimes she will say the food is really bad, but I have never seen her give a place anything below a great score.

But sometimes even this isn't enough. There are often stories of bloggers being sued and being forced to pay, because in their blog they wrote "the meat was too dry."

2. No cursing. In English, Taiwanese are worse than drunken sailors when it comes to cursing. This is probably because in Chinese cursing is practically against the law. There are often reports of somebody calling another person a bad name, and then getting sued and being forced to pay damages.

And for those of you who think "it's ok, i'll just speak with my hands." Well flipping the bird comes with a 5usd fine in Taiwan. No joke this actually happens.

As for the picture. There is a common known fact in Taiwan that old Taiwanese women are demons. Foreigners and Taiwanese agree that these monsters from below the earth are evil in their pursuit of always cutting in lines, never picking up after themselves, and murdering kittens.

The one in the picture just walked right in front of me in the produce line to have her fruit weighed. But rather than chastise her, we shall thank her for allowing me to practice my self control. It would have cost me a lot of money to say what I really want to say.

Although...because of the sheer amount of rude old ladies, I have gone out of my way to create a sentence that is legal, yet cuts deeper than any curse word or gesture ever could.

Who says all my time learning Chinese is wasted.

[Alexander]

Kudos for the sentence! I may have to ask you for it as even in Adelaide, South Australia, these Dragon Ladies are quite obvious in the Chinatown when I go shopping for my Asian cooking ingredients. It's not just the shoppers either, the store owners and workers of the older female persuasion can be quite dark and short with you.