Bang, Crash, BOOM!

Where in the World is D Today?

Standing on the corner with his mouth wide open.

Given my latest propensity for silence these days, it would take something extraordinary to persuade me to write. Extraordinary indeed!

I am often struck, at the differences in Taiwan culture and my Midwest American culture. In Columbia, MO and American in general, I KNOW what defines as “Normal”. In ANY given situation I can anticipate most outcomes. Of course, there are occasionally exceptions, but human beings by and large are creatures of habit and culture. I would suspect that is true of humans no matter where on the earth they are.

While humans, on one hand, are the same in this relatively simple aspect worldwide, (culture), on the other hand, it (culture)is something that has as many variable and variances as there are people. This leads me to the event today that still leaves me scratching my head in curiosity.

Today on my very routine walk home, crossing the street at the same corner I have crossed at the same time every day I don’t see, but rather hear a crash. But it sounds …… odd. As my foot is reaching the curb I immediately look to my right, there lying in the street is a motor scooter knocked on its side with a woman lying partially under it. She has been hit by a car. I temper my immediate impulse to run out to see if she is ok. My instincts are quelled my two things. One, the traffic does NOT stop… at all. Seriously, NOBODY stops! What the hell?! The second thing that stops me is the policeman in the middle of the street who has been directing traffic. (By the way, isn’t he there to keep this sort of thing from happening?!)

The man driving the car jumps out and runs to the woman crying and holding her leg. Traffic keeps moving at it’s frantic Taiwanese pace. The cop very casually, (really that’s no exaggeration), comes over to the woman leans done to talk to her for a moment. The guy who hits her moves her scooter out of the street and to my utter amazement the traffic cop grabs the woman by the arm and pulls her up to her feet. Or rather her foot. She wobbles and limps over to the side of the street next to her scooter. In witnessing this scene I notice two more things. A car hits the woman’s helmet. I don’t know if she took it off or it got knocked off. Second, as the light changes people begin to cross the intersection in the direction of the accident. 4 people walked past the woman’s shoe, which had been clearly knocked off in the collision and was lying in the intersection. In a twisted combination of frustration, annoyance and compassion, I start to brave the traffic to get the woman’s shoe when the traffic cop comes over and gets it.

As this is happening the car that hit the woman LEAVES!! What?! The cop isn’t even going to write his name and license down?! Then to my utter surprise, the woman collects herself, hops on her scooter and rides away! The traffic cop saunters back to the middle of the intersection and everything continues like “Normal”. WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON IN THIS COUNTRY?!

Is what I saw today normal? I really don’t understand this aspect of Taiwan culture. As for the traffic cop, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but as a observer, it seemed it he was not at all concerned about the woman’s well being. Or has he seen this so many times, it’s normal to him and he can assess the woman’s injuries very quickly. Am I simply being an over-sensitive westerner? I am both disturbed and perplexed by today’s event. Mad props to the woman. If I had to go into a battle, I’d want her on my side. If it were me, I would probably still be lying in the fetal position.

As an interesting side note, I am about to buy a motor scooter. So if I have an accident, is my biggest concern going to be, not the car that just hit me, but the possibility of getting hit by another car as it continues on its way without seemingly any regard that I just crashed.

Over the course of my 9+ months in Taiwan, I have found Taiwan people to genuinely kind and compassionate people.

Just don’t have an accident on your motor bike.