(The video referenced in this post is in the post below)
I’m being facetious, of course, in beginning the titles of these two posts with a news-flash “Extra!”; this video hardly qualifies as news – as my thirty-something Taiwanese laundress and her twenty-something brother who translated parts of it for me kept insisting between laughs.
And even if it were news, it’s not news; the cab scenes are almost certainly staged, as the second (and third?) camera-at-the-ready makes obvious.
But in a deeper sense it actually is news – good news, as far as I’m concerned. My Kafkaesque Life, who beat me to the punch in blogging on the video disagrees and is worth a read (and his post includes English translation of the video): http://mykafkaesquelife.blogspot.com/2011/12/about-big-foreign-hotdogs.html . And Forumosa, which was on the video way back in September when it was first released, has six pages of comments in case you’re interested: http://forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?f=92&t=103079&sid=4a74e40db237b0b461fd96f5a7ab379d
Anyway, returning to why I feel the appearance of this “news” is a good thing…
Ten years ago, we heard again and again in Taiwan that “foreigners don’t know who the good looking Taiwanese girls are.” This statement was never very true, as this story, taken from an earlier YFFM post points out:
This idea that Western men can’t detect beauty in Taiwanese women is near universal here and is annoying. I once sat with a group of 15 students of mine in a pub. I had spotted a Taiwanese woman sitting nearby who I felt was a knockout. I thought I’d try a little experiment. I steered the conversation toward this topic of beauty and then asked the students sitting within earshot of me if they could pick out a woman in the pub whom they found attractive. I did not let on that I had already made my choice. Without exception they all agreed that the woman nearby was a bombshell – the best-looking. Later I moved down to the other end of our table to students who had not heard our conversation. This time I began by pointing out the bombshell. Again, without exception they ALL agreed that she was not attractive: “Tut, tut, you Westerners…” they scolded, and thus once more I was engaged in conversation about this shopworn topic. However, this time I felt silently vindicated. – Andrew, 43, Canadian, former ET
The actual truth back then was this:
Some Westerners have good-looking Taiwanese girlfriends, and some don’t. But especially some Taiwanese guys like to say to themselves that no Westerners have good-looking girlfriends. It’s to make themselves feel better. They’ll say something like this to themselves when they see a Taiwanese guy with a hot girl, too, if they doubt they could get the girl. They will always try to find a way to make themselves feel better – say “nah” if she’s with someone else, but say “yeah!” if she’s with them. – Joseph, 34, Taiwanese, aeronautical engineer
And this was the actual truth back then, too:
Of course we know. And we also know that we can’t get the hottest women here because those women are acutely aware that they can milk their looks for more with Taiwanese guys than with Western guys — can get away with taking multiple Taiwanese guys for a ride simultaneously, with plenty of financial benefits accruing. – Thor, 39, American, former ET
The real knockouts demand a lot. The best-looking women I see in pubs are with these haggard businessmen who can keep them in Gucci. – Scott, 46, American, ET
The real news flash thus is this: Nobody is trotting out the tired “Foreigners don’t know…” anymore. Quite the opposite, the Apple/Next video repeatedly uses the term “la mei” – hot girl(s). There’s a reason right there to like this video: it expresses a truth formerly denied.
Facing this truth is a reflection of the stakes having been raised – of the situation being felt by prudes and cultural chauvinists to be getting out of hand. But what situation exactly? Westerners and other non-Asian foreigners running amok, spreading sleaze? No, the culture expects that, wants it to a degree, exaggerates it, and would likely even encourage it if its incidence fell below a certain threshold; traditional “Taiwanese”/”Chinese”/”East Asian” felt identity depends on having a small, occupationally semi-ghettoized (mostly confined to English teaching) Other whose concupiscence is but the most glaring manifestation of a general lack of “proper” restraint. Full industrialization/developed economy status, in fact, makes this semi-ghettoized Other indispensable to efforts to maintain “culture” that would otherwise tear and split at seams stretched and made visible by economic advancement.
Foremost, the Other helps obscure that the “culture” was never a single culture with a single set of mores; sing-song girls and concubines were always the unspoken promise in Han societies that awaited males who could climb to the ranks of the elite. Commoners, on the other hand, got one partner for life – usually by arranged marriage. To put it bluntly, elite males were able to control hot sex and maintain their power and their near-monopoly on hot sex by endowing the institution of family with a rigid, confining orthodoxy (filial piety and other Confucian mores) for lower-order males and females alike. In return for accepting the arrangement, commoner males, though they were limited to one partner, had a decent shot at a permanent arrangement for getting their rocks off.
The go-go 80s and early-to-mid 90s began the process of change in Taiwan that has produced the video. Rising wages elevated more males, if not to the elite, then to the level where they could afford prostitution, even a mistress. More important, women’s wages – and education levels and employment opportunities — rose steadily. And you know the rest there…
The out-of-control situation is unrelated to foreigners: randy young Taiwanese women are the video’s real concern. It’s the la mei, not the lao wai (Westerner) who initiates the canoodling-and-more in the taxi (though the cabbie talks of foreign males initiating these moves); and it’s she who leads the way into the hotel. Most obvious in this regard is the vertical legend that appears on screen as she apparently feels her guy up in the cab or else goes down on him: “I love foreigners’ big hot dogs.” Clearly she’s not being hoodwinked; if she’s going astray, it’s she who’s leading herself.
Just as bad as her hotel-room escapades is the fact she’s being public about her sexuality: a guy in the video describes la mei as being completely OK with foreigners kissing them, putting arms around their waist, etc. in the pub (Taipei’s Brass Monkey). This PDA-plus phenomenon, once it reaches large enough proportions, is as threatening to “culture” as girls easily putting out. Joseph quoted above told me ten years back that any foreigner who took a Taiwanese girl’s prim reserve in public for probable reserve in private would be making a mistake. Would that be true now, though? Girls eschewing primness in public constitutes a form of directness that frontally threatens the “harmony value” and the millennia of rigid, authoritarian order that this value maintains. To put this point another way, nearly all cultures have been built by and run by males and have nearly all depended on controlling female sexuality; unrestrained flirtatious-to-licentious touching in public is as much or more a threat to traditional “culture” as is free, uncommitted sex in private.
The biggest tip-offs that the video’s focus is young women are its start and finish. It begins with a search-engine request for “Taiwan girls are easy.” This is going for the jugular; nearly all women seriously don’t want to feel they are “easy.” But the video shoots itself in the foot at every turn after that. It has three glum, sour guys bellyaching about horny foreigners, implying that girls are selling themselves way short by going for these foreigners. But why not go for foreigners if the alternative is these drips? Far worse in terms of tactics, the video interviews no girls who don’t frequent pubs with foreigners. Which shows how idiotic the video is; it fails to understand that while females don’t want to be labeled sluts by either sex, it’s being labeled such by their own sex that causes much more worry.
The end of the video (actually the second screen from the end) says “Taiwan girls, do you see through them (Westerners and other foreigners)?” This, too, is priceless dumbness: the girls are seeing foreigners – and Taiwanese guys, too – much more clearly than the video is. Depending on the girl, they’re seeing foreigners as possibilities for (a) no-strings-attached sex; (b) as ego-boost vehicles (reflects on their own English); (c) possible-boyfriend material without the family complications that come with a Taiwanese guy; or (d) all of the above. What’s to see through when the girls are already seeing with 20-20 vision?
It’s that legend “I love foreigners’ big hot dogs” that most highlights the inanity of the video, though. Not to say dick size doesn’t matter to girls, but if the video makers and some Taiwanese guys (very surely not all, and hopefully not most) imagine that this factor is usually decisive in most females’ minds, then that’s another reason to love this video: because girls aren’t going to do anything but laugh – they won’t be dissuaded in the least from their current behavior.
“This isn’t a foreigners’ problem,” my laundress and her brother assured me after translating for me. “It’s a Taiwanese girls’ problem.” But no; it’s a Taiwanese guys’ problem. This post is already way too long, so I’m not going to get started on explaining why by talking about evolutionary biology, female dual sexuality, and provider males vs. good-genes males (Google Randy Thornhill and Geoffrey Miller if you’re not following me). I’m simply going to say that the video displays the provider-male perspective whereas the la mei are in part, mostly, or wholly playing the good genes game. And that this video and any future videos or articles like it are – at best, if they’re lucky – Battles of the Bulge in a theater of defeat for traditional “culture.”
In short, the video expresses to-be-expected anxiety over positive change, and therefore it is to be welcomed.
Traditional Chinese culture has sold Taiwanese males a bill of goods and has press-ganged (yes, you, mothers!) nearly all of them to behave as provider males even though the percent of them that are good-genes guys is very likely similar to the percent of Western guys who are. So keep putting the pressure on, la mei! The glum guys in the video will probably never come around, but there are smart and cool young Taiwanese guys who will soon enough get it. And a “culture” will mature in the process.
I’m not sure how one specific Taiwanese female’s quest to be nothing more than a Caucasian semen receptacle has anything to do with the “good genes’ theory unless of course you are implying that Caucasian males have superior genes to their Asian counterparts; In which case, a glance at the typical Carnegies’ crowd would probably dispel that premise.
As a guy, I don’t mind it when any other guy, be he Asian, Caucasian or anything, scores with a legitimate 辣妹. Heck, I might even give you a fist bump. The problems begin when Caucasians start labeling 4s and 5s, as such. Soon, these 4s and 5s begin expecting 辣妹 type treatment and label guys who don’t cater to their whims as being misogynists. Yes, once in a while, it is amusing to see a 4,5 or worse with a diva-like air of entitlement but the schtick grows old quickly especially when your line is being held up due to some plain looking behemoth arguing with the bouncer to be let into Luxy; Not to mention that it makes things much harder for those of us who do date these 4s and 5s.
I can also gladly assure you, contrary to the speculation provided above, that I do not spent countless nights at home furiously pacing around my room fuming with rage directed at foreigners for stealing “our women.” If anything, I have only done this, at most, 10 times. So in my opinion, your sagely laundress is incorrect. Yes, this is a foreigners’ problem. Stop giving 4s and 5s princess treatment and we will stop making staged undercover videos. Although, I will think you will agree with me when I say, “Nothing says ‘investigative reporting’ better than a cab cam, a table cam, and then another cab cam.”
I’m not at all trying to suggest that most Westerner males in Taiwan – particularly the Carnegies’ male Caucasian crowd – actually merit a “good genes” designation. Quite the opposite: I would be among the first to proclaim that they don’t. Rather, they (quite naturally) get awarded this designation by default by a lot of Taiwanese girls, because most Taiwanese guys still keep themselves mired in the “provider” mindset that rigid, confining “culture” wants them to buy into.
I realized that I perhaps wasn’t being crystal clear in the post on this point, but (a) the post was already long enough (getting into the evolutionary-biology stuff would maybe double its length); (b) I’m not blessed with enough free time right now to write about/get involved in detailed discussions of that area; and (c) to make a worthwhile argument on this complex stuff, one probably has to simplify a bit.
Regarding (c), I want to here clarify that the general falsity of “Foreigners don’t know…” does not mean that (1) cultural differences in taste don’t occasionally come into play; (b) qualities besides looks don’t ever apply; and (c) Western guys here cannot suffer from confidence deficiencies that would stop them from going for a higher-number girl.
I think you do have a valid point that some girls here who are not hot start believing and acting like they are because of the attention they are able to extract from Western males. And on a personal level, I find many of them annoying, too. Yet on balance, I find them to be a positive factor precisely because they are a thorn in the side to the attitude you displayed in your first sentence; the girls – it’s not just one “specific” female – aren’t seeing their choices as rendering them “nothing more than a Caucasian semen receptacle,” and until “culture” understands this — understands that girls are not going to be deterred by what “culture” thinks–, about all it’s going to be able to do is make goofy, impotent videos like this one.
I say again that horny foreigners are not the primary motivation for the making of this video; whether flirtatious physical PDAs and uncommitted sex constitute actual liberation of self or not, they certainly constitute some real liberation from “culture,” and distaste at and fear of this liberation is what motivated the making/staging of this video.
And I’m glad to see old “culture” that gives most Taiwanese guys no choice but to serve and slave as “provider” types cracking apart.
I will say one thing, though, in possible endorsement to something in your reply, TAG. I may have overstated somewhat the significance of the la mei term in the video. This is, after all, Next/Apple Daily, and they may have used the term mostly to further sensationalize — it may not reflect as much of a change in traditionalist/chauvinist perception as I state in the post, though I’m sure there indeed has been some change.
I’m sure of this, too: Taiwanese women’s (especially younger women’s) interest in meeting and hanging out not only with Westerners but with foreigners of other nationalities, too, just grows and grows. And yes, mostly for the reasons John points out below. But also, I’d say, — a point not made previously — because the genes, for fitness reasons, generally program our species (and every species), to be attracted to a degree of difference. Read up on dual female sexuality, TAG, and you’ll likely henceforth be mortified to find yourself saying something as ignorant and small-minded as “nothing more than a Caucasian semen receptacle.”
“Soon, these 4s and 5s begin expecting 辣妹 type treatment and label guys who don’t cater to their whims as being misogynists.”
Oh, that sounds like North America!
(kidding… kind of…)
That really isn’t a joke. Of course why do you think so many people are single in the U.S. Who would want to waste time and money on a 5 who thinks she is a 辣妹?
First of all, videos like this try to play up the “foreigners are shamelessly exploiting women who are too unexperienced, naive and innocent to see through foreigners’ deceptive charms” kind of angle. But these women know exactly what they are doing and why.
For the women, as has been pointed out before, this is more than anything else a relatively risk-free opportunity to get some sexual experience in a social context which (if they are careful) can be kept separated and insulated from their other local social contexts of family, work, school, etc.
If they did this among Taiwanese males, their reputations would be quickly ruined, not only because their family and co-workers would find out, but because they would be treated like whores by Taiwanese men, and not respected. If the Taiwanese man doesn’t get what he wants, he can call her parents, friends and co-workers and stalk her for years (I have heard several first-hand accounts). With foreigners, she knows that “goodbye” is enough, and that he could not find her parents’ address even if he tried.
These women may brag to their closest friends, but it is understood that these secrets are to be kept confidential, and away from their local social context. I know Taiwanese women who basically only have foreign boyfriends, but who are extremely careful not to let their family or their co-workers find out about this preference. If they are cute and not openly attached, they can take advantage of the extra attention and various benefits they get from hopeful men in their company. If it gets out that they only get intimate with foreigners, it would ruin everything.
When dating Taiwanese men, the woman will have to answer questions about social class identity, where they are from, what school the guy went to, would her parents and friends approve of this guy, does he have a good job, does he even have any sexual experience yet, etc. Too complicated! With a foreigner, those questions are irrelevant because 1. he’s handsome and has cash in his pocket, and 2. Her family is never going to know about it, anyway!
The foreigner couldn’t care less if her family is Hakka or Taiwanese, where she went to school, etc., as long as she is smart, confident, cute and in the mood. So that gives women a sense of freedom, too.
Very good observation.
With a foreign guy they have less of a buy-in rather than if they have a Taiwanese bf they have to play all the social games with.
I still remember my first Taiwanese gf remarking that I didn;t call her everyday and that was nice. It struck me as very odd at that moment, but after talking to a few friends and her bf kidnapping her to his house and threatening to kill himself. It all started to click
I think the same is true for foreigners that frequent the Brass Monkey. Could you really go around banging different women every week if you were back home and over 30? People would consider you immature and would think you need to grow up and get married.
When dating Taiwanese men, the woman will have to answer questions about social class identity, where they are from, what school the guy went to, would her parents and friends approve of this guy, does he have a good job, does he even have any sexual experience yet, etc. Too complicated! With a foreigner, those questions are irrelevant because 1. he’s handsome and has cash in his pocket, and 2. Her family is never going to know about it, anyway!
The foreigner couldn’t care less if her family is Hakka or Taiwanese, where she went to school, etc., as long as she is smart, confident, cute and in the mood. So that gives women a sense of freedom, too.
Excellent observations. I often note that the foreigners here constitute a select class of people — with degrees, open minded enough to travel, etc. Comparing them to entire population of Taiwanese men is unfair to the latter….
What a load of trash written here, if a woman can hide a foreigner who stands out in the crowd from her social friends and family then she can do it a very easily with a local lad. Class identity? I think sometimes you guys dream up too many new novel expressions.
A lot of the women here don’t care if you are single or married as long as you can afford to take them out for a good time and also show them some respect at the same time. I’ve been here since the mid 80′s and it’s still just as easy now as it was back then to go out and find casual partners. Maybe easier back then when I was younger lol
Girls who like to party normally have at least 2 or 3 telephone numbers. One for family only, which they never give out to anybody, then a number for work colleagues and friends. Once you meet a lass and give her your name she will excuse herself and go to the bathroom, get on her 3g or wirless connection and google search you or try to find your facebook page if you are stupid enough to have one where everybody can see who you are. They suss you out quicktime.
All guys are easy to get laid is what the title should really be.
“get on her 3g or wirless connection and google search you or try to find your facebook page if you are stupid enough to have one where everybody can see who you are.”
Love it!
I think you’ve muddled and mashed together some other points, though, in order to make yours which labels other opinions here trash.
Yeah, I don’t see what makes other people’s opinions trash. They’re just as valid.
That’s interesting about the Facebook pages. I’m so far out of the game…