The post office got a new system recently, which is aimed at streamlining the process for sending parcels overseas. The system isn’t the most user-friendly, however, and my colleague has complained about having to fill out the form over and over again due to the unclear instructions.
I have the 2021 version of the list of countries that require this new QR code process:
If you’ve been outside of Taiwan anytime in the past year, you’ll notice a substantial difference in masking practices. In the US and the UK, I rarely saw anyone in a mask, but in Taiwan, the mask industry is still going strong. As I was walking back home one day, however, I spotted this random sticker on a lamppost, suggesting someone is not happy with the lasting fetish with face masking in Taiwan:
It reads:
「口罩臉 不好看 打扮病夫 很詭異」
“A masked face is not attractive Dressing up like a sick old lady is very weird”
To be fair, for the past couple of months, it feels like the entire city of Taipei has had a cough or a cold and do you really care whether other people wear masks or not?
What do you think? Time to expose our chins to the gods?
Just as in English advertising you’ll see some letters substituted with images, the same happens in Chinese, and you’ll often see parts of characters replaced. I’ve captured a few examples below, but let me know if you spot any yourself!
In what we’ll call questionable taste. A kid with an open mouth takes the place of the 「口」 component of 「吃」 in this sign (and yes, 吃 has most if not all of the connotations of the word “eat” in English). It reads 「吃我 早午餐」 (Eat Me – Brunch).
This congee shop has creatively substituted the central 「米」 component of 「粥」 for a stack of steaming bowls of congee.
Although I dabbled in my youth, I’m pretty much a post-Queen’s Gambit chess player. I’ve really gotten into it over the past few years, although I’m still at around 1000 ELO (Daily), so just thought I’d provide a bit of info on the scene in Taiwan and some useful vocab in Mandarin.
Most of my interactions have been online, but there are some meet-ups in Taipei, also happy to play over-the-board with anyone in and around Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall over lunch times.
If you want to play for Taiwan, you can join Team Taiwan on Chess.com (you can only play for one country at a time, but they’re flexible about the flag displayed in your profile). Also, feel free to add me and play me.
Although Xiangqi (象棋) is more popular here, there is a growing community of chess players too, including stand-up comic, presenter and podcaster Brian Tseng. He’s yet to disclose his Chess.com username, but he’s mentioned chess a good few times in his podcast, particularly in the King’s Gambit (王翼棄兵) episode, where he talks about applying the lessons of chess to everyday life.
You can find some cool stickers on Instagram, by searching for “rvdtor.”
I’m late to the game, but I finally watched Marry My Dead Body (《關於我和鬼變成家人的那件事》, literally “Concerning me becoming family with a ghost”) on Netflix over the weekend (available with English subs). The film did have its moments although not all of the jokes landed to me.
The name in Chinese follows a pattern of using overly wordy titles that started more or less with another film You are the Apple of my Eye (《那些年，我們一起追的女孩》, literally, “Those years, and those girls we chased together”). This formula is a little played out now in popular culture, however, and I think they could have gone with something a little snappier. There’s also a euphemistic tone to the Chinese title, as the marriage part is not stated overtly, referred to just as “becoming family.” The English title, although a little inaccurate in terms of spirit versus corpse, has a touch of humour to it in its echo of the phrase “over my dead body,” so I’d say the English title works quite well, as it reflects the enmity between the two main characters at the outset in typical rom-com fashion.
The film is largely well-meaning in its message: essentially that stereotypes and discrimination are a result of ignorance, and that, once homophobic people interact in a meaningful way with gay people, they begin to see them as human.
You might have heard quite a lot of talk about permanent residents and citizens of Taiwan getting an NT$6,000 tax rebate a while back, one of the last things outgoing Premier Su Tseng-chang did before he left office.
Ehhhh… that was back in January, when does the money come in?
The website is here and went live for registration for direct deposits to bank account Wednesday,March 22 at 8 am for those whose IDs end in a zero or a one; those whose IDs end in a two or three on Thursday, March 23 at 8 am; those whose IDs end in a four and five on Friday, March 24; six and seven on Saturday, March 25; and eight and nine on Sunday, March 26. After that, you can register regardless of your ID number. The ATM and Post Office options are also now available.
Click 登記入帳 to register to get the money directly deposited to your bank. You’ll need to fill in your ARC no., the 12 digit number on your NHI card and your bank and bank account number.
So… how do I get my grubby little hands on it?(Updated March 16, 2023)
As you may or may not know, as opposed to the stimulus vouchers issued previously, this time they are issuing cash directly. According to Minister Audrey Tang, there are three main ways to collect your tax rebate (there are two other categories for special categories including remote areas, but not super important for the majority of us):
Straight to yourbank account – you can log into the online system with your NHI card and will have the option to have the money deposited directly into your bank account.
Withdrawing the cash direct from an ATM – you can go to an ATM at one of 12 appointed banks and enter your NHI card number and ID number to allow you to withdraw the cash immediately. (Prepare for some hiccups for APRC holders with this option in my estimation).
Post office counter service – for those who are fans of queueing, you can also get the cash at a post office with your ID/APRC and NHI card. If you’re a real queue aficionado and want to eat up at least a few hours, you can try to get it on the first day or target an area of Taipei with a higher concentration of senior citizens. Alternatively, you can go with option 1 and then queue up for a distinctly average beef noodle restaurant instead.
UPDATE (March 29, 2023):
You can check if you successfully registered using the tool below:
When you click “查詢登記結果” (Check the results of registration), you’ll be prompted to enter your ARC number and the 12 digits on the front of your NHI card. And if you were successful it should give you a message like this:
“Registration complete, the money will enter your account soon.”
You can now borrow a power bank at any 7-11 and leave it back at any other branch. The rental fee is NT$12 per hour, with a 24-hour max charge of NT$36 and a 72-hour maximum rental period. They will hold NT$300 on your card until you return it. If you want to cancel a transaction, you can also return it within 10 minutes without charge. You can check out a list of participating stores here! Wireless and wired charging are both available for Android and Apple.
First, check to see if the Ibon machine at the 7-11 you’re at has any power banks inserted at the bottom. If not, they might all have been rented, or it might not be a participating store. If you do see power banks, you can follow the steps below to rent:
Step 1: At the Ibon Machine main menu, hit 「生活服務」 (everyday services)
In a previous post, I mentioned the phrase 「是在哈囉」 to mean *sassy voice*”Hello~~!” or “What the f*ck is going on?” Well, recently, I spotted a variant of this phrase on a friend’s Facebook post, playing on the similarity in sound: 「是在哈佛」, which is used to mean the same thing, but with a twist:
“I can’t get through to any of the numbers for confirmed positive cases. I can’t get through to the remote-treatment number I can’t get through to my district office It’s the fifth day and I still haven’t received the welfare package and I’m yet to receive my quarantine notice.”
“None of the options on the “Health Companion” app work, why did they even launch it? Of the mass of various apps launched by hospitals, I wasn’t able to use even one (I need a remote consultation). I called the number for the health department of the District Office (Wanhua District) 23x33x92 It told me to call 23x33x92 instead. What the f*ck is with giving out the same number??“
“When I dialed it again it said the line was busy, and if I wanted to continue waiting I could press *. After I pressed *, it said this option was invalid and the line cut off. I wasn’t able to get through to any of the numbers, so it seems Betelnut Ko Wen-je (Taipei Mayor) just wants people to die at home.”
The “hello” in the original phrase is switched up for the Chinese word for Harvard. This phrase originates from the suggestion that Christine Fan (范瑋琪) stated that she was a Harvard alumnus on her CV, when, in fact, she transferred to the Harvard Division of Continuing Education in the second year of a degree and never graduated. The implication in highly-competitive Taiwan is that the Harvard Division of Continuing Education does not count as Harvard proper and that she was trying to plump up her CV, although the portrayal of her as a Harvard grad seems largely to have been led by the media.
The phrase still retains the meaning of the original, basically “What the f*ck is that all about?” but with an extra pop culture reference added.
The reference to Betelnut Ko Wen-je to refer to the Taipei Mayor originates in a series of pranks played by high-schoolers on politicians, where they ask to take a photo together and then ask them awkward questions or find other creative forms of embarrassing them. In this instance, the high-schooler dressed up (rather subtly) as a betelnut to take a photo with Ko:
The Taiwanese language has a lot of imported words from Japanese, but one of the most common and fun is “Asaburo” (often transliterated into Chinese as 「阿薩布魯」) used to refer to something messy or chaotic. Like, for example in this article:
The early-warning radar deployed on Dongyin Island isn’t a hodge-podge of low-grade copper and shoddy tin, but is rather an AN/FPS-117 3-dimensional air search radar, like those watching over the northern and southern extremes of Taiwan from an altitude of over 1,000 meters above sea-level at the Songshan and Dahanshan radar stations.
The funny thing about this word, however, is that in Japanese (朝風呂/あさぶろ/asaburo) it only refers to morning baths.
The running theory in Taiwan (and among my colleagues when I discussed it with them) is that this word was adopted to mean messy, as the idea of bathing in the morning is a messy thing to do. This touches on a bit of a cultural difference between Taiwan and the UK/Ireland as, although I remember having a bath every night before bed as a child, it was the norm for my entire family to shower in the morning before school/work once we were old enough to wash ourselves. In Taiwan, the general idea is that you should be clean when you go to bed, whereas in the UK/Ireland the general idea is that a shower in the morning wakes you up. If you’ve ever lived with a Taiwanese person, you’ll register their dismay if you choose to shower in the morning instead of before bed.
You can always shower twice a day, especially during the humid summers in Taiwan, to keep everyone happy.
Tones play an even more important role in Chinese than accurate pronunciation a lot of the time, but you know you’re swimming in the deep end when even native speakers have to clarify the difference.
One of my friends was talking about a colleague of theirs and said:
「XX很雷，跟他共事很累。」 “XX is a real liability, working with him is exhausting.”
When the person he was talking to appeared confused, another friend clarified 「地雷的雷」.
Literally “thunder,” or “landmine” in the context of 「地雷」, 「雷」lei2 is an adjective used to describe someone as clumsy or always mucking things up. My friend made a real effort to emphasize that it was second tone, to distinguish it from 「累」 lei4 (tiring/tired).
