Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Boys are still favoured over girls in some families, and it is not uncommon to hear of a
mother who is pregnant once again because her first three children were girls. But this is
getting less and less common and comes down to individual family pressure rather than
societal.
After giving birth, Taiwanese women partake of the month-long
zuo yuezi,
an ancient
custom of postpartum recuperation with specific dietary and movement restrictions.
These days
zuo yuezi
nursing centres provide 24-hour assistance in a hotel-like setting.
Lifestyle
Despite the low birth and marriage rate, family still remains central to Taiwanese life.
Both young and old are generally deeply committed to each other. Parents dote on and
indulge children in a way that seems developmentally harmful to many Westerners, while
adult children continue to defer to their parents for major decisions. Male offspring take
their role as guardian of the family name with utter seriousness.
Most people in Taiwan live in crowded urban conditions. However, with low taxes,
cheap utilities, fresh local foods, to say nothing of excellent low-cost universal medical
care, people enjoy a good balance between the cost of living and living quality. (On the
other hand, stagnating wages are a major problem for young people;
Click here
.) Life
expectancy is 83 years for women and 77 years for men.
One of the most unfortunate parts of Taiwanese life is education: an emphasis on rote
learning means kids are burdened with long hours of homework and evenings spent at
cram schools. Elementary school is fairly low pressure, but junior and senior high
schools are true soul crushers and suicide is common among teens.
Like their peers in the West, young Taiwanese have taken to pop culture, casual dating,
sexual experimentation, (limited) drug and alcohol use, and expressing themselves with
fashion choices. They have been labeled the Strawberry Generation in that they look per-
fect but can't bear pressure. While often true, many in this generation are also proving to
be devoted to social causes and willing to put themselves on the line in protests as shown
in 2013 when 250,000 mostly under-30s protested in front of the Presidential Palace over
the death-by-torture of a young army recruit. Strawberries are also more than willing to
drop out of the rat race to pursue a dream.
In general, relationships are the key to Taiwanese society and this is expressed in the
term
guānxi.
To get something done, it's often been easier to go through a back door,
rather than through official channels. This has serious implications for the rule-of-law,
