Mondo Taiwan - Architecture: Bathroom Tiles Outside, Squat Toilets Inside

ARCHITECTURE

(Last update to this page: 1/27/2003)

Tunghai University's Luce Chapel designed by I.M. Pei

"Modern Architecture"

In a place where you can find both centuries-old temples and modern structures by I.M. P e i, you'd expect a little more from the average building. However, many buildings designed in the traditional style are falling apart, and little is being done to preserve them. Instead, they're being replaced by "modern" concrete structures covered with bathroom tiles! (see below) Others seem to be built in the hopes that someone will build something adjacent to the existing structure and use the extruding rebar in the process. Wires for electricity, telephones, and cable TV are left in place when no longer used, and new ones are slapped up with absolute disregard for aesthetics.

"Rice in every pot and a water tower on every roof"

In Taiwan, although you can find community water towers in some neighborhoods, practically every residence has its own. This provides quite a "sense of place" in case you ever forget where you are. It also helps when you live in a place where it seems that every time it rains heavily, the water supply is shut down (due to landslides mucking up the resevoirs).

Excuse me, can I pee here?

Chiang Kai-Shek National
Concert Hall, Taipei

Taichung's City Park
(where you can hang out
with the hookers)

"The land of metal doors"

"The Land of Metal Doors"

In many areas, homes are fronted by large, ugly, rusting metal sliding doors which must be flung open with a great clatter at 7:00 every morning and slammed shut late at night -- preferably after midnight, when the firecrackers are going off. It's part of a great Taiwanese tradition. Yeah, that's the ticket! Supposedly, these doors exist for security reasons, but it seems to be a case of "keeping up with the Chens." If you don't have a metal door, you're a nobody. You must not have anything worth stealing. (Just be sure to leave all your shoes outside.)

"Mail, man!"

While your house or apartment will probably come with a fully working mailbox, your mailman might not know how to use it. (I don't use the gender-neutral "mail carrier" because I've never seen a woman doing this job here.) First of all, if he gets the mail into the box at all, it'll only be in halfway -- especially if you have a lock on the box. (Is this just to be sure there will be problems for everyone?) If you've got your mailbox labeled nicely with your name and everything, you'll certainly get your neighbor's mail -- and vice-versa.

Especially in "strip mall" type businesses, the mailman will ride his motorcycle along the sidewalk and plop the day's mail on the ground in front of the door. If you're "lucky," he'll blow his horn to let you know he's been there so you can pick it up before a stray dog does its business on it. Also, it may come bundled together with a rubber band or a staple.

I'm not sure if this counts as "positive" or not, but you also might discover that the mail comes more than once a day. In fact, I've even received a package (halfway) in my mailbox on a Sunday! Junk mail, for certain, will come several times a day. My neighbors never fail to take it out of their box and dispose of it directly on the ground below the mailbox. One thing to always keep your eye out for among the junk is free tissue. Taiwanese often use small packs of tissue with advertising printed on the outside. They can come in quite handy. (See below to find out just why.)

"Smith, Locksmith"

The most common form of advertising in Taiwan has got to be the kind used by locksmiths and moving companies. Their stickers will be stuck with some sort of Super Glue on the bathroom tiles on the exterior of your house, on the mailbox, on the walls in the hall, on the ceiling (!), in the elevator, on the fire extinguisher, on your front door, and on the lock itself -- especially if you live in a "secure" apartment building. (Well, they are locksmiths -- maybe they're just bragging!) I often want to call them saying "I need help," then when they arrive, tell them I need their help in removing all the goddam stickers they put in my fucking building!

The stickers that moving companies will put on your building aren't as numerous, but they are even more obnoxious. The companies will use cherry pickers or whatever they have at their disposal to paste the A4-sized stickers on the front of your house out of (easy) reach by most. Occasionally, the city government will say they are going to remove them all, but their half-ass attempts do little to meet my expectations -- or put a dent in the problem.

"Where's the light switch?"

A foreigner in Taiwan is not likely to have an easy time with light switches here. (Hell, the locals do, too, but they're not accustomed to having an easy time with them.) Well, they do work the same way as they did where I come from, but they're usually not located where you would think they'd be. Because of my upbringing, I had come to expect that when I walk into a room I'll find the light switch for that room just inside the door, on the wall at about chest level, and on the side nearest the doorknob. Fat chance of that happening here. I've seen switches that were 20 or more feet away from the rooms whose lights they controlled.

Another thing that drives me nuts is these banks of light switches: 2, 3, or even 6 switches in one place controlling most of the lights on that floor of the building. Other than in my apartment, you'll have a hard time figuring out which switch controls which light. In a 2-switch panel, you might expect the one on the left to control the light on the left, and the switch on the right to control the light on the right. In Taiwan, it's usually the opposite. The confusion is compounded when you put even more switches in one panel. With these, you'll find all sorts of variations, but rarely the correct one. When I moved into my current apartment, rewiring the light switches to match my expectations was one of the first jobs I took on. Still, the bedroom and bathroom lights being outside of these rooms feels weird.

"Water Torture"

To a newcomer, Taiwan's plumbing can prove to be a source of intriguing questions. While bathtubs do exist here, the average Taiwanese bathroom doesn't have one. When taking showers, Taiwanese people get the whole bathroom wet! Being that there's no tub, there most likely won't be a shower curtain. (Be careful if you go in there wearing socks. This is why there are slippers by the door.) Most sinks will only have a single cold water faucet or occasionally 2 separate spigots for hot and cold. The hot one will often not work (What year is this?!), but if it does you may have to turn on the gas to make sure it does so. In spite of all this backwardness, there are hands-free faucets and auto-flushing urinals to be found in many public places (malls, restaurants, etc.). Cool, but "Huh?"

And if you're brave enough to drink the tap water, be sure to boil it first using one of those pots you can find in every Taiwanese home. It's usually a case of boiling off the disinfectant chemicals, but there are occasionally outbreaks of disease due to certain disgusting things seeping into the water supply. Maybe you'd better just stick to bottled water. But then again, a lot of that (80% of it!) is of dubious quality.

"A (bath)room with a view"

If you're a male of the species, and you've got the condition known as "bashful bladder" (i.e., difficulty urinating in the presence of others), you'll surely have a tough time in Taiwan. Many men's rooms have their urinals in full view of passersby. If there happens to be a door on the bathroom you wish to use, it may be impossible to close. Add to that the very real possibility that the cleaning lady will come in unannounced. Privacy? Ha!

You may also be accustomed to staring at shiny white tiles while letting loose. Here's a new one for you. At the rest stops along Taiwan's freeways, you may find an open window just above the top of the urinal (probably to help ventilate the stench). Directly on the other side, there very well may be a woman washing her hands. (This has happened to me on more than one occasion.) Even if you don't have an overactive imagination like me, the possibilities are pretty disgusting!

"Copping a Squat"

Squat toilets are quite familiar to Taiwanese, but inexperienced foreigners need instructions on how to use them as well as handles to manage the physical difficulty involved. Shortly after my arrival in Taiwan, a squat toilet at the train station provided me with a very uncomfortable experience. For my NT$10 (about 25 cents), I was graciously provided with two (count 'em!) squares of toilet tissue. Ugh! My companion hadn't prepared me for this. I was worried about dropping my wallet into the toilet, soiling my pants, falling down, someone knocking on the door (someone did -- twice), and a million other things simultaneously. While most Taiwanese seem quite comfortable squatting with their feet flat on the floor, I needed to hold onto the wall behind me to keep from falling down. I wasn't sure which way to face or if it even mattered. (FYI, you should face the "cup.") Taiwanese people know all these things and that they should carry a pack of tissue with them wherever they go, but I was completely ignorant of any of this. (For your info, you can usually buy a small pack of tissure for about NT$10 nearby or inside of the restroom.) Click here to view a Japanese site that uses Shockwave to illustrate how to use a squat toilet! If you're not sure how it works, just wait long enough for the whole page to load, then click the little toilet "icon" after viewing each frame to advance to the next image.

While more and more of the familiar "Western-style" toilets are making their way into public places, they are definitely fewer and farther between, and the ones you sit on will be just as disgusting as those in Western countries -- maybe worse! Why? Some Taiwanese like to stand on the seat and use this kind of toilet as if it were a squat toilet. This leads to both broken toilets and doodie-coated seats. Yeeeeech!

"Coinless Public Telephones"

For NT$100 (about US$3), you can buy a phone card at most convenience stores that lets you use many payphones around Taiwan (the beige ones). There are also NT$200 cards for use in other public telephones (the dark gray ones). There are coin-operated phones around, too (the aqua ones), but it's very convenient to have a card which you can just slip into a slot in the telephone. The phone simply deducts the amount used and makes a mark on the card to let you know how much "money" you still have in the card. The phones also have a digital display that lets you know how much money you're spending. (Call somebody's cell phone, and you can almost imagine that you're using a slot machine!) The downside is that people don't "recycle" the cards, but some people collect them for the pictures they have on the front.

By the way, there's another kind of pay telephone that uses coins which confused the hell out of me for years. One reason was unfamiliarity. Another was that I couldn't read the instructions very well. This kind of payphone looks like a regular tabletop phone on steroids. You can find these on the counters of coffeeshops, teahouses, and restaurants. To use this kind, first insert your coins (at least NT$2 for a local call, NT$5 for long distance, or NT$10 if you're calling someone's cell phone), then dial the number. When someone picks up on the other end, quickly press the large button near the top of the phone (usually red) to complete the connection. Otherwise, the person you're calling won't hear anything, and they'll hang up.

"Interstellar Communications Transponders?"

For the longest time, I wondered why so many buildings in Taiwan have rebar sticking out of their ugly gray sides. After discussing this with more people than I can remember (including an architecture major), I came to the conclusion that they must be there just in case somebody wants to build something abutting the structure that was there first. Either that, or ET's phoning home to Taiwan (with one of those cards, probably)!

Alexander the Great 'untied' the Gordian Knot with his SWORD!

Help ! ! !

"Safety Fir-- OUCH!"

Taiwan is a constant myriad of construction and demolition. This may be because much of the construction is illegal, dangerous, or both. Although the axiom "safety first" is ubiquitous in Taiwan, "summer homes" like the Lincoln Mansions condos are built with complete and utter disregard for safety. During Typhoon Winnie in late 1997, a landslide toppled an illegally constructed 5-story structure killing several people. As of February 2000, the residents were still fighting for compensation. The planners of these "summer homes" only care about quick profit and provide no service after they get their money.

Read what the Taipei Times says about what the Lincoln Mansions complex is like 5 years later here. Pay particular attention to the line that reads, "the construction company has very good relations with important officials in the central government."

"Safety in the News" has moved here.

"Do-It-Yourself Carcinoma"

Something I'd never heard of before coming to Taiwan was "wall cancer," but I've seen too many examples of it to count them all. This phenomenon occurs when cheap concrete made with sea sand absorbs water and begins to disintegrate. First, the paint peels, then the concrete wall begins to take on a porous appearance and begins slowly crumbling away. If it's in the ceiling, a large chunk could come crashing down on your head -- in the name of "anarcho-capitalism," of course. No chemotherapy will cure this form of cancer, however. The best solution is to move. But if you bought a residence (house, condo, etc.) which has this kind of problem, you might just be stuck with it.

Here are some links about wall cancer, most of which are in Big-5 Chinese encoding:
Visual Focus Paint Company (Big-5)
Lucky Will says you can fix-it-yourself. (If you can, then I don't believe it was really wall cancer!) (Big-5)
A photo of wall cancer

"Legoland?"

A more recent phenomenon which has been brought to light is the use of styrofoam as a "filler" where concrete should be used in construction. The builders put up these buildings at minimum cost then disappear, leaving the buyers with absolutely no recourse if they discover this (before the building falls on their heads). Speaking of money, some of the money obviously goes into the pockets of people working for the Taiwan government who approve such construction projects and who go to great lengths to cover up these improprieties.

"People Mountain, People Sea"

Owing to the fact that the interior of the island has some of the highest mountains in Asia (Jade Mountain, also known as Yushan, rises to 3,952 meters--176 meters taller than Mount Fuji!), Taiwan's remaining inhabitable area is quite crowded. It is, in fact, one of the most densely populated places on the planet. However, an apparent lack of any sort of urban planning takes something which is already a problem and makes it even worse. It is a vicious cycle. The more crowded it becomes, the less people seem to even try to apply aesthetic principles to construction. It's as though the most important thing is to cram the most stuff into the smallest possible space, regardless of anything else. There are very few lawns to be seen in Taiwan. I've often wondered if there's even a word for "lawn" in the local language! On holidays such as Lunar New Year, some places become so crowded that you can hardly move. Mandarin-speaking people have a phrase to describe this:

, which -- literally translated -- is "people mountain, people sea."

Lunar New Year near the Matsu Temple in Peikang (Beigang)
This is what the Taiwanese call "People Mountain, People Sea"

Please let us know if any information here is inaccurate or outdated. If you have any suggestions, comments, complaints, or criticism, send them to us, or wither away in complacency ! ! ! ! ! MondoTaiwan(at)mailcity.com

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