tv

In the more than 3 years that I've lived in Taipei, I never bothered to get cable or any other kind of tv programming. As much as I miss MTV and the like (I'm not kidding), every time I involuntarily happen to watch some Taiwanese tv, I know it was the right decision. The main purpose of Taiwanese tv seems to be to drive you mad. Well, I guess the cooking shows, dubbed Korean soaps and silly game shows are sort of okay if you're into this kind of thing. News, however, seem simply unbearable. Like, two days ago. As every other day, I went to the gym and started pedalling on the exercise bike in front of the rows of muted tvs. I usually choose a position between HBO, Cinemax and CNN, scan the newsbar of CNN and can or can not be bothered reading the Chinese subtitles for whatever is on on the movie channels (and try to avoid watching the ubiquitous snakes on National Geographic right next to HBO).

Anyway, above Cinemax, they had some "expert" analyzing somebody's Chinese name (you should have seen them after the President's grandchild was born: every channel had their own expert analyzing the stroke order, number and combination of the newborn's name and predicting its future from that). And just above HBO, they had a news channel with breaking news: A plane had taken off from our domestic airport that morning and - gasp - landed again after 2 minutes in the air. And there were - gasp - almost 80 people on board. And nobody - gasp - knew why the plane had landed again. And every news channel was trying to get the airline's president for an interview, and he - gasp - didn't know what was going on either.

So for the whole two hours that I was in the gym, there were always at least two news channels showing the same half minute of a plane taking off and landing and then the plane in question standing at the airport, and the airline's president in his news conference over and over again. And that's what most Taiwanese news programs seem to consist of: repeating about half a minute worth of filming for five minutes in a row and repeatedly hour after hour, blowing up insignificant events like domestic rows and car accidents and making it sound as if Taiwan was the most dangerous place in the world to live in (which btw, according to the World Bank, it actually is - due to the fact that seventy three percent of Taiwan's population are threatened by at least three natural disasters). And a lot of Taiwanese who regularly watch the news seem to think that Taiwan is indeed a very dangerous place (like my friend's Taiwanese boyfriend who told her it was waaaay too dangerous for her to have a technician install the washing machine for her while he was out - I told her to ask him what he thinks how I'm handling life, being on my own most of the time). Whereas most Westerners here agree that Taiwan is one of the safest places they've lived in. Sadly enough, Taiwanese newspapers aren't that much better. Taiwanese media seem to prefer sensationalism over serious journalism, as a friend of mine (who unlike me is a real writer) pointed out a while ago.

And what's up with the snakes on National Geographic? Are they having "Snake Year"? I don't mind snakes, I think they're fascinating, I like to look at them in the zoo, and the two or three times that I actually came across a snake outdoors, I was honestly thrilled. However, watching snakes in close-up, biting into the camera or eating baby squirrels every single time I'm doing my work-out sort of freaks me out.