The Second System

‘One country, two systems’ is a political principle proposed and created by Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s. On one hand, as a philosophical and legal framework, it has been used as a tool to reunify China. On the other hand, it helps to explain the differences in the economic, social, cultural, and political climate between mainland China and Hong Kong/Macau/Taiwan. This is a topic that has been researched and written about to death, so I’m not trying to say anything novel or inflammatory here. I just want to share some minutia that I’ve casually observed over the past couple of days in Taipei.

On my first night here, during a ride to my brother’s house from the airport, the cabbie whose cab I was in went out of his way to stop at a zebra line (that’s a direct translation from Chinese for the word ‘crosswalk’) and wave across a group of people waiting to get to the other side of the road. Unheard of! My second night here, I went out to a buffet hot pot dinner with a group of friends. *Note: Taiwanese hot pot is individually-sized, unlike the communal style pots found in most hot pot restaurants on the mainland. Anyway, at the end of the meal, there were 2 eggs leftover that hadn’t been touched. One of my buddies grabbed them and walked back up to the food station, stacking the pair of unfertilized eggs nicely back where they came from. On a walk this morning, some guy on a bicycle coming from behind me slowed his pace to look over, make eye contact, and say “thank you” as I moved sideways to let him pass. On the subway just a few hours ago, I took the photo that you can see on the right side of this entry. A cute sounding woman (ok, it was probably just a robot) would come on the metro’s PA system every 3 minutes or so and request, “When using a cell phone, please lower your voice so as to avoid interfering with the comfort of other passengers.”

I know my buddies from Beijing are a bit jealous of me now, if only for a couple minutes. “Second” isn’t always the first loser. Also...random...below is a funny video I took of a couple working out alongside one of Taipei’s many scenic riverside paths.