Observing Intercultural Communications

In this blog post, I am going to describe an intercultural scenario that I have observed when I was in Taiwan last December. This incident happened at Taipei Railway Station on day 1. My family and I did not know how to get to Hualien because the railway transport system in Taiwan was much more complicated and confusing than what we have in Singapore. Basically, there are 3 different types of trains available at the Taipei Railway Station. They are the Taipei Metro (similar to Singapore's MRT), Taiwan Railway and Taiwan High Speed Rail (similar to Japan's 'bullet train'). Not knowing which is the correct one to take, we stood in the middle of the station lobby holding maps and brochures of the different trains to have a discussion.

In the midst of the discussion, a Taiwanese lady, in her mid-thirties, walked past and overheard our conversation. Without hesitation, she approached us and asked us if we need help. We explained our situation to her and she gave us an introduction on each of the 3 trains, including a rough gauge of the ticket prices and train timings. She even showed us the way to buy the train tickets. From her detailed introduction and enthusiasm while talking to us, we thought that she is a staff of the railway station. Much to our surprise, she is just a random passer-by! Throughout the whole trip, we met a lot of friendly and helpful Taiwanese who offered us help whenever we needed it. Some were even voluntary.

As a Singaporean, I was really shocked by the high level of friendliness and initiative that most Taiwanese have. In Taiwan, it is common for help to be offered even without request whereas in Singapore, it is common to be shunned by people or be shown a straight face when you ask them for help. Maybe it is linked to the 'kiasi' culture in Singapore or how we were being brought up to not talk to strangers? I hope I am not over-generalizing over here.