Blinky_katt
Yeah, people when talking politely to their taxi driver, or any skilled trades worker really, would call them “师傅” as well. The term generally has a strong connotation of the traditional culture and all the types of works and environments that passed on knowledge via apprenticeships.
Well, the DPP has been advocating for more than a decade that Taiwan has nothing to do with China, or Chinese culture, not historically, not now. Even when the KMT were in power for decades, due to its own history of “fighting” against the CPC, they implemted full-on propaganda about how crappy Mainland China was, how horrific was the communist system there, how oppressive, how Mainlanders hate them and always only want to oppress the Taiwanese, etc. Etc.
Honestly the Taiwanese people are pretty innocent folks mostly, not very interested in political nuances, but after all these decades of propaganda from every single party, separatism is basically politically correctness there now. The constitution, along with the “ROC” name, alas, might as well just be a piece of paper
In the tier-1 cities most people, especially younger, can manage a few words in English (although many are very accented and may be hard to understand) and all public transportation and facilities will have English translation accompanied.
Outside of those, English REALLY isn’t a lingua franca here, people will not even be able to guess what you’re trying to convey in English. Also, many of the wordless assumptions behind design, procedures, and how things work that many travelers can rely on in countries with more Western influence are also different, which can be challenging.
Massive upsides: everyone is comfortable if you use translation apps or devices to communicate; people are friendly and approachable and pretty social culture-wise, and will go out of their way to help you. It’s also extremely safe everywhere, well organized, easy to travel to wherever you care to go, and everything is accessible digitally (although sadly you’d have to be able to read Chinese for most of apps and websites, but it’ll be easy for other ppl to help you out by just pulling out their own phones to do xyz).
So yes, you absolutely can go as a tourist without knowing the language ;D
It used to be pretty interesting to read people’s questions with genuine attempts at answering. I paid the $5 to be able to post… Haven’t been back in years though
Sharing borders with China, they have culturally-held reservations /anger /fear /disgruntledness about China’s influence and effects reaching within their lands, and believes China had invaded them or ruled over them unfairly at various points from ancient times to the Vietnamese Communist era, etc etc. All the typical love-and-hate between lands that were side by side for thousands of years with endless cycles of good times and bad. Relationship status: it’s complicated.
So Vietnam geopolitically aims to find other great powers—USA in this case, USSR in the past, etc—to counter balance China. Simultaneously, they have been part of the sinosphere for centuries and does know the need and the how of working WITH China too.
K that’s beyond my knowledge level to answer xD I mostly know what Huawei want it to become and how they likely can make it happen compared to Google Home and Apple versions of the same dream but badly realized, give the more friendly environment to Huawei in China, its relationship with more companies and branches of products, and ppl being more used to doing literally everything already via their mobile os and very willing to be even more immersed