The Taipei Kid => Taipei Tops for Rudeness (WTF?)
The China Post => New Yorkers most polite, Taipei residents among the rudest
My wife brought a Chinese-language news article siting a Reader’s Digest article to my attention the other day. Apparently Taipei came out at or near the bottom in terms of the Digest’s rudeness scale for cities. The article she was reading was in Chinese, so there wasn’t much point in my blogging it – and naturally, I haven’t read it, but the China Post has reported on it in English. (Found this by way of the Taipei Kid.)
Apparently the folks are the Digest secretly followed people around and observed things such things as opening doors, saying “thank you”, helping people pick things up that are dropped, etc. – All definitions of politeness entirely by Western standards. I don’t blame the people of Taipei for being miffed about this.
My experience has always been that people – at least those that have any real reason to interact with me – are kind to the point of being almost annoying. They try to do everything they can for you, even if you don’t want them to.
As for complete strangers… well, they exist in a state of polite indifference, but none have ever been rude to me.
The survey is a crock.