Thu 15 May 2008
A Taiwanese View of the World
Posted by Kerim under Culture Notes , East Asia , Visual Anthropology[10] Comments
Since we are talking about how stereotypes explain “more about the people making the statements than the people described in them” I thought it worthwhile to take some time in order to translate this map which has been floating around the Taiwanese internets.
I have no idea who the original author is, but I can promise you that my Taiwanese colleagues find this map to be both accurate and hilarious (“its funny because its so true”). It purports to show what anthropologists wish to study: how Taiwanese view the world.
I’ve been informed that some of my translations lack the local nuance which makes this map so funny. For instance, where I wrote “blonde babes” one friend implied that I should have written something more like “blonde hos” and the word I translated as Aborigine is far less polite, etc. In some cases I’ve included additional notes on the map which you will only be able to read at full resolution.








