Betelnut Babes in Taiwan #1
On one side of the Taiwanese cultural spectrum you have a nation of people who’ll sing the praises of traditionalism, worshipping your parents, starting your own business, not giving a crap about what goes on in the world (except for what happens in Japan, China, Lady Gaga and Korea) and working hard.
Perfectly counterbalancing this image are the thousands of discarded betelnut boxes that litter the island. On each of these boxes you’ve usually got a racy picture of some girl, with the idea being I guess to distract the purchaser from the fact that oral cancer continuously ranks as one of the top causes of death in Taiwan.
Whether you’re out on a field trip as an English teacher, showing your visiting parents around where you live, trying to keep a straight face as you show your newly arrived friend around “traditional Taiwan” or just walking the dog on a sunny summer morning, the abundance of these little slutty boxes lying around never fails to amuse.
As such I’ve decided to catalogue the photographable betelnut babe boxes I stumble across in my travels.
The rules for qualification being that I have to come across the box randomly, it has to have been discarded as trash in a public area and it can’t be my own trash (ie. I can’t just go buy betelnut and throw out the box myself just to take a photo).
I’ve been snapping these boxes for a few months now and I figure I’ve got enough (and will continue to acquire enough thanks to Taiwan’s large betelnut-chewing “I don’t give a crap about the environment” population), to make this a semi-regular feature of the blog.
Spotted on the side of Provincial Highway #3 somewhere in central Taiwan’s Taoyuan County, here’s the first installment of “Betelnut Babes in Taiwan”:
Nice balloon breasts but what’s up with the purple beanie and scarf?
June 28th, 2012 at 6:00 pm mike(Quote)
Of all the possible things you could choose to write about Taiwan and its people, you decide to go for bits of trash you find lying around on the ground? Classy.
Anyway, I’ve always seen betelnut sold in transparent, little polythene bags; that box looks like its designed to hold playing cards, not betelnut. Why else would the little semi-circle cut out on the side be there if not to allow you to thumb out a 10 of clubs or something?
June 28th, 2012 at 6:22 pm Oz(Quote)
Damn straight. I’ve learnt a lot from observing Taiwan’s roadsides as I cycle around.
The bags come inside the boxes. Not all places use them but a fair few do judging the frequency in which I come across these boxes.
June 28th, 2012 at 6:24 pm TaiwanTeacher(Quote)
Having never bought any of these boxes myself, I wish to thank you for helping me to discover why my wife’s 12-year-old nephew keeps stuffing empty betelnut boxes under his mattress… haha!
As with Mike, I most often see betelnuts being sold in baggies. However, the ones in boxes are the more common variety used when delivering to an establishment such as a restaurant or bar.
I look forward to seeing your whole collection posted herein. One at a time, we can suggest names for each of the ladies, and then later on vote online as a means to establish the one gal with whom we’d most like to share our nuts.
I suggest we call this one, “Beret Babe”.
June 28th, 2012 at 11:04 pm James(Quote)
Bags are nearly always for betel leaf-wrapped (包葉) variety of binglang which are more popular down south (they’re available pretty much everywhere in the north, too, though).
The boxes are always (in my experience) for the ‘convenient’ lime (as in calcium hydroxide)-filled nuts sans leaf wrap.
The lasses on the boxes are all Japanese soft-porn types. Apart from under TT’s wife’s nephew’s bed, the preponderance of these boxes is to be found at KTVs, jiudians and ‘talking-bars’, so the images always kind of fitted with that to me.
June 29th, 2012 at 2:45 am blobOfNeurons(Quote)
Those are betalnut containers? It all makes sense now …
I always wondered why someone would just throw away playing card boxes … what would they use to carry around the cards?
July 11th, 2012 at 8:09 pm TaiwanTeacher(Quote)
More babe pics, Oz! Who cares if they are Japanese? hahaha