There are some things you can’t do in a public swimming pool in Taiwan.

The first and perhaps most annoying rule is that you have to swim with one of those annoying shower caps.

The second is that you can’t wear board shorts (yes all you skinny guys are going to put up with looking like malnourished African children if you want to swim here).

And the third, if you don’t have your own towel… and refuse to purchase one on loan from the swimming pool – you don’t get in.

Period.

Following these rules is a no brainer – it’s pretty much the same everywhere you go island wide and really, apart from the aesthetic inconvenience to your pride – is it really that hard to follow?

Apparently so.

Last Sunday a failure to follow these seemingly simple rules led to the uncovering of two of Taiwan’s biggest fuckwits ever, revelations of illegal  stripping and even managed to drag in the country’s second largest political party, the DPP.

Seriously… all over a towel.

To digest the full extent of fuckwittery on display by the characters in this story, I’ve decided to split the narrative up into two parts.



“Eric”, the idiotically short fused English teacher from Hsinchu

Eric is your bog standard English teacher from Taiwan. White and hailing from Hsinchu, geographically about a third of the way down the island in the mid north, Eric no doubt got bored with his surroundings and in his spare time fled to the nation’s capital, Taipei.

Here he did the usual things with his girlfriend, go clubbing, get drunk… y’know – all the stuff that isn’t half as fun to do in one of the smaller cities of Taiwan.

Eric however wasn’t quite the bog standard teacher he appeared to be. Eric you see, had a dirty little secret.

Not content with the bucketloads of money to be made teaching English, Eric moonlighted as a stripper in Taipei for some extra cash.

That, and evidently he had a temper on him as explosive as a mouthful of left over kung-pow chicken chillies.

Last Sunday, Eric and his girlfriend decided to go swimming in Taipei City’s Wanhua district (south area of the city).

Having forgotten his towel, Eric was promptly informed by the staff desk that he would not be permitted entry.

Now usually in these situations, for a small fee, the swimming pool will offer you a towel of their own… but judging by Eric’s reaction (he no doubt thought he’d just be fine using his girlfriend’s towel to save a few bucks), this was an unacceptable compromise.

You see, upon being told he wouldn’t be able to enter the swimming pool without a towel, Eric got ‘involved in a dispute with a 27-year-old Taipei resident Wu Hong Jianyi ‘.

As I understand it, this dispute did indeed get physical (despite the Taipei Times claim it ‘almost involved in a physical confrontation‘) between Eric and another staffer who spoke very little English.

After being pulled off the guy, according to my girlfriend, Eric then apparently spat in his face.

Not only that, but during the confrontation Wu claims that Eric

said he was a gangster and I would pay for not minding my own business …


Oh dear, a gangster…?

What an unbelievable fuckwit.



Wu – the self righteous swimming pool clerk

For Wu, it should have been like any other ordinary day at the swimming pool. People in, people swim and people out.

All that however changed when Eric, the foreign teacher from Hsinchu rocked up.

Eric had forgotten his towel, and after shouting at Wu’s fellow employee and getting violent, Wu decided to step in and put a stop to Eric’s nonsense.

Having been ‘almost involved in a physical confrontation” with the foreigner, who threatened to hurt him’, Wu was furious and instead of simply reporting the incident to his boss, took matters into his own hands.

Over the next few days, somehow Wu ‘discovered’ that Eric was a registered teacher in Hsinchu City… but in his spare time took on extra work as a stripper in Taipei City.

This second job did not appear to be covered by Eric’s ARC and Wu promptly reported Eric to the authorities.

One might first ask how Wu got Eric’s details, and the only explanation I can come up with is that Eric was a regular at the pool who had his details on file.

Then one might ask how Wu got Eric’s employment details and discovered Eric was working as a stripper… and the only connection I can come up with is some investigative work on Facebook or some such.

How else is a swimming pool clerk going to ascertain the work details of a foreign national working in Taiwan… let alone find out that he’s working as a stripper too!

According to the Taipei Times, The Taiwanese government have three public servants handling approximately 30,000 white collar workers, so there’s no way they did the legwork on this case on their own in a week.


Hilariously, instead of this being handled quietly by the local police and immigration, with Eric being handed down an appropriate legal punishment (or even better, deportation), this incident was escalated and made headlines in Taiwan all week.

Hell, even the DPP got directly involved with DPP Taipei City Councilor Hung Chien-yi (洪健益) accusing

the foreigner of threatening Taiwanese and ignoring the country’s laws by illegally moonlighting, urging the Taipei City Government and the Taipei City Police Department to clamp down on the illegal jobs of so-called white-collar foreign workers.

“Taiwan is a friendly country and we welcome foreigners to work and live here legally. What we do not allow is any acts of disrespect toward Taiwanese and illegal acts from people like ‘Mr Eric”


I wholeheartedly agree about the illegal acts… but disrespect? What the fuck is that all about? Are Taiwanese people some infallible self-righteous entity now?

Eric is without a doubt the biggest fuckwit foreigner I’ve read about in Taiwan all year, and he absolutely deserves to be kicked out of the country. Even if immigration legally decide against this, I’d go one step further and plead with them to do so as a favour to the rest of us living here.

Fuck off back to England Eric, you’re a tool. Spitting on people and claiming to be a gangster… there’s no excuse for that.

But since when was showing disrespect to Taiwanese people illegal, as Hung implies. Jesus Christ princess, if I had to crack the sads everytime I was shown disrespect in Taiwan I’d have been strung up by the media and deported just days after arriving.

Harden the fuck up Taiwan.

Disrespect shouldn’t be encouraged by anyone towards anyone… but that doesn’t mean it’s illegal. People here treat eachother like shit on the roads, like shit at work, like shit in relationships, like shit in restaurants… so let’s not pretend like all of a sudden Taiwan is some bastion of a respectful society.

By and large most people in Taiwan are respectful of eachother most of the time but there’s always going to be fuckwits who ruin it for everyone. Chastise them by all means but really, there’s no need to turn events like this into an ‘us vs. them‘ scenario.

Eric is a fuckwit for putting on display a simply atrocious exhibit of antisocial behaviour, and Wu is a fuckwit for practically stalking the guy afterwards.

Meanwhile shame on the DPP for trying to turn this into a race issue. Eric might very well be a racist bastard with superiority issues, but ‘we don’t allow any acts of disrespect towards Taiwanese?‘

Try telling that to the taxi drivers who cause near accidents every other minute of every day and then yell abuse about it, or the old person who thinks it’s perfectly fine to cut in line, the idiots who don’t understand the simple concept of ‘WAIT FOR PEOPLE TO GET OFF THE MRT BEFORE YOU BARGE ON!’, the sleazy looking guys in white shirts and black pants standing outside ‘girl clubs’ who give every female the once over as they walk by, the hoardes of people who won’t even acknowledge you when you greet them with a hello (in Chinese or English), the south east Asian workers who have a social status barely above Taiwan’s stray dogs and the general rule that, so long as your saving face, it’s perfectly acceptable to lie through your teeth and completely re-engineer reality.

Taiwan, like any other country on the planet is full of disrespect amongst its locals and pretending otherwise, or that this is something localised to just foreigners, is an indefensible farce.


Footnote: Here’s a Chinese language news report from CIT about the incident with footage;



“Do you know who I am?”

…again, what a complete fuckwit.



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