Distance

The cultural understanding of distance is different in Taiwan. While this sounds like a trivial matter to devote time discussing, not only is it something that I encounter frequently in my daily life, but it is also something that I hadn’t considered malleable (nor considered all that much ever) before I moved to Taiwan. What follow are generalizations based on my observations of Americans and Taiwanese opinions on this matter, so of course there are exceptions and feel free to comment about any that you find particularly interesting.

 

I chalk the difference primarily up to this fact: Taiwan is about the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined; the United States, on the other hand, is that size plus another 48 states. Secondly, the primary transportation methods are not the same. I think that these two factors are largely responsible for creating a different cultural understanding of distance, but there are also some other things thrown into the mix that I’ll talk about as well.

 

As you might have guessed, Americans (myself and other Americans that I’ve mentioned this to) often find that Taiwanese people refer to distances that I find laughably close as “far”. Just because the United States is large, I don’t mean to imply that all Americans are necessarily running around all of it. I think there are still plenty of Americans out there who don’t travel particularly far (I can think of some folks off the top of my head that have hardly left the eastern seaboard in the entirety of their lives). Yet the American concept of distances still generally finds things much closer than the Taiwanese concept. Why?

 

To start, the daily usage of distance for most Americans is driving distance. More than a mile implies that it is appropriate to drive (get on a bike, sure, but still I think the vast majority of Americans would still land in the driving category). And generally speaking, I think most Americans view as any distance driving under half an hour to be “nearby”. This, with the potential of driving on a freeway at 60-80 miles an hour, leads to a range of about 30 miles. Yet many Americans also regularly commute for upwards of an hour, sometimes even stretching to 2-3 hour commutes on a daily basis. The American distance of “not that far” really probably extends up to a hundred miles by this definition. And depending on where you live in the US, this distance of “willing to drive because it’s not that far” probably ranges even further. When I lived in New Mexico in the middle of the desert, driving for an hour to Albuquerque seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do multiple times a week because there was simply nowhere else to get or do the things we wanted.

 

Americans also treasure the concept of the “road trip”, in which the act of traveling is a great part of the overall experience. Days are spent on the road are about covering distance, because one sure can cover a lot of distance while staying in the continental US if desired. And sometimes that’s just what one wants. So while I don’t think any American would consider New York city to San Francisco a trivial distance, I am pretty sure that we all know someone who has driven it. And the distance between New York and Boston? Really, that’s pretty small potatoes. Whether or not you want make the trip all the time is a different question, but I doubt that any American would choose “far” to describe the distance between those two cities. In fact, there have been plenty of times that I’ve described Boston as “close” to New York while abroad.

 

It just so happens that the distance between Kaohsiung and Taipei is approximately the distance between New York and Boston. And I guarantee that a Taiwanese person would never, ever, say that Kaohsiung and Taipei are “close”. Oh no. Even imagining someone saying it is making me crack up. This is because Taiwanese people would often describe a distance of a few kilometers as “sort of far”.

 

Let me put this back into the perspective of methods of transit. For the average Taiwanese person, a daily commute is likely via moped, public transit, or car. But for many distances, cars are not necessarily faster than mopeds, as they constantly need driving at a slower speed to be cautious of mopeds and other road hazards (if you missed it, see this discussion of traffic). So instead of half an hour that might be averaging 50 mph in the US (some stoplights, some fast stretches), I would guess a half hour averaging 50kmph (31mph) would be a reasonable situation in Taiwan. This would therefore reduce that distance of “nearby” from somewhere up to 30 miles away to probably a mere 15 miles.

 

Yet I would hardly ever hear a distance of 25km described as “nearby” in Taiwan. Maybe it’s partially because I know a lot of Americans who like driving, and would gladly consider a 20-30 minute trip as a nice time to listen to music, thing, or talk to a passenger in the car. On the contrary, I think most Taiwanese people view any transit on the road with wariness which is merited; driving is best done as an all senses alert task. Also, it is difficult to have a conversation with a passenger on a moped, or listen to music and sing along. And if it is raining, then being on a moped simply sucks (and there are plenty of places where it rains all the time in Taiwan).  Similarly, for those who rely mostly on public transit in Taiwan: it has the benefit of not requiring being active and alert, but it’s still not the private space for hanging out that most Americans consider their cars. Traveling for a long time under these conditions is not as pleasant as time alone in the car and I think people are subsequently less willing to spend time in transit.

 

But the majority of the time, Taiwanese people simply don’t have to go that far, anyway. Because people live at such high densities in Taiwan compared to the US, there is no reason to travel for half an hour to get what one wants. Usually there is a convenience store within walking distance (which, given the lack of sidewalks in many places, is probably less than half a mile); but if that is not going to cut it, there are likely any number of other establishments that will fulfill your needs within a few kilometers.

 

Similarly, geographic variation is high in Taiwan. While I haven’t lived in New York, my understanding is that the climate is no great leap away from that of Boston. But living in Tainan for just the past month and a half, I’d say that the weather here is distinct from Taipei. Eastern Taiwan is also another type of climate altogether. Additionally, there are the shifts in all geographic features that occur with the dramatic elevation shifts all over the island. If you want the feeling of tropical getaway, all one has to do is travel to Kenting, not the entire length of the east coast down to the tip of Florida. But if you want some cold, head into Taiwan’s mountains; which might take some effort, but geographically speaking is not going to be more than a couple hundred miles.

 

Even though this is something that I started getting used to last year, I still find the difference amusing. Sometimes I don’t make any particular comment when someone is amazed to find out that I live several kilometers away from school and that I bike for 15-20 minutes; but and every now and then I can’t help but mention that such a situation would be considered a blissfully short commute in the US.