While the world has been largely homogenized, making travel even more frivolous than it otherwise already was, there is still a lot you can learn about your own culture if you spend some time abroad. Yes, there may be a McDonald’s or a Starbucks on every corner, but there are still limits to this kind of cultural and commercial warfare. The centerpiece of this article are two pictures of Taiwanese toilets. This may sound bizarre at first, but have a look at the images first. Then we will talk about them.
Well, what do you see? More importantly, what do you not see? Let me drag this out a little by stating that these are pictures of toilets at train stations in Taiwanese cities. My wife took them, so I can assure you that this is real life, not some kind of idealized fantasy. These toilets are spotless clean. You cannot even tell how old they are. They may be decades years old. This is similar to taking a metro in Singapore. They are spotless clean but you may wonder about the retro design. Then you learn that you are in a train that is 25 years old.
In contrast, Western society has degraded so much that anything that is publicly accessible will inevitably get vandalized. In a recent article I wrote about enrichers in Sweden demolishing bus stops week after week. Then there is the problem of graffiti or people putting stickers on every surface area they can reach, normally with some leftist slogan or symbol on them. Cleanliness is another issue. I find public toilets gross, and I try to avoid them. I do not even recall the last time I sat down on a public toilet. I only pee in them if I really have to and this is disgusting enough already. Speaking of public toilets, I recall reading that the avoidance of public restrooms is a sign of neurosis. The psychiatrists who agreed on this probably are not familiar with contemporary public toilets, let alone toilets in train stations. Otherwise, they would have labelled it a mental disorder not to avoid them.
On the left picture, you see a disposable layer of tissue. You use one, place it in the center, and the part in the middle that is hanging down ensures that it gets flushed down. You do not even have to push it into the toilet. In the West, though, you may need to put a layer of toilet paper on the toilet seat first, which is a time-consuming and surely also a rather uncomfortable activity. The design of the tissue is an example of Taiwanese high IQ in action. In the West, though, nobody would even think of it because more often than not people would just pull out all these sheets for the sake of it, light them on fire, or piss on them.
The lesson you can learn from using a Taiwanese public toilet is that there is a parallel universe in which people are able to behave themselves. Just going somewhere and not seeing graffiti in any bigger Western city would be quite unusual. This is part of the culture shock when I am in Asia. It takes you a while to process that it is normal that people do not thrash anything they can get their hands on. The pendulum in the culture war may be swinging back, but it has to swing back by quite a lot until we will have restored normalcy.