3. Family

The great building block of Chinese society has long been the extended family. Families traditionally lived in large compounds with interior courtyards, so that even the "outdoor" area was within the walls of the home, where three, four or more generations all lived together under the same large roof.

Times have changed, and most of Taiwan's population now lives in the city, where a three-bedroom apartment is the norm. The old-fashioned home of twenty people plus the chickens and pigs is no longer practical. Today, the average Taiwanese family has five or six members.

Yet the familial ideal remains remarkably intact: the youngest generation filling the house with energy and joy, the adult children industriously managing the household and its worldly affairs, and the older generation, enjoying the glories of their golden years in the midst of their many grandchildren. Multi-generational family relationships still form the backbone of Taiwanese society.

Taiwanese people tend to marry later than they used to, having discarded traditional arranged marriages for Western-style dating.

The average Taiwanese home has around 1400 square feet of floor space, a 65% increase from 40 years ago, and despite extremely high real estate prices, more people own their own homes now than ever before. Standard appliances in the household include a television, a telephone, an air conditioner and a motorcycle.


4. Work and Education

The Taiwanese are known for their industrious approach to life. The "nose to the grindstone" ethic begins early on, as many pre-schoolers are drilled in music and English lessons before they ever enter school.

Grade schoolers wade through an exhaustive and exhausting day of class work, only to march off to extra-curricular cram schools, where they study more English, music, math and anything else they might be tested on. Finally, in the evening they are free to go home and do their homework.

The "cram life" reaches a fever pitch in junior high school, when young teens take brutal tests to enter the best high schools, a pattern that is repeated at the end of high school, when they compete for the few precious seats in the best universities.

After university comes graduate school, attended by an impressive percentage of the population. Whenever the student finally graduates, a career is not long in the offing. Perennial favorites are electrical engineer, computer programmer and business person.

Thus begins a long-term lifestyle of "work hard, save hard." Money is socked away assiduously, for that inevitable day when one must make the major purchases of life. Stocks and bonds are always popular, but the real goal, of course, is the Three Great Acquisitions - a house, a car, and a son (in Chinese, "fangtze, chetze, ertze"). With the Three Acquisitions comes a great reservoir of face ("miantze"), enough to last a lifetime.

Although with time attitudes toward gender are slowly shifting, the preference for male offspring prevails. A son can carry on the family name and take care of his deceased ancestors with offerings and spirit money. The traditional belief in spirits is anything but fading, and even though women have achieved a great deal of equality in society, law and business, a certain extra sense of pride still wells in the hearts of new parents (and new grandparents) when they hold a baby boy in their arms.

With the gender of one's issue so difficult to dictate, and the cost of an apartment sky-high, it is no surprise that so many Taiwanese focus their energies on the one Great Acquisition that lies within reach, and whose outcome is predictable, down to the tint of the chrome.

The automobile figures highly in the lives of the Taiwanese, because for many it is their only Great Acquisition, and the one they can display on the street. This is why every single winding lane and narrow alley on the island is packed bumper-to-bumper with shiny European imports.

The average double-income family makes around US$28,000 per year, and spends 45 minutes a day in commuter traffic. In the 1950s, nearly half of the population made their living from farming. During the 1960s and 1970s, a major shift was made into manufacturing, but by the 1990s, the service industry became the dominant source of livelihood.

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