Momopi, HOT Taiwanese girl I met! What should I do?

[momopi]

Since Winston has been unhappy abroad in TW, there has been a rash of posts about how unhappy he is as we get closer to Christmas. Rather than to start yet another thread on the same subject, I'll take the initiative to reopen an older one of the same subject.

In the past, I've posted about a popular Chinese dating show called 非诚勿扰, aka "if you are the one". Recently Taiwan has bootlegged the same format and has their own version of show called 王子的約會, aka "take me out Taiwan". Oddly both English translations are way off, as 非诚勿扰 means "if not sincere then don't bother", and 王子的約會 means "Prince's Date" (note: Prince, not Princess). Anyways, I thought it'd be interesting for ya'll to compare and contrast between the two. Before we start, let me point out a few things:

1. In the TW dating show's introduction, the male guest will give his name, age, height, weight, astrological sign, and blood type. Note that this is more similar to Japanese than Mainland Chinese, because the Japanese are really into stuff like blood type compatibilities. In China the CCP would discourage such superstitions, the gap or difference in viewpoint is about as wide as an antagonistic contradiction.

2. The TW dating show's girls tend to turn the lights off faster than the Chinese dating show. This isn't necessarily because the TW girls are more picky up front. In earlier editions of the Chinese show, the girls turned their lights off just as fast and some behaved rather badly (girl: "...I would "prefer to cry in a BMW" than laugh riding on the back of a bicycle!") so the government told the show's producers to "tune it down". So now the girls behave better and wait for couple rounds before they flip the switch.

3. In the Chinese dating show, if you get a lot of lights remaining after the first round and successfully get a girl, the "couple" gets a free cruise to Greece. Even though the girls turn their lights off later, it's actually harder to take a girl on the Chinese show than the Taiwanese one.

4. In the Taiwanese one, the male guest who successfully gets a date from the show goes on a date, followed by the camera crew. During the date, the girl is asked to go to another room and consider if she wants to pursue a relationship with the guy. If yes, she will return and they'd officially start dating as a couple. If not, then she walks and he "loses' and is left alone. You'd see the same "made for TV" suspense found in US TV shows where the guy is waiting and gets all emotional when the girl returns.

5. Because the format and expectation of the show is a little different, the age demographics also differs. The TW show is more "dating" than "match making", so the age demographics tend to be much younger, versus the Chinese show tend to have older guests. On the TV show you might see girls as young as 19, versus the Chinese show has girls as old as late 20's to early 30's (?).

6. The Chinese show has been running for 3 years vs. the Taiwanese bootleg show has only been running since this year, so the China one is more "refined" and better developed.


Here's the Taiwan dating show:










(Note the guy in above video clip is "sunny boy" or "sunshine boy" image)






Here's the Chinese dating show:










p.s. note the difference in date format. The TW show use 20120908 vs the China show use 121215. So when searching for this show on youtube, make sure you use the right date format.

[momopi]

Here's the Chinese dating show, Chinese American guest edition:

[momopi]

Here's another TV show in Taiwan called 姐妹會, which means a meeting of older and younger sisters. For whatever the reason they decided to call the show "WTO" in English, because it's about "new residents" in TW. By "new residents" (新住民), we mean the ~640,000 foreign born immigrants that have Taiwan residency, excluding seasonal or contract foreign workers. With new immigrants there will be various cultural differences and conflicts, so TV shows like this tries to promote a more humane view on immigrants in TW and discourage discrimination.

This episode is with America immigrants to TW:


This episode is foreign born residents talking about their experiences in learning Chinese:


This episode asks the question of "what's good about living in TW" as well as what's not good and needs improvement. Note the critiques from the French and Italian guys from 14:00 to 16:00+, and the comment about TW urban architecture around 33:00. Winston, if you don't understand what they're talking about, ask your parents to translate for you:


Here's an episode that talks about the top 10 cities in the world with the best looking women. They invited a pretty Ukrainian girl to the show because Ukraine was ranked on top. The hosts doesn't speak Russian or Ukrainian so they had to converse in English:


This episode talks about the top 10 cities with hot guys (they took this survey result from some foreign magazine):


This episode asks "why do foreigners want to live in TW?"