4. Interview Analysis
4.3 Attitudes Toward China
國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a
tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
to Taiwan] less Taiwanese come to the night market” (M5), “some Taiwanese do not come anymore because of the Chinese tourists” (H7). The future prospects with a further increase of tourists, thus, might cause very different results for the vendors. Those who do profit from tourists might have a very contrasting viewpoint of this development in comparison to the businesses, which largely rely on local customers.
Especially the fact that some of those vendors see the Chinese tourists affecting their business negatively is interesting for this research. While the overall future prospects match the present development and most vendors do not see a large change in the shares of Chinese tourists they will receive, the negative aspect in which the presence of Chinese tourists
“scares” away the local customers is very remarkable and counter-intuitively suggests an influence of the amount of business with Chinese tourists not only on the large benefit group (positive), but also on the low benefit group (negative).
4.3 Attitudes Toward China
Attitudes Toward Chinese Tourists
Probably one of the major findings in this study is the obvious negative attitude of night market vendors toward Chinese tourists. When asked how they feel toward different groups of tourists (Westerners, Japanese and Chinese), a very large share of the vendors (16 out of 22) issued comments on the misbehavior of Chinese and only one of the vendors actually said something positive. Although even the vendor with the positive attitude limited the statement saying: “Asian tourists”, instead of Chinese tourists. “Asian tourists are more favorable here on the night market, because they spend more money than Western tourists”
(H8).
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a
tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Table 3 – Attitudes Towards Mainland Chinese Tourists
Negative Moderate Positive
Large Benefit Group 5 2 1
Medium Benefit Group 5 3 0
Low Benefit group 6 0 0
Total 16 5 1
Like some of the negative statements, the moderate respondents highlighted the fact that there are many differences between Taiwanese and Chinese (“Chinese bargain a lot more” M1, M5, H3; “Chinese are louder than others” M7). But in contrast to the negative group, they limit themselves to describe the differences in a neutral tone or are indifferent in their opinion (“There’s love and there’s hate” H5). In general, they are classified moderate because interviewees seemed to prefer moderate statements instead of revealing their true feelings and, thus, it might be possible for them to diverge in either direction, positively or negatively.
Turning to the by far largest share, the negative accounts, it becomes obvious that there is a cultural gap between Taiwanese night market vendors and the Chinese customers.
Many vendors connected the behavior of Chinese explicitly to bad intentions or made their negative attitude very clear. We find many people complaining about noise (L4, M3, M8, H2, H6) or the attempts to bargain on a night market with fixed prices (M3, H1, H4), just like in the accounts of moderate vendors. But, in the answers of these sixteen more negative vendors, we can observe statements like: “Chinese have no manners” (in many different variations issued by L2,L6, M2, M3, M4, M8, H1, H2, H6, H7). Some also connect negative experiences with the whole group of Chinese tourists: “Order without paying and then leave”
(L6), “They touch our food and make the other customers feel uncomfortable” (M2, M6, H6).
Although one vendor was aware of this oversimplification and stated that “the majority of [Chinese] people are very nice” (L6), he still held on to the view that there is a large number of “black sheep”.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a
tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Of the sixteen vendors with negative attitudes, again, five stand out and express especially negative attitudes. They stated that “the bad attitude [of the Chinese] affects all of the workers on the night market” (H7) or that “it doesn’t matter if they come or not” “they [just] make everything dirty” (M2). Some even said they hated the Chinese (L5), that they
“sometimes drive me crazy” (H7), are “getting on my nerves“ (M6), or that they “might as well not come anymore, all they do is to make everything dirty” (L1).
These results match the negative views, which Gries and Su (2013) observed in their study on attitudes of Taiwanese people toward other nations. As in their findings, the vendors on Ningxia Night Market seem to dislike the mainlanders in both absolute and relative terms.
The comparison to either Japanese or Western tourists reflects this, as no vendor has a better opinion on Chinese tourists as on the other nationalities.
Looking into these findings from the perspective of the business transactions and categorizing the answers according to the benefit groups classified earlier, we then find something interesting. As one might have expected, there are no moderate or positive attitudes about the Chinese among the group with low amount of business with the Chinese tourists. All of the vendors in this sample, who do not profit from the increase of mainland tourists, have issued negative comments as stated above and seemed to be estranged from the mainlanders. Although, we also find many negative comments in both the medium and the large benefit group, all of the more moderate accounts can be found in both of these categories.
Change of Attitudes about Tourists over Time
When asked, whether the attitudes toward the tourists from the mainland had altered over the last two to three years, twelve of the vendors answered that they had changed positively and eight vendors responded that no change had occurred. Only one vendor stated that his attitudes had changed negatively, while one business had only been at the night market for less than two years and therefore could not answer this question.
‧
Table 4 – Change of Attitudes on Mainland Tourists During the Last Years No
From the perspective of economic incentives, we would expect the vendors with more benefits to have a tendency toward a positive change in attitude, which reflects the material benefit, which those vendors can gain by the presence of the tourists, while the contact that those business transactions bring with them might have a negative or positive influence. The interviews show that only two of the interviewees of the large benefit group said that there had been no change at all, while four issued statements similar to “I got used to the manners” (H2, H3, H5, H6). The two vendors with no change in attitude both issued a negative overall attitude: “try to bargain too much” and “many [people] share one drink [instead of buying multiple ones]” H4, H7. The positive changes of this group stated arguments like: “[I] want to earn money off them, [that is] worth ignoring the bad habits”
(H2), “the Chinese now buy more, I got used to them” (H5).
For the group with very low economic benefits, things are very different. As expected, the economic incentives and the contact seem to be not as strong and out of the six vendors in this group, two did actually respond that a positive change had occurred. One of them also states “I got used to them”, but got limited right away by adding “a little bit” (L2). The other vendor expressed: “[I] learned to ignore them” (L4), which also can be seen as a less
positive viewpoint than that of the others out of the large benefit group. All the other vendors of the low benefit group said there had been no changes at all, but one. This one vendor was very explicit and actually claimed that his views had changed negatively: “I now think that they [the Chinese] are even worse. Earlier, I thought they were ok, [but] now I know they are really terrible and extreme” (L6). While the economic transactions seem to play a role in the attitudes of some of the respondents from the large benefit group, the lack of economic transactions in the low benefit group fails to mitigate the generally bad view of Chinese
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a
tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
tourists and the positive effect which can be observed in the large benefit group are missing here.
So what do we expect from the medium benefit group then? – Probably a mixture of both the large and the low economic benefit groups. The findings suggest this result and are a little bit more indifferent than those of the other two groups. While five of the vendors had changed their attitudes positively, three claimed to have not changed their attitudes. We see positive changes: “They are better than before. Earlier, they would eat one [food item] with five people, now it is only one for two people” (M8), “[The] tourguides now give them better information than before [on their behavior]” (M3) or “I am more used to them now. Before, their level of education [from the tourguides] wasn’t as good“ (M4).
Altogether, the change of attitudes seems to confirm the expectations. In the large and medium benefit group, more vendors have expressed moderate views than in the other group and we see a clear difference between the attitudes of vendors with different amounts of business transactions.
Attitudes on Cross-Strait Economic Integration
On the issue of cross-Strait economic integration, things are more complicated. While there is a tendency toward a positive evaluation of cross-Strait issues, all of the economic benefit group’s respondents are distributed very similar and there does not seem to be a large difference. Notably, there is no one in the low benefit group, who issues a negative view.
Only in the medium and large benefit groups do people disagree with the opening of Taiwan and those views also do not completely reject the ECFA policies, but rather opt for slowing it down (M3, M4, H2). Apparently, most people agree that those policies are necessary and sometimes even think they are inevitable: “It is good for the economy and if the time comes, it just has to happen” (H6).
Taking the influence of different amounts of business transactions into account it becomes obvious that the vendors do not seem to make any connection between this issue and their personal situation. Apparently, the connection of cross-Strait economic integration
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a
tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
and increased numbers of tourists is not important for the vendors here. Positive statements like “the economy is now better than it was before” (M8), “It is good for the economy and if the time comes, it just has to happen” (H6), “there’s good and bad things about is, but for the Taiwanese economy it is good” (M5) can be found in all of the benefit groups.
Alienation of Taiwanese People From the PRC
When asked about the attitude of the Chinese government toward Taiwanese people, most vendors take a moderate viewpoint and see the intentions of China as neither good nor bad. Many vendors also thought it was hard to assess the questions or didn’t have an answer to it. Of those, who answered the question, most of the positive evaluations came from the large benefit group, while the medium group took a very moderate stance again. Looking at the low benefit group, we see a small tendency toward a negative perception of the Chinese attitudes towards Taiwan. Interestingly, the large benefit group did not offer many
justifications or arguments for their viewpoint, while the medium and low benefit groups seemed to feel more obliged to explain themselves.
Out of fourteen valid answers, only six vendors gave reasons for their decision.
Positive arguments included: “there are advantages [for Taiwan]” (L3), “they are better to us now than before in economic terms” (M4), “For politics their attitude is not good, but the economic policies are good” (M5), and “only business matters. Businessman don’t belong to any country” (M8). More negative statements mentioned: “I feel they are hostile. They think Taiwan belongs to them” (L2) and “They want to change us and take over Taiwan. [They]
think Taiwan is very poor and everything here should be cheap as well. […] But they might change later, when they have better education.” (M6).
‧
Table 5 – Alienation from Mainland China Positive
The overall tendency suggests that there exist a similar case as with the attitudes toward the Chinese tourists. The low benefit group has the least favorable opinion on this issue, and the large benefit group has the most moderate, if not positive. Surprising, however, is that the opinions on this political issue give us more reason to believe that there is a
correlation between the alienation and the amount of economic transactions than between those transactions and cross-Strait economic integration.