5/23/2008

No Smoking

Differences between Taipei and home that have begun to seep in: hardly anyone smokes. Walk into a newsagent back home, and there's always a vast, shrine-like display of cigarettes. Hundreds of packets. Walk into a newsagent here - or a 7/11 as they're known - you see about three, stuck up next to the counter. Go into a bar in Glasgow, it's guaranteed to have a mob of people standing and shivering in the rain outside and desperately clutching lit fags. You don't see that anywhere here.

Oh sure, you walk around the streets, and you see one or two people smoking. And I mean one or two. It just doesn't seem to interest people here so much. They just don't seem to be driven to clog up their lungs and everyone else's with foul, polluting smog.

It's nice.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

you miss it really.....mmmm lovely fags

Gary Gibson, science fiction writer said...

Almost as much as the neds, Chris. Almost as much as the neds.

Unknown said...

Gary, you need to hang out with the high school boys and girls or with the business types where smoking is a fact of life. Even on the street. Especially outside of Taipei which is hardly representative of most of Taiwan...