Cute and Fun in Taipei Taiwan

Since I was born in the UK I have become used to the built environment around me composing everything from architecture, to streets and signs, to advertising. There is so much information within the immediate environment that often I am not aware of it unless I really pay attention.Being lucky to go to other countries has given me an insight into a completely different culture and life style. This is especially true for Taiwan as so many things are very different like the food, architecture, advertising, language and behaviour within society.

Taiwan (please see map) is located east of China, originally called Formosa which meant beautiful island named by the Portuguese who gave the island this name during the Portuguese colonial age. The Taiwanese aborigines were living in Taiwan eight thousand years before the first arrival of the Han Chinese in the 17th century. During the colonial age Taiwan was occupied by the Portuguese in 1517, then the Dutch in 1624, the Spanish in 1626 and the Japanese in 1895. To this day the independence of Taiwan is disputed. You could say the situation is similar to that of Scotland and Ireland. However for this blog post I do not want to talk too much about the political side of things even though it is important in shaping society.

For this post I would like to talk about a kind of cute and fun atmosphere that hangs in the air of Taipei in Taiwan. This seems to be something that was all around me when I went to Taipei. I could see this style reflected in the adverting as lots of bright colours such as pinks, yellow's, blue's and green's are used. The advertising is often combined with child like imagery such as toy animals in an animated style.

This kind of aesthetic style does not stop there as in the public metro station instrumental music such as piano and ambient is played when a train approaches which can be cheerful and relaxing.

Music is often played across most Taipei Metro Stations

 If you would like to find out more information about why music is used at the stations you can see theses links Taipei Times and Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Various Advertising in Taipei, Taiwan 

A bear sitting on top of a boat in Dadaocheng District in Taipei. I think this bear symbolises the Taiwanese indigenous bear. 

I think these are just a couple of examples but this kind of say style in some way seems to be adopted by the people of Taiwan as people are always very friendly and sweet as one way to put it. Perhaps it is a kind of youthful and joyful social behaviour that not only is apart of people's behaviour but also integrated into the environment. This seems to all come together to help shape the Taiwanese culture. Either way it is difficult to not associate some aspects of social life and culture to the word "Cute".
I found a couple of articles describing Cuteness in Asia and they were all interesting to read as it gave me more of an insight into the culture of Taiwan and Asia.
Please see the links listed bellow:

1. "The new science of cute" The Guardian UK
2. "‘Pretty, Innocent Asian Girls’: The Cult of Cuteness in East Asian Societies" by Aris     Teon: The Greater China Journa
3. "What is the reason behind the cuteness culture in Asia" by Tarina Tang. quora.com

After reading through these articles I can understand a little bit more on why this style is widely used in Asia and Taiwan. Introducing cute and fun aesthetics into society could I suppose induce more happiness and well-being amongst people in society. 

Our current day lifestyle is often fast paced, busy and at times stressful. Would it not be useful to introduce more aesthetics into society to evoke among people happiness, well-being and harmony. Coming from the UK I can sometimes feel myself as being detached from the built environment as some environments can appear machine like and dull. 

Although there is an apparent cute culture in Taiwan this does not necessary mean its people are soft. As my wife is Taiwanese she notices that Taiwanese people tend to be soft on the outside and hard on the inside. Were as in the UK it appears that our social conditions are based on confidence and showing this on the outside while on the inside we can be soft. Perhaps it is also these social behavioural conditions that also manifests itself into the built environment around us.