A professor from the USA's Northwestern University recently made his first visit to Taiwan on a combined lecture tour and sightseeing trip. When his serious engagements were over, his friends here began to organize some travel and leisure activities for him, asking: "Is there anything you specially want to do?" To their surprise, his first choice was to go to the gift shop at the Brother Hotel to buy souvenirs of some of the ROC's professional baseball teams, so that he would have something to show for his visit when he returned home to his sons.
In America, professional baseball goes back more than a century, and with its large following has naturally developed its own subculture. But although pro ball in the ROC is only just entering its fifth year, the high standard of our Little League causes the pro game to arouse the interest and curiosity of young American fans.
So just how good is our professional baseball, and what are its prospects?
"In four years, pro ball here has really come a long way, but it could still be a lot better!" says one long-standing fan. He sees such factors as a shortage of new players, the players' rather high average age, and the poor standard of baseball parks as obstacles currently standing in the way of the game's development.
With amateur and professional baseball competing for players finding enough athletes really is a worry. The amateur teams' standpoint is that if their players are below par, they will not be able to compete internationally. Especially since baseball has become an Olympic discipline, who else will fight for our national prestige? But it is even more apparent that the professional game needs good players, making a scramble for good players inevitable.
Before the professional league was set up, there were few prospects for players, so that many athletes with great potential turned to other careers. Since the league was established, the number of teams in senior high schools has mushroomed, and this has gone some way towards alleviating the dearth of players. But overall, the game still needs more new blood.
Perhaps the lack of players is behind ROC professional baseball's rule banning the selection of players below the age of 23. This not only makes for a high average age, but in effect also knocks several years off the athletes' professional "life."
Moreover, the poor state of the ballparks, with their uneven playing areas, can also influence players' performance. For fear of injury, athletes hesitate to go all out, and this directly affects the quality of play.
Many fans also complain of spartan conditions at stadiums, with cramped seats, poorly-maintained toilet facilities, other spectators smoking, and so on.
Such problems aside, broadly speaking professional baseball in the ROC has developed very quickly, even exceeding expectations. Many people love to watch pro ball "because we've watched these players grow up, so we have a lot of affection for them!"
Nonetheless, the lack of new players entering the game is something to take notice of.
Baseball is a sport which makes great demands on the eyesight, and most competition players have above-average vision. As Lu Ming tsu has said, the pitcher throws the ball at a speed of around 140 kilometers an hour, and it takes good visual acuity for the batter to judge the ball's line correctly. But with the severe levels of short sight now prevalent among ROC schoolchildren, it would seem that many fail to meet the basic physical requirements, whatever their degree of aptitude.
After four years of professional baseball, there are still many shortcomings to be urgently addressed. But this is no reason, as pro ball enters its fifth year, not to invite readers to a spectator's-eye view of the action down at the ballpark.
A young woman from Taiwan who is at graduate school in the United States was visiting Switzerland with her Swiss boyfriend when she was surprised to be "propositioned" by the owner of an exclusive watch shop: "If you get married and come to live in Switzerland, please be sure to think about coming to work in our shop. We really need salespeople who can speak Taiwanese!"
The amount of money which tourists from Taiwan visiting Switzerland lay out for Rolex watches is enough to make dealers there look for special staff to serve them. Especially in a time of economic recession, such free-spending visitors bring shopkeepers flocking in droves.
According to figures from the Central Bank of China, the amount of money taken overseas by travellers from the ROC has set new records each of the last two years. In 1992 it reached US$7.2 billion. Although not all this money was spent on tourism, tourism did account for the largest proportion, and of course the figure does not include money spent on air tickets or bills paid by credit card.
With their free-spending ways, tourists from Taiwan have leapfrogged over the Japanese to become Asia's highest-spending tourists. But what image of our country do the waves of travellers project overseas?
The saddest and most painful recent example was the case of the two students from Taiwan who were mauled to death by lions while visiting a wildlife park in South Africa, when they ignored the park's warning signs and left their vehicle to take photographs. While expressing their regret, park officials could only tactfully say that in more than 20 years of the park's operation, there had never been an incident of lions attacking visitors. The warning signs were very clear and the lions were not to blame; therefore the animals would not be put down.
This tragedy and other incidents prompted us to write this month's report "Here come the Taiwanese Tourists!" in the hope of reminding readers who plan to travel overseas of some of the things they should pay attention to. For the behavior of each of our four million overseas tourists per year (1992) contributes to our national image abroad. A good image is difficult to create, but so easy to destroy.
Of course, differences of culture and custom may always create inconvenience and misunderstanding for travellers away from home. Overseas travel is in itself a learning experience, so one should not expect the impossible. But when a minority of tourists are ridiculed as having "more money than sense," it is not surprising if more and more people cry out: "Respect yourself and others!" and "Show some consideration in the way you act!"
Far from wishing to force the task of upholding the "national image" down every tourist's throat, we just want to give a few words of advice in the hope that everyone can enjoy their trip abroad, and come home safe and sound!
