While in Taiwan I was always looking for similarities or differences between the Taiwanese culture and our own. The first major thing I noticed was the cleanliness of the city. There was no trash anywhere. The metro was even clean which is impossible to find in almost all American cities. What made this even more surprising was that there were no trash cans anywhere. None on the streets or in public places which I thought would only increase the amount of trash and litter. We later learned that people carry all their trash on them until they get home and then throw stuff away in their personal trash cans. Additionally every purchase you make comes with a receipt no matter what. The receipts have numbers on them and there is a monthly drawing kind of like a power-ball in America except the reward is much smaller but everyone still participates anyways. Another observation I made was that our hotel did not have a 4th, 13th, or 14th floor of the building as Taiwan has a very superstitious culture and those numbers as considered unlucky. Another thing I found interesting was the combination of Japanese Chinese and European architecture because of the influence during early Taiwanese culture. Something similar to America was the aggressive driving except most people ride mopeds in Taiwan so it is much more dangerous than driving a car aggressively like in America.
