This is Randi Hacker with another Postcard from Asia from the KU Center for East Asian Studies.

Here in Taiwan, culture plays a cruel joke on American children. What’s that down the street? A slow-moving truck? playing a cheerful, synthesized ditty on a sunny afternoon? Yay! The kids beg some change from off the folks and run outside already debating over whether it will be a Bomb Pop or a Fudgesicle. Alas, it will be neither because it isn’t the ice cream man. It’s the trash man. Garbage decomposes quickly in warm, humid Taiwan, so it’s illegal to place it out on the street for collection. Instead, the trash truck plays music from a roof-mounted speaker as it passes through, to let people know when to bring out their garbage. It may be an efficient system, but it feels bogus to a hot kid. Poor things. They run out expecting cool and tasty and end up with foul and nasty.

With thanks to David Boyd for this text, from the KU Center for East Asian Studies, I’m Randi Hacker. Wish you were here.