Self Reliance

There is a saying in Chinese:

天高皇帝遠

The usual translation is:

"The Heavens are high and the Emperor is far away."

One interpretation is:

"It is hard to get justice in this world."

another interpretation(which I like) is:

"You can not depend of the gods and you can not depend of the government."

This fits in with the idea that families are most important in Chinese culture.

There is another Chinese saying:

出門靠朋友,在家靠父母

the usual translation is:


"At home you rely on your family, away from home you rely on your friends."

This distrust of the government and centralized control shows up in many ways. For example, many houses have there own water supply on the roof of their building. This gives them control of the water supply and pressure.

It is rare to see a centralized water tank like this one in KaoHsiung.

Many people don't trust the purity and safety of tap water, so all over Tainan we have these drinking water stations, where for a few NT you can fill up a plastic jug of drinking water. Lugging that container has to be a chore, but people do it.
Similarly, bottled water is popular like in the US but not as much as tea.

Here we have on of the engineering buildings. You'd think engineers would know that centralized air conditioning is more efficient that individual units but with a centralized system you lose control. This building is 12 stories high with each floor populated by such individual air conditioning units.

In my dorm, each room has it's own air conditioning unit(I doubt any have been in use for the past 3 months). So rather than have a fixed fee included in the rent, each student, each month gets a electricity bill. Here are the individual meters for
one floor of rooms at my dorm.

 The same goes for individual transportation(motorcycles) .vs. public transportation(subways). In one you have control, in the other you are dependent on the government. Eventually economics will win out.