The foreign perspective on Taiwan’s Betelnut girls | Fili’s World

17 Apr, 2007 in Taiwan by Fili

The foreign perspective on Taiwan’s Betelnut girls

Betel-nut girls - “They’re young and they’re beautiful and when they approach the stopping cars with a big smile you might mistake them for selling sex, but no… they’re selling drugs”.

The Israeli online guide for “Sex, drugs and rock&roll” called “Bracha surfs“, has in their “sex category” what might be the first Hebrew article on Taiwan’s betelnut beauty and betelnut girls.

“If you had to guess what the minimally dressed girls, sitting at the sides of the Taiwan roads, are selling you would probably get it wrong. [...]

The Betelnut girls are a unique Taiwan Phenomenon. The products they sell is used all over Asia, but no seller in other countries dress like that. The Betelnut, Taiwan’s 2nd largest produce, contains an energizing substance that has become popular with drivers across the island. Since profits from Betelnut, soft drinks and cigarettes are high - selling those at the middle of the night in a small kiosk has become a lucrative job. Those kiosks started to compete against each other - setting up transparent glass windows, flashing them with neon lights and having a young girl. The sales went up the less the girl wore, and that how they also started competing on that. [...]

Toby, a South-African photographer that documented the Betelnut girls, opened an exhibition last month in Taipei, and has uploaded his photos to Flickr and the videos to YouTube. He’s aware of their sluttish image but claims that in most cases the Betelnut girls made the right financial decision. In some of the photographs you may see some of the girls with study material and notebooks that have decided to gain better education.

There’s nothing else in Hebrew Google on the Betelnut girls, aside from a short wonder from a long Taiwan tip I wrote about a year ago for one of the travel sites.

It’s interesting that in the month+ that Taiwanderful’s been running, the Betelnut Beauty section has been, by far, the most popular section of the site. Amazingly, Taiwanderful’s quoted in the Hebrew article as a source for the info (maybe through the Israeli “Chinese culture” forum discussion about Taiwanderful, I’m not sure).

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5 Responses so far | Have Your Say!

David on Formosa | April 18th, 2007 at 5:43 am #

I also find it quite amazing that of all the things in Taiwan this attracts such a disproportionate amount of attention on the web. I think the interest is largely superficial, most people are just interested in looking at young women dressed in sexy clothes.

It is a pity more people don’t take the time to consider the issues involved more seriously. It does really say a lot about Taiwan and is no doubt worthy of analysis.
fiLi | April 19th, 2007 at 12:04 am #

I think there might be a bit more to that than just young women dressed in sexy clothes. On today’s internet, why search for “betelnut girls” when you can search for “naked asian girls” and get Google images to overwhelm your browser with soft pornography?

I think people searching for betelnut beauty are surprisingly interested in understanding betelnut culture and how those girls came to be.

A small comparison, I wish that people would look for regular keywords about Israel, but from the Israeli websites I run all the searches come from sensational Israeli-Palestine politics (/tragedies).
China Scoop - Taiwan’s Betelnut Beauty and Betelnut Girls | April 26th, 2007 at 7:04 pm #

[...] Toby, a South-African photographer that documented the Betelnut girls, opened an exhibition last month in Taipei, and has uploaded his photos to Flickr and the videos to YouTube. He’s aware of their sluttish image but claims that in most cases the Betelnut girls made the right financial decision. In some of the photographs you may see some of the girls with study material and notebooks that have decided to gain better education.Source: Filination [...]
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