The “ice-cream van” (Taiwan)

A friend’s friend Eric was over in Taipei on some training,  so I was asked to look after him, as he couldn’t speak any Mandarin (a common phenomenon amongst Singapore Chinese in those days):  take him sightseeing and shopping, dine with him.  My colleague Lǚ Jìpíng said she’d come along, so one evening after work, we took Eric to Zhōnghuá Road, which is the shopping, eating and cinema area in central Taipei.  

At one point, I saw a jacket in a boutique window, so we went in to try it on, as I’d been wanting one for ages.  Being one degree north of the equator, Singapore is too hot for anything other than short-sleeved, or even sleeveless, tops, so jackets were a sartorial novelty, a “must-have” for me at the time.  

By the time we emerged from the boutique, Eric was nowhere to be seen.  We waited for a few minutes, then another few more minutes went by, and still no Eric.  

Just as we were starting to worry about the boy getting lost, as he couldn't speak Mandarin, he appeared from round the corner.  “Where did you get to?”  

He explained that he’d got bored waiting for these two women to finish their clothes shopping, so when he heard the jingling tune of an ice-cream van, he rushed off in pursuit of an ice-cream.  To his horrified incomprehension, he saw workmen tossing the contents of rubbish bins into the back of the “ice-cream van”.

In Singapore, ice-cream vans play a tune to let people know they're in the area.

In Taiwan, rubbish had to be brought out when the collection trucks were in the area, hence the tune.

(Taipei 1975)