The international language of screaming

I'd like to thank Douglas Adams...

For almost a week now, the world has watched the effects of the massive earthquake off the coast of Japan in horror. Nowhere more so than in Taiwan, a country historically and politically close to the Land of the Rising Sun.

Taiwanese reaction to the events has been much the same as that from anyone across the world. Shock, fear, horror - sheer sympathy for the suffering of others. All this exacerbated by the fact that some Taiwanese have friends and family in Japan. Naturally, panic has also been a regular theme.

As an outsider, it's interesting (if not comforting) to see that Taiwanese people are just as susceptible to the joy of a scare story or two. Initial erroneous tsunami warnings prompted my girlfriend's parents to phone her at work and dispense what they thought might be their last pearls of parental wisdom. No doubt Taiwan's own earthquake prone nature played a part in amping up the mania, too.

Another interesting symptom of the hysteria was a hoax text message, sent in reaction to the radiation leaks at Fukushima nuclear power plant. It name-checked the BBC, warning people as far away as Singapore to stay in their homes and shut all doors and windows. This little nugget of bullshit rattled round Asia at quite a lick, so much so that Auntie was forced to put a story on her website, exploding the myth of a continent-wide death-cloud.

Stranger still was how popular the text was in Taipei - a city where English language comprehension is incredibly high. It seemed to escape some people to simply check the BBC website - something I had to do several times on Monday to allay Jen's fears that we were minutes away from growing extra heads. Still, what's the fun in a dose of calm rationality when there's all sorts of fear-filled hi-jinks to be had?