Crowds are subservient to power. So argued philosopher Elias Canetti, in 1961, before he won the Nobel Prize for literature. Crowds are passive responders to the initiatives of the dominating figures that address, incite or entertain them. Ironically, people's fear of being touched is overcome by being in a crowd, so they feel liberated in a dense throng.
New Year's Eve in Taipei provided a very large crowd, estimated at 400,000, with which to test these theories. Until recently there had always been two big public celebrations of the magical date, one outside the mayor's offices and the other in front of the Presidential Palace. This year only the former took place, probably because the proximity of the Taipei 101 building - the world's tallest - gave the mayor an unmatchable cachet. The weather was mild, pop groups sang and gyrated, and fireworks cascaded down from the top of 101 as the giant digital clock came up with the long-awaited row of zeros.
I allowed myself to be gently but inexorably pushed by a crowd that had a direction, if hardly a mind, of its own. By 11.30pm I found it impossible to move. There were a few words from city notables at 11.55pm, but no one incited any trouble. Instead, a thousand arms went up at midnight, catching images of the festive scene on their state-of-the-art mobile phones.
If you are prone to attaching local characteristics to crowds, as Canetti was, you would have to characterise Taiwan's as profoundly good-natured. The same character was observable at the political rallies held around the March 2004 presidential election - parties of fun-loving celebrants, high on the joys of democracy itself, with aggressive behaviour only rarely visible.
Most people got nothing more tangible from their New Year's experience than satisfying the desire to be where everyone else was.
On this evidence, Taiwanese crowds are as obedient and malleable as anyone could wish. Heading home, people displayed a patience that was almost unbelievable. After waiting a full hour to enter the subway station, alongside the Eslite company's massive new flagship bookshop, the group I was in obeyed an instruction to detour to a different entrance, with laughing equanimity.