hey ya’ll. i know living in taiwan isn’t necessarily easy but coming back to the US after years away has me bored out of my gourd.
watch TV. eat food. talk to family/friends who are seemingly trapped in time: “…hey, remember that time in high school…”. drive a car. go to work.
at least in taiwan there were the unexpected everyday SNAFUs that presented obstacles to be overcome. seemingly everything here is “been there, done that” to this returnee.
since coming home i’ve landed a swell job and a wonderful girlfriend but wanderlust (or something) is pulling at every fiber in my body telling me to pull up stakes and LIVE again.
while this may very well be part of the re-acculturalization process it is driving me mad. any solace/insight you might have regarding this topic would be welcome from folks who have already plowed this furrow.
Actually, I go back to the US every couple of years, and after 4 or 5 days of malls, huge parking lots, and suburbia I’m climbing the walls. The air is so clean, but I still feel like I’m suffocating when in the US.
Friends of mine who’ve moved back (and Taiwanese friends who’ve immigrated) generally adapt after 2 or 3 years. Hang in there.
What part of the US did you return to? If there’s a TECO office nearby, I’d bet a friendly visit over there will remind you what a challenge dealing with Taiwan beaurocracies can be like (Better yet, offer to volunteer to help out )
[quote=“skeptic yank”]hey ya’ll. I know living in Taiwan isn’t necessarily easy but coming back to the US after years away has me bored out of my gourd.
watch TV. eat food. talk to family/friends who are seemingly trapped in time: “…hey, remember that time in high school…”. drive a car. go to work.
while this may very well be part of the re-acculturalization process it is driving me mad. any solace/insight you might have regarding this topic would be welcome from folks who have already plowed this furrow.[/quote]
Re-acculturalization is actually a word. I looked it up. I go to Australia/ Europe/ USA for a few weeks every 3 months and am now into my 4th year of this.
I get settled in Taiwan then end up on a plane out where I am totally unsettled for a few weeks then come back and settle in again.
1st year I could not wait to get out of here.
2nd year I missed Taiwan a little.
3rd year I could not wait to get back to Taiwan then could not wait to get out again.
4th year. Who knows but your comment about people back home doing the same old thing was just where my thoughts were this morning.
It is a curious thing to see
Ppeople wishing they were back in Taiwan
People wishing they were anywhere but Taiwan.
People like me who are moving all the time and don’t know where they should be.
The clean air has to be a bonus skeptic yank. That, easy driving and being able to see blue sky regularly are some of the things I look forward to.
[quote=“skeptic yank”]“suffocating” seems about right.
thinking about yangmei seems to put things back in a better light. that is one place I never want to see again.[/quote]
Were you the one who called Yang Mei the armpit of Taiwan?
I still don’t know why it is compared to potentially offensive body parts.
Its really not that bad. I can see it out of the office window right now. Grey blue sky, some clouds, sun shining off the water tanks on roofs. Traffic on the number 1 and a golf club on the next hill.
I think that Sceptic yank lived somewhere down near Hukou, as he found the hill a bit too humid in winter… But then, nothing beats looking out over the Hukou Industrial Park, I guess… Unless the alternative is to look out over a prison yard.
Poor guy, choosing to live in the valley… :loco:
he will come back, once the GF ditches him and he gets fired.
Taiwan is like Hotel California…“You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”.
skeptic tank,
this has been one of my fears. like i grew up in a hick town in louisiana, population 3000!! no moive or bowling even now. mass obesity every freakin where. it’s boring as can be. i don’t know if i’d survive. come back home to taiwan whre you belong!
no, i lived in the heart of downtown yangmei…just paces from the library which had all 400 of the books locked up. my boss was better than average to me. she and the students were great, but yangmei with the narrow streets, speeding cars and fine dining are best taken in small doses as everyone up the hill knows.
the weather here is lovely and the people are nice. heck, they’ll stop the car if they think you MIGHT want to cross the street. st.louis is a wonderful place and am just fighting the “growing pains” of coming home.
you live up the hill or down in the valley? i could see the statue of kuanyin (the goddess of mercy) from my old place in yangmei.
never lived in yang mei. it’s small i know. St. Louis is probably my kind of city! i always thought about St. L looking at the mississpi when i went to new orleans. lot of history on both parts of the river!
I live on the hill now - but actually liked the narrow streets of yangmei.
I used to live on Hsiutsai Rd, which branches off route no 1 at Yangmei Elementary School.
The only tall apartment block on Hsiutsai Rd itself, white monster, and YES I could see the Guanyin statue a well. We went there a lot back before I moved up on the hill. More or less the only real park in Yangmei, and quite nice too.
The old white guanyin statue is gone. they ahve a golden one up there now. The guanyin statue would appear to have been damaged, and looked as it was about to fall over, leaning forward at a rather alarming angle. They also had the big turtle, which my oldest daughter used to like to climb. After all, the park was called “Turtle mountain park” or something like that, so i guess they needed one.
I liked the Xin Chuan steak restaurant, but that’s gone now, too bad.
Also, walking around in Yangmei during the weekends was a great pastime for me before we got a car. I worked in Taipei and really liked the contrast.
I gather that you lived up on the small hill behind the police station? They had 2 taller buildings up there - nice on the outside, we looked at a flat there, and it was somewhat cramped.
I first lived in Taiwan from '89-'96. I was able to “re-acculturalize” myself (or perhaps avoid the process altogether) by going to law school upon my return to the States. No time to worry about fitting back into American society since I was too busy studying.
An American friend of mine from my Taiwan days returned to the States around the same time as me. He didn
I always find people stopping their cars like that to be disconcerting in the states.
Are you sure they are not being polite because they think the pedestrians may shoot them?
I was here for a year before I discovered the mountain bike riding trails and groups that venture out. Even today I have the bike in the car and will meet friends at lunchtime for a 90 minute ride.
Also, the mountain residents include a number of Forumosa posters and a lot of other residents make it more bearable and even pleasant.
Fine dining though? I am with you on that point. Up the golf club the Chinese is okay as the only spot I can think of.
Huge contrast between our quiet wide leafy streets on top of the hill
and the crowded town area. I could not live there for a minute.
So, if you come back to Taiwan keep the top of the hill in mind. I have lots of books that are not locked up.
Well, there are a few semi-decent eateries in Zhongli, a 20 minute car drive away.
Also, it’s a tradeoff… If you want lots of fine dining, then it’s a taofang in Taipei… I honestly must admit that I prefer Yangmei to every other place in Taiwan.
I’m feeling the exact same thing. It comes and goes like a melancholic hunger pang, ebbing and rising. Some days, I will be totally involved whether biking, enjoying the nice clean air and water, hanging out with friends and family, other days, I am weighed down with a heavy heart, with this gut-wrenching feeling that I made the wrong choice, thinking with nostalgia what I liked across that vast ocean, and how immensely devoid of life California now seems to be. Oh sure, there’s moments of vividness. But there’s also a lot of moments where you think, my god, is everyone a zombie? Will I be fated to become one too? I know I really have to be careful about not being fooled by nostalgia, because there were many moments I was dissatisfied in Asia (though more so with myself). Maybe I will never be happy in one place, but that doesn’t mean I can’t find a place where I will be most happy, right? And every day that passes, I seem to be passing into a shadow world, a black and white world. It’s not like I’ve come back to a wasteland. California is one of the most beautiful places, I know, but it is still a wasteland for my soul in a way. I think Asia changed me, and I will never be truly home again over here, or I fear, anywhere. But for now, if home is where the heart is, it ain’t here.
pm me skeptic if you want to commiserate. too bad you’re over in st. louis. we could start a forumosa USA support group. Anyone else want to start the USA chapter?
(Better yet, offer to volunteer to help out 
)