Should I move to Taiwan?

Taiwan Moving to Taiwan
1

Hi forum, nice to meet everyone. I’m looking for some advice regarding whether I should uproot my family and move to Taiwan or not. If any could be kind enough to offer their two cents, I’d really appreciate it. So here’s my situation…

I’m 33 years old and work in web development, which is an arrangement I do remotely and really love and want to continue. I make about $5000 USD a month. My wife is Chinese and we have a son who is one year old. We lived in China for about seven years before moving to Seattle, where we’ve been for the past two years or so. We like it here in Seattle, but it is seriously expensive and our collective income pretty much goes towards just keeping our heads above water. I could work at an actually company, but I honestly love what I do and it gives me a lot of time to be with my family. Thus, the past year or so we’ve been toying with the idea of moving to Taiwan, but we (well, mainly me) are anxious about a few things. If anyone could help with the following, I’ll buy you a beer should we meet. :bow:

  1. We’re hoping our next move will be our longterm one - settle down, raise and educate our kid (and any future ones), (…). What does this picture look like in Taiwan? Are the education options there capable of pumping out a fluent English speaker? I guess I’m a little worried that our son, who already has so much Chinese influence in his life, will graduate high school with broken English and limited opportunities outside the Chinese speaking world. Maybe I’m paranoid?

  2. In reading the forums, it sounds like $5000 USD a month could go a long way in Taiwan and leave a little room for some modest savings. Would this be accurate if we were to rent a two bedroom apartment in a decent area of a large city like Taipei? For those of you with kids, would this salary provide for a decent education? I see schooling prices that are all over the map there, so I’m a little more than lost regarding how much it would actually cost to live and educate a child in Taiwan.

  3. To be completely honest, I didn’t really like living in China. The approach to personal space was trying at times (I’ll leave it at that). For those of you in mixed race relationships, can you comfortably travel and eat out without having a spontaneous audience/photographs? (I’m so sorry to ask this, but it was really something that bugged my wife and I while in PRC.) If any of you have situations similar to mine, did a pull to go back to the Mainland ever come up while you and your Chinese spouse were in Taiwan?

  4. I’m trying to figure out what sort of visa or residency I could get that would allow me to carry on my work in Taiwan. Is there a visa I could purchase that would allow me to sponsor my wife and son?

Thanks!! :lick:

2

Other posters who know more about visas, feel free to add to this. As far as I can see, your big big big problem is the visa, and I don’t know of any realistic way around it. If you’re not being sponsored by a company (you can open your own), the only way to legally stay on a residency permit I believe is to enroll as a full-time student. Even if you do get sponsored for an ARC (residence card), your wife and son would be allowed to stay with, but she would not have open work rights. She would also need to find a sponsor to get a job. If she is still using a PRC passport instead of a US one, there will be many many restrictions that are hard to navigate.

The bigger issue, I believe, is your son. Just the other day we talked on this forum about how when a child of two foreigners reaches 20, he or she no longer can get residency status from his or her parents. That means find a job, be in school, marry a local, or leave. The job part isn’t as easy at it sounds because there are restrictions on what foreigners can do and a minimum salary that is well above the market norm. That is not to say that any of this is impossible, but you should be certain that you are on top of the ins and outs of the visa situation for 20 years down the line before you make the decision.

By the way, US$5,000 a month would be extremely comfortable in Taiwan. Only 6.2% of the population makes over NT$70,000 (US$2,100-ish) a month in individual income, and you’re more than double that. Of course there is a difference in the standard of living… If you want to have a car (EXTREMELY expensive), save for retirement, eat at nicer restaurants, live in an upscale place obviously the money won’t go as far, but it’s still a very good salary for the cost of living there.

3

5000 USD can go a long way here in TW. As mentioned before, the visa will be the main issue. You can set up your own company and then have that company sponsor your ARC. After 5 consecutive years, you can change that to an APRC, get an open work permit, and ditch your “company”. If I’m not mistaken, children of foreigners born in TW won’t have TW citizenship. You’ll still need to apply for residency papers. There are “American” schools in Taiwan. Three that I can think of are: Taipei American School, Taoyuan American School, and Kaoshiung American School. I’m not sure about the prices, but I heard somewhere that it’s about NTD 300,000 per semester. I could be totally wrong. The “American” schools should teach English better than regular schools. I think there are also “European” schools. Public transportation is ok. The MRT is mostly good except for the occasional psychopath.

I’ve seen an advertisement on Forumosa about setting up a business and getting an ARC.

I clicked the and it took me to
http://jusregal.com/English.htm.

That might be worth checking out.

4

Seconding what above posters say. My added two cents: IF neither of you are from Taiwan I would not be as confident that it will all be worth it for the both of you, maybe only one of you… Taiwan is still quite different from China. Is it that your lady misses China , but you don’t want another China stint so you think Taiwan will be a good compromise for the both of you? If so, that could be a good enough reason. But she may find that Taiwan really is NOT China and is NOT home.

As for an English education for your children. Prohibitively expensive to go to an American school for most people.

And the Taiwanese schools , in general, do not produce good English speakers. Going to Taiwan may become just getting yourself between a rock and a hard place.

And it may not be HOME to either one of you.

Increasingly I feel that living long term in Taiwan , one has to be Taiwanese. IF not ethnically, at least in spirit. And should have a tie there (like a Taiwanese wife) if you are not from there. And in that case you still need to be spiritually Taiwanese, like Hok.

5

Many thanks for the replies, guys. Very insightful.

Wow, parental sponsorship ends at 20? That’s young compared to many other countries out there with similar systems. Definitely something to think about.

I’ll look into those business startup services. Hopefully they’re not too expensive. Thanks for the leads!

So I guess that’s 600,000 NTD ($20K USD) per year (two semesters) for tuition to a foreign school? Sounds like a raping on par with most other expat options around the world, but if you get an English speaker in the end I guess its worth it. Thanks for the info.

Very reassuring that our income (which is average here) could provide for a decent life there. I’ve also read/heard that the medical system there is decent and not expensive. Hopefully Taiwan’s also dropped all the TCM hocus pocus that seems to plague medical systems in the Chinese speaking world.

Yeah, that’s part of it - it’s also nice that my wife could get back to the Mainland a few times a year to visit family. But it’s also the fact that I want a place where I can carry on with my work and not have to become a corporate drone in some soul-destroying multinational. I just hope I don’t grow to regret the move to TW. What I really do worry about is that we’ll spend two years in Taiwan, hate it, and then default into a “well, we might as well go back to the Mainland” mindset.

Thank you guys for your input! :lick:

6

If Seattle is so expensive you could always try somewhere cheaper in the US. Taiwan isn’t a bad place but it’s never going to churn out good English speakers. On the other hand, if you want your kid(s) to learn Mandarin, there are few better choices.

There’s another problem which is the education system here, piss poor for the amount of hours people spend in it and amount of money spent on it. It’s a hot house system designed to create grade testing champions and make teachers look good. You don’t need to put your kids in the system until 6 or 7 though. Elementary school isn’t too bad but junior high and high school are a nightmare.

It’s far too early to be making plans of settling down anywhere, the reality is IF you do make the move to Taiwan you’ll have to re-evaluate after two years like you said. No biggie I think since you are mobile and the kid is still very young. I get the feeling you guys would like Taiwan, in lots of ways it’s a lot better than the mainland, even if it has it’s own issues.

7

  1. There are few educational options for an English-language education in Taiwan outside the expensive European and American schools. One possible option is the Nangang Elementary School bilingual class for the children of people working at or investing in the Neihu Software Park and Academia Sinica. This is a public school. Another less expensive option is the Dominican International School. The fees are about US$8,000 a year. Some people just send their kids to public schools and home school them in English. You are right to be concerned about this issue but I think it is manageable if you deal with it from the get go.

  2. $5000 a month is about NT$150,000 per month and will go reasonably far in Taipei depending on your lifestyle. You should be able to save at one third of that a month if you live a modest lifestyle. It would go a lot further in Taichung or Kaohsiung, which also have much better weather than Taipei.

The big issue is the cost of housing in central Taipei. You can rent an apartment with two bedrooms in central Taipei in a traditional five story walkup for around NT$30,000. The afforable housing stock in central Taipei is generally around 30 years old and was built in a time when Taiwan was less prosperous than it is now. The kitchen will be tiny, no oven, and the bathrooms are spartan. They are decent concrete boxes but you may feel your standard of living is lower. You need to choose carefully to avoid noise etc.

For these reasons, many people are choosing to live in newer areas oi New Taipei City where you can easily rent a much nicer new apartment for NT$30,000. A fair number o foreigners live in suburban development known as Lotus Hill and seem to be happy there In Taichung or Kaohsiung there are loads of brand new luxury apartments that are very affordable. You could also look at Wanfang community in Taipei.

  1. Most foreigners who have lived in China love Taiwan. It’s a vibrant, open society. You can comfortably travel and eat out without having a spontaneous audience/photographs in any urban area. Even in rural areas you are unlikely to attract a spontaneous audience and no one is going to take your picture. At most, you’ll get a few surprised glances and comments of ‘Adoga’ if you are in a really remote area. IN the cities, no one could care less unless you behave badly. I predict that you will be amazed at the difference from China.

I’m not sure how your wife is going to like Taiwan. In general, most Chinese spouses here seem to like Taiwan OK although some get a bit upset when they discover that substantial number of people in Taiwan don’t consider themselves to be Chinese and don’t like Chinese people in general. The good thing about the Taiwanese though is that they are quick to revise their views of individuals that they know personally. If “being Chinese” is a big deal to your wife and she is outspoken, she might not be happy here. Otherwise, she should be fine.

  1. I would suggest that you go to the trouble of getting a visitor visa for the purpose of business in the US and visitor visas for your family at the same time. You should then set up a business entity in Taiwan and invest around US$15,000 in it. You can get a work permit as the manager of the business and sponsor your family members for ARCs. To sustain your work permit, your business will need to make an average of US$90k per year in sales/revenue (not profit) each year after the first year. Alternatively, you could probably work out an English teaching gig for 16 hours per week and use the rest of your time for web development. It’s also possible to get a different kind of visa for US$200k if you have that kind of money lying around. Or check out the new enterpreneurial visa and set up your software business in an incubator to qualify.

If you are going to be on the ground in Taiwan, have a CPA help you as suggested here.

Your child can now stay in Taiwan up until the age of 26 if he or she grew up here. See winklerpartners.com/?p=4697. No automatic work permit though. I suspect this will have loosened up by the time your child reaches the age of 20.

Good luck!

[quote=“skulls”]Hi forum, nice to meet everyone. I’m looking for some advice regarding whether I should uproot my family and move to Taiwan or not. If any could be kind enough to offer their two cents, I’d really appreciate it. So here’s my situation…

I’m 33 years old and work in web development, which is an arrangement I do remotely and really love and want to continue. I make about $5000 USD a month. My wife is Chinese and we have a son who is one year old. We lived in China for about seven years before moving to Seattle, where we’ve been for the past two years or so. We like it here in Seattle, but it is seriously expensive and our collective income pretty much goes towards just keeping our heads above water. I could work at an actually company, but I honestly love what I do and it gives me a lot of time to be with my family. Thus, the past year or so we’ve been toying with the idea of moving to Taiwan, but we (well, mainly me) are anxious about a few things. If anyone could help with the following, I’ll buy you a beer should we meet. :bow:

  1. We’re hoping our next move will be our longterm one - settle down, raise and educate our kid (and any future ones), (…). What does this picture look like in Taiwan? Are the education options there capable of pumping out a fluent English speaker? I guess I’m a little worried that our son, who already has so much Chinese influence in his life, will graduate high school with broken English and limited opportunities outside the Chinese speaking world. Maybe I’m paranoid?

  2. In reading the forums, it sounds like $5000 USD a month could go a long way in Taiwan and leave a little room for some modest savings. Would this be accurate if we were to rent a two bedroom apartment in a decent area of a large city like Taipei? For those of you with kids, would this salary provide for a decent education? I see schooling prices that are all over the map there, so I’m a little more than lost regarding how much it would actually cost to live and educate a child in Taiwan.

  3. To be completely honest, I didn’t really like living in China. The approach to personal space was trying at times (I’ll leave it at that). For those of you in mixed race relationships, can you comfortably travel and eat out without having a spontaneous audience/photographs? (I’m so sorry to ask this, but it was really something that bugged my wife and I while in PRC.) If any of you have situations similar to mine, did a pull to go back to the Mainland ever come up while you and your Chinese spouse were in Taiwan?

  4. I’m trying to figure out what sort of visa or residency I could get that would allow me to carry on my work in Taiwan. Is there a visa I could purchase that would allow me to sponsor my wife and son?

Thanks!! :lick:[/quote]

8

Opinions vary on the quality of the public educational system here. Some people seem happy with it. Others are not.

There are some alternatives if you don’t like the regular schools. I posted more information in this thread: forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopi … 8&t=151706.

[quote=“headhonchoII”]
There’s another problem which is the education system here, piss poor for the amount of hours people spend in it and amount of money spent on it. It’s a hot house system designed to create grade testing champions and make teachers look good. You don’t need to put your kids in the system until 6 or 7 though. Elementary school isn’t too bad but junior high and high school are a nightmare.

.[/quote]

9

Others have addressed the visa issue, and I agree you can probably get around this by opening a business in Taiwan. There’s a thread here on this topic, or you can just contact Jusregal, who will do the job for you, for a price. A $5000/month income will buy you a nice lifestyle, and Taiwan’s national health service costs peanuts. It also includes dental care at laughably cheap prices.

If you speak English a lot at home, I don’t see a problem with your child growing up fluent in English. If you are the only source of native-level input, however, you need to spend a lot of time with your child, speaking, singing, playing and reading with him. When the child’s primary care giver speaks Chinese or Taiwanese, the other parent is away from home for most of the day, and the child attends a local school, yes, English fluency can be difficult to achieve.

There are cheaper alternatives to TAS for schooling, and many foreign parents choose to enrol their child in a local school anyway, for the elementary years at least, to learn Chinese literacy. It’s very hard to achieve a good level in this otherwise.

Housing-wise, I often recommend Wenshan District, which is Taipei City but cheaper and less built up than other areas yet has a good level of access to the rest of the city. Another good area is Neihu.

10

Hi Skulls - I would second Head Honcho’s suggestion of looking at cheaper alternatives in the U.S. There are quite a few cities with large Chinese speaking populations that are less expensive than Seattle. Does your wife have U.S. citizenship or want to. Something to consider. If you look at the Living in Taiwan thread you will also see a few long thread about couples or children becoming photo ops - yes it happens here too but more in the smaller cities. Besides the financial considerations, this also sounds like a compromise to make your wife happy. Considering China part of the year would not be a bad compromise. Since you have the capability of being a digital nomad, look at other countries in Asia and other cities in the U.S. It is also very common for a spouse or child to spend a few months in Taiwan or China each year to visit and get to know family and the language.
Just my 2 cents.

11

You also have to consider if US$5000 a month that you are getting will be there all the time. If you lost that and try to find anything local, you will struggle to get the same. Something to think about…

12

[quote=“Hokwongwei”]
By the way, US$5,000 a month would be extremely comfortable in Taiwan. Only 6.2% of the population makes over NT$70,000 (US$2,100-ish) a month in individual income, and you’re more than double that. Of course there is a difference in the standard of living… If you want to have a car (EXTREMELY expensive), save for retirement, eat at nicer restaurants, live in an upscale place obviously the money won’t go as far, but it’s still a very good salary for the cost of living there.[/quote]

I want to disagree on the living comfortably part. It really depends on the individual and your standards and expectations. It was fine for me to live cheaply in a run down apartment for a few years and later when we had kids move to a less convenient location so we could have a big house, but eventually we desired a standard somewhat closer to what we had as students in Canada. With kids we need a car, I don’t like cars much and see them as money pits, so paying cash for a 10yr old beast was fine with me. But there comes a time when you grow tired of the hassles a crap car can bring (like over heating in the middle of highway3). Getting a loan for a tiny car here is exhausting and expensive. Just like getting a phone, or credit card etc. And if your kids aren’t in local school, education becomes a major drain on your budget. Healthy food isn’t necessarily cheap etc.

As long as we don’t go abroad we are ok and can save, but even though our combined incomes far exceed what you are stating, I wouldn’t describe it as comfortable.

13

The local papers had some interesting statistics the other day.

The average person in Taipei City spends about NT$27,000 per month, the highest in Taiwan. That’s on everything: rent, if any, food, clothing etc. So you can expect to be spending around NT$90,000 per month for three people to live like an average Taipei resident.

As Kelake points out, the quality of housing and the kind of education available to the average person in Taipei/northern Taiwan may be less than you are accustomed to in Seattle and likely in Shenzhen as well (esp. the housing). If so, you could easily end up spending the rest of your NT$150k on education and housing ‘upgrades’.

If I were you, I’d look seriously at Kaohsiung or Taichung where your housing dollar goes much further. Now in those places, you will probably need to buy a car, so perhaps you won’t end up saving that much on Taipei even if you can afford to live in a much nice apartment/house with much better weather. International/English language educational choices are fewer.

14

There would be no point in moving it Taiwan and paying a fortune for international education for the OP. There are however good benefits from putting kids in the school system here, namely first class Chinese language education.
There are also tonnes of fairly good bilingual kindergartens in Taichung and outside Taipei, interestingly Taipei is one of the worst choices for decent kindergartens due to space and cost restrictions! The kindergartens outside of Taipei have their own outside playgrounds, in Taipei they drag the kids to the local park! I was really shocked to see
The sad state of expensive kindergartens in Taipei. Farther out in linkou and sanxia should be okay though and they have more kids there. Many people in Taipei leave their kids with grandparents down south in a rather odd arrangement that satisfies everybody but the kids.

Any freelancer should not seriously consider Taipei IMHO …no need to be there…and it’s very crowded …bad traffic on weekends…and fairly crappy weather. Get a car and live large elsewhere.
Take it from me, 10 years in Taipei and Taoyuan, 5 in Taichung. Taichung and down south appeal
To me far more now. jUst too many goddamn people
Wedged together in North Taiwan!

However…if one is a real urbanite, then Taipei city will be the choice for you.

The environment here is generally not as good as the US, namely housing is fairly crap and the air quality is poor. The air quality issue is not a trivial issue especially in central
And southern Taiwan. Taipeis air is also poor quality and you deal with dampness issues. oF course China mainland is absolutely abysmal in this regard.

15

When you put it that way… Basically it’s leaving the West behind and then paying a small country’s treasury to get … a Western education. Good point.

I think that’s a matter of opinion. For me, Taipei will always be top pick because it’s the best for visiting performances/concerts, exhibits, and events; it’s close to the international airport; there is a lot more variation of food than other cities; better job and networking opportunities (in my field, anyway); and the place where most of my translation clients are HQd. The weather does suck, though… And I totally get where you’re coming from about being able to move a child around easily up there.

16

I tend to think that the OP should consider some of the more alternative versions of public education in Taiwan.

In particular, I think he should consider the Humanities Primary and Junior High School in Toucheng (Yilan County).

It’s close to Taipei (45-60 minute drive/bus ride through the Hsuehshan Tunnel) and near the beach.

Your housing dollars will go a lot further here and the air is much better. Plus the big city is close enough.

The tuition/costs is US$2-3,000 per year.

This is a product of the educational reform movement that started back in the 1980s. The idea is to have a school where the child can develop as a person without the distortions and pressure of test-driven regular schools. I think the elite in China are experimenting with similar schools. This one is well established.

I visited there a few years ago feeling very skeptical because of my own experience in alternate schools in the 1970s.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was something very different. It had most of the egalitarian features of Taiwan’s regular schools except the uniforms, was well organized, and the students seemed happy. I was especially impressed by the parents. Many intellectuals and university faculty from Taipei but also plumbers from Zhonghe and farmers from Yilan. Many of them teach part time. The day I was there, a physics professor was giving a math lesson to a group of Jr, high schools students.

The foreign teacher I met there said it was by far the best place he had taught in Taiwan.

It has a well stocked open library with many books in English and a great selection of Taiwanese kids books devoid of KMT/Confucian bullshit.

Read this thread to learn about Datun elementary school and other alternatives here: forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopi … 8&t=151706

I think Headhoncho is right. An excellenet Chinese-language education can be had here and you can create an English speaking environment at home and in the small but vibrant foreign community.

17

[quote=“headhonchoII”]There would be no point in moving it Taiwan and paying a fortune for international education for the OP. There are however good benefits from putting kids in the school system here, namely first class Chinese language education.
[/quote]

Exactly. What’s the point of moving to Taiwan because of learning Chinese but putting your kids in International school. Isn’t Taiwan’s education the TOP 5 (or 10) in the Asia? It’s definitely wayyyy better than in the US. I do see a lot of people here that are anti TW public schools… I wonder why…

18

Links are broken?

19

Links are broken?[/quote]

Link works fine on my browser, but here is is again. The school recommendations begin with AmoyMama’s post.

20

[quote=“pin2xbo”][quote=“headhonchoII”]There would be no point in moving it Taiwan and paying a fortune for international education for the OP. There are however good benefits from putting kids in the school system here, namely first class Chinese language education.
[/quote]

Exactly. What’s the point of moving to Taiwan because of learning Chinese but putting your kids in International school. Isn’t Taiwan’s education the TOP 5 (or 10) in the Asia? It’s definitely wayyyy better than in the US. I do see a lot of people here that are anti TW public schools… I wonder why…[/quote]

Reasonable people will disagree about this.

I personally think Taiwan’s schools are better than some members of the international community think.

Their advantages are:

[ul]relatively well funded and equally funded
egalitarian
good Chinese language education
good math
good at teaching kids values and disciplined study habits
staffed with dedicated professionals
less authoritarian than most other Asian school systems
[/ul]

But there are disadvantages that cannot just be listed out.

Taiwan’s modern school system created in the 1950s and 1960s was a resounding success. Its purpose was to create modern citizens of the Republic of China who would be literate and numerate. The vast majority of its graduates were well trained to work in factories and other sectors of an industrial economy while a small minority, chosen by intensive testing, was selected to become the university-trained elite.

Taiwan today is a democratic, open society that has transitioned rapidly to a post industrial knowledge economy. It is fair to say that Taiwan’s public schools have only partially adapted to this new reality. There is still a strong emphasis on rote learning and an addiction to testing that creates disturbing levels of pressure during junior high school and high school. Many parents, including Taiwanese, are not pleased with the long hours that children spend in the classroom and the heavy loads of homework at an early age. The nature of the Chinese written language requires long hours of practicing characters. As a result, schools and the majority of parents discourage children from sports and other non-academic pursuits. If you are in Taipei or another urban area, don’t think that you can easily exempt your child from this. There is strong peer pressure from students and parents for everyone to conform to the heavy workload and discipline that it requires.

Another possible disadvantage is the ideological nature of Taiwanese education. All educational systems inculcate values of one kind or another, but Taiwan’s schools come with a heavy dose of Confucian and middle class Taiwanese values that some people may not care for. For example, primary school textbooks constantly reinforce the message that the traditional family is the bedrock of society and constantly portray men and women in traditional gender roles. Thankfully, most of the open political propaganda has been removed although people with pro-Taiwan views will still find plenty to disagree with in the textbooks.

Finally, you are making a choice when you put your children in the Taiwanese public school system. Their language of eloquence will naturally be Chinese if they attend through high school. That means they will likely be best suited to college in Taiwan.

If your children attend through elementary school, they will most likely have the enviable advantage of being truly bilingual and a solid foundation in Chinese but that will come at a heavy cost to their reading and especially writing skills in English. Plus, they will not be highly literate in Chinese–that comes later in high school and college.

If your children simply attend elementary for a couple of years, they will not acquire a solid foundation in Chinese and will also be behind when you move them to an English speaking school although kids at this age can usually catch up pretty quickly (while their Chinese skills erode).

Obviously there are many exceptions to these outcomes and parents who emphasize Chinese or English can produce some extraordinary results. But the decision to have your kids attend a Taiwanese school or an international one involves many choices with important consequences.