I’ve never been to the moon but there’s no way it’s made of Swiss Cheese.
Blue cheese all the way man!!!
[quote=“meldrew, post:20, topic:155061, full:true”]
I’ve never been to Taiwan but there is no way it is more crowded than China. It just can’t be.[/quote]
China’s a big country, so it depends on how you measure it.
“most westerners learning Mandarin have terrible pronunciation”…you need to qualify that statement in some way. Terrible in what way? What are you measuring against? Are you including tones in the criticism? I think in general a majority of people learning any language once they’re past 20 have bad pronunciation and/or poor grammar. Its simply mother tongue interference. “Chinese tend to massively patronize westerners speaking Chinese without realizing how shit their command of English is.” Again that’s another gross generalization but it could be true.
Quite a famous Chinese phrase is People Mountain, People Sea. I don’t know if that’s used in Taiwan or not but it’s an everyday comment here.
I know the island is densely populated, of course, but with China… density is masked by the huge areas that are not liveable (deserts and mountains mostly to the west). So you have a huge landmass like China which has an extremely high urbanisation rate which leads to 2 extremes.
- Extremely densely populated cities
- Barren land where nearly nobody lives
Although a part of it in China is just the sheer volume of people you see every day… ‘Crowdedness’ for me, you need to look at the volume as well, not just density.
http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html
Taipei is the 7th most densely populated city in the world. This figure is referring to metropolitan Taipei, but still, northern Taiwan has crazy population density. China in general feels more spread out.r, .
Moreover, Chinese cities are ugly as sin, but they feel planned and spacious. Taiwan has no planning. People build shacks on top of things. Everything is ricketty. People put street food stands all over the place. Every last inch is turned into commercial space. China is not really like this. Taiwan 's greatest charm and most major hindrance is the laisserz faire nature of basically doing everything.
The population density thing doesn’t quite work for me. China is just more crowded, more people. It has urban planning and space but Taiwan simply isn’t as crowded. Sure it is in a night market or at the weekends or in zhonghe but its not the same level as China IMO. Theres plenty of chilled out places in Taipei. Especially if you venture out in the day time.
Living in China would be my worst nightmare. That’s why I have been living happily in Taiwan for the last 16 years. 
I still say it depends on how you measure density. What are the borders of a “city”? Do tourists and unregistered migrants count? Do commuters count? Does higher density on public transportation due to less adequate planning count? Does seasonal density at train/bus stations count even if it’s the same proportion of the population traveling but with fewer cars? Do wider/narrower roads count? And so on. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed in any big city in Asia, and usually also possible to find a place to chill, if you have time to look for it. 
My observations of foreigners learning Mandarin are non-scientific. Ymmv.
@yyy yeah they all do count because it’s part of the feeling. Crowdedness is not just a stat, it’s a state of mind at a moment. It’s clear that Taipei and Taiwan are very crowded, for sure. Most cities in Asia seem to be.
With China, it’s misleading. We have large spaces of uninhabited land for sure, some of it is close to the cities. The country is massive. But there’s a reason why no one lives in those places… usually devoid of all infrastructure or currently being built on. Building work is everywhere.
I had a look at a few things. So considering just the administrative districts of Guangdong around me. Forshan borders to the left, Dongguan and Shenzhen below. (I’ve decided to ignore Zhuhai, Macau and Hong Kong - all which can be reached by train in under 2 hours from GZ)
We have 38.4 million people:
Guangzhou City 12.7m
Shenzhen 10.3m
Forshan 7.2m
Dongguan 8.2m
Those administrative districts add up to 15,743 km2.
The whole of Taiwan is 36,200 km2 with a total population of 23.5million.
Of course, large areas of Taiwan are just mountains and forests too. It’s possibly unfair for me to compare this area of Guangdong to Taiwan but it is my reality.
I have lived in Seoul and I frequent Shenzhen regularly, both just slightly higher density rates than Taipei. Seoul never felt uncomfortable or overwhelming, very busy, yes, but organised. Shenzhen is so busy, despite all the brand new infrastructure and well planned districts, it’s still China and theres still people everywhere.
A part of it is how people act in these crowded areas that makes it worse. Being in a seriously crowded area and having most of the people around you not paying attention to what they are actually doing because they’re glued to their phones just makes the crowdedness worse, though I’m sure that’s a problem everywhere.
I have learned quite a lot about northern Taiwan because of this thread and it does seem like in parts, especially the main train station in Taipei, will be as crowded as I’ve ever witnessed be that Guangdong, Beijing, Seoul or Tokyo. But I feel comfortable knowing that I will find respite from the crowds, something I struggle to do in China.
For anyone that struggles with crowds in Taiwan but wants to relocate to China I’d say aim for Inner Mongolia or to Yunnan. Those places are less dense and beautiful. But you’ll earn a fraction of what you get in TW or any of the crowded cities in China.
This.
Guy
My general feeling was that China was crowded when I live there and Taiwan is crowded.
Based on personal experience I can say that shenzhen and hong Kong both feel more crowlded than Taipei.
Also about the planning, about half of the population in shenzhen live in buildings that were not planned. They are called urban villages. If you google it you can read about that. Its pretty interesting and is linked to China’s two tier system of local v out of town hukou
Yonghe, Yonghe has 40,000 people per sq. km making it one of the densest urban areas on the planet. My maths tells me that’s forty people per square meter. Is that possible?
Your math is off. There are 1,000,000 square meters in a square kilometer (these are units of area, so the 1000 needs to be squared).
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I’d like a third opinion. Anyone?
Google does this too, but feel free to ask for another opinion. I’m quite competent at math.
https://www.google.com/search?q=1+square+kilometer+in+square+meters
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I don’t think 40 people per square meter is possible without turning them into some kind of high density paste first.
Vertical stacking. If you had lots and lots of high rises…
OK my revised maths says 4 persons per 100 square meters, that seems too few, people would be lonely. Anybody?
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What volume of peanut butter would be required to cover both halves of a standard 5" bagel to a depth of 6.5 mm? Calculations should take the center hole into account. Show your work.
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