Hey folks, love Taiwan, born January 1985, just wondering what people liked the most about being in the military?
I’ve been reading a few of the threads here and there seems to be a general blase attitude towards it, where people either have negative opinions or feel like it was boring/unnecessary. After doing it, did anyone regret it and wished that they didn’t come back to Taiwan instead and stayed overseas? I.E. If you were to relive the year, would you have done anything differently?
I don’t regret my choice to do the army, but I didn’t exactly enjoy the experience either.
It was more of an educational thing for me, which isn’t always necessarily a pleasant experience.
In no particular order, here are some of the things I do/did enjoy:
Making friends with all kinds of people from all walks of life. Let’s face it, how many locals do overseas people make friends with?
Having a moral high ground to b*tch about Taiwan, having earned the right to it by paying my dues to society.
Having none of the loopholes to jump through to enter and leave the country.
Not having to follow up on new regulations on concerning conscription.
Truly understanding Taiwanese society from within and being able to read between the lines (Confucianism in practice).
Being part of a massive club that almost all able men belong to (including my dad)- if you run out of conversation, you always got the army to rag on about.
Enjoyed the thrill of firing an assault rifle- even if I don’t like the idea of guns.
Respect from other Taiwanese for knuckling down and doing it, even when they don’t think much of conscription themselves- in particular, my in-laws were impressed and relieved I had done my service and certainly raised their esteem of me.
What I’d have done differently? Probably do Alternative Service instead and end up teaching English to disadvantaged communities in a rural place. Both my brother-in-laws did that after I was discharged from the army. They seemed to have enjoyed some aspects of it, but they didn’t make as many friends as I did. Other than that, everyone’s experience is different in the way they respond to different things at different places and times. How and where you end up in the army is so random and up to chance (drawing lots to be assigned) that I wouldn’t be able to say how I’d do it differently. I was also learning more about myself under the circumstances in my response to situations, so in all honesty I would probably approach the experience with more humility if I were to do it again.
Thanks for your reply - do you mind if I ask for a few more specifics? Other than firing an assault rifle, all the other things you ‘enjoyed’ appear to be philisophical - what I was kind of hoping to find out about is what you actually do when in the military. Do you get to go out drinking? Do you get to having sparring fights? Do you get to go crack down on riots? Etc. From what I’ve read you run 3kms a day but other than that details are sparse… Cheers!
You should’ve said so earlier.
As a conscript soldier, you are expected to live like eunuchs- no sex, no booze, no violence, etc. So many restrictions on your personal liberty, even on your breaks. This is mostly true when you are junior. When you become senior, you get to bend all sorts of rules. Only when you are senior, you get to enjoy stuff. That’s how it works. I was stationed in Mazu, which is run differently from Taiwan proper.
On base, most drinking is done with officers so that you don’t get into trouble for drinking by making them part of it. Drinking with other officers and talking shit was fun, until they get to the part where they moan about being under-appreciated by society at large. Such whingers!
Occasional banquets for the entire company (the CO treated us to keep us quiet about the poor standard of food, as he skimmed off the money for himself). Still, it was good for morale to eat well once in a while in a festive environment.
Fighting among personnel in the army will get you court-martialed, it is really frowned upon. The next best thing is friendly sports matches with other companies, units, etc. I’m no baseballer, but I was the key batsman for our team. It was good for company morale to go out and compete. You also get to win some respect from the seniors for helping to win matches. Officers treat you better for winning matches they were betting on- we never lost a match. Tug of war is pretty fun too with loads of people.
Cracking down on riots is the job of the police and not the army- the poor buggers in Alternative Service get to become the human shields to do riot control. Using the army will only make the riots worse (martial law memories). However, the next best thing I got to do was to get hired by the Coast Guard for half a day to help herd Chinese deportees into awaiting vehicles to carry them to holding centres awaiting the Chinese Red Cross to repatriate them. I got paid NT$50 for my work and a free packet of milk. Unlucky for me, they were transporting men that day and I didn’t get to see the “working girls” that got busted in Taiwan. Still, I got the rest of the morning off for 2hrs work. We also got to do post-typhoon clearance, which is less fun but you get to hang out with people the entire day and not get bogged down with office work.
Going on sentry duty inspection with our Captain in a van, and went on to terrorize the fresh new recruits in the middle of the night. You get to earn a lot of snacks from each stronghold to ease up on their squadron.
Watching the Military Police coming to our base asking for help for making official presentations- we had a Powerpoint genius that could do animations and all manner of stuff. We took the piss out of them for all the crap they gave us from the moment they entered our barracks. I was on sentry duty when they arrived and I prodded them for papers to prove their visit was legitimate. Made them wait as I called my base to confirm their arrival and used all sorts of delaying tactics to waste their time. At base our boys only showed them half of the work, or gave them obsolete stuff, forcing them to return again and again to get it right. Payback is truly satisfying! It’s not everyday that you get to have the entire MP squadron under your collective thumbs. They were stood at attention in our office as we prodded them with uncomfortable questions about their picking on our battalion (our battalion commander was the most junior officer and thus got the most attention). Any victory over the MP’s, no matter how small, is very gratifying. Even our battalion commander was in on it. In the end, he later told us not to overdo it so that we could get favours from them in future. For a long while, we were immune from MP’s.
Squeezing other units for favours for faxing the daily agenda (official secret document) that I personally collected on foot from HQ. They couldn’t be bothered to make the trip, so we had some leverage over all the other units.
Learning 台客舞, Taiwanese dancestep, that was all the craze during mid-autumn festival at base. No beers, but there was a barbeque and music. Some dudes could really dance! You also get to learn who were the snobs… mostly Taipei people…
Watching my former corporals and lieutenant’s suck up to me after my transfer for potential favours and insider info. Those who treated me well got access first to sensitive data so that they could respond to situations better or knew when trouble was coming.
Losing homophobia completely. I was good friends with a gay conscript and learned a lot about them. Of course, I had to keep his sexuality a secret for his sake. You’d be surprised how many gays there are in the army.
Raiding the company pantry for desserts.
We rarely had any fitness training since we were mostly pre-occupied with office work. But it was even funnier to see our CO’s get tested for fitness running laps, with some failing to meet the minimum requirements- we helped falsify some lap times and earned a few perks for our complicity.
Secretly enjoying Philip Pullman’s trilogy “His Dark Materials” on audiobook while on sentry duty.
Thanks heaps for the detailed reply - it really helps to be able to get an insider’s perspective!
To be honest though it sounds really bleak if those are the sorts of things that are the highlights… I guess I always had the impression that army dudes train during the day then go to the pub to hit on chicks at night… Too many American movies I guess… Given that I am nearing my thirties… Life does seem a bit too short to spend a year playing pranks.
Thanks again for putting the effort to write such a detailed post, it’s helped me in my consideration for whether or not to stay in Taiwan.