So what have people found in terms of “integrating” here? What sort of barriers have you encountered? Sorry if this is a bit of a ramble… It’s not a very linear problem.
I work at a public elementary school and honestly feel like an expensive glass ornament. The school loves to wheel me out and have me on display but doesn’t want me to actually be involved in anything (planning / prepping even the actual teaching lol)
On relations with my colleagues… They’re all friendly and nice but as I’m not actually given any work to to do, there’s not much common ground for us to talk about. Once you get past the “你們英國也有這個嗎?” what else can you talk about? I feel often as well now that I’m more confident in my language skills that this isn’t a linguistic problem… It’s cultural, people often freeze up when talking to me in Chinese (or English). I often try to talk to my colleagues but feel like there’s a barrier that they don’t want me to get past.
Like it’s not exactly like I want to be Taiwanese, but I would like to feel like I’m part of a team of people that I’m working with… It often feels that the default mode is to exclude me, not necessarily deliberately, but often through an excess of over complicating things.
A few things I’ve encountered that I’m finding very challenging.
manic / hystryonic giggling when engaging with people.
people who respond with what feels like a dismissive shake of the head and “沒事，沒事” when you ask “xyz什麼意思？”
being singled out as an English object. Eg in a group of locals, when everyone is chatting in Chinese and someone makes a point of targeting me to speak English / reply to me in English when I’m having a conversation in Chinese…
whispering in the office!
Anyway I’m under no doubt that I’ll ever actually integrate, but would love to hear other people’s thoughts / experiences.
I’m afraid you’ll always be an outsider to some degree, however keep working on Mandarin and even Taiwanese if you’re that motivated. You’ll find those close friends who will always have your back. Tell them you’d like to improve your Chinese and answer in Chinese.
They probably don’t understand why you want to be here and have a need to make sense of things.
My best lifelong friends are here now. Take an interest in their lives and join meetup.com for activities you enjoy groups to make friends outside of work.
Giggling is nervousness on their part.
I worked in an office where turnover was high and the people from there still stay in touch
I’ve been here fore decades unfortunately I can’t argue with what you said, you can’t really properly integrate here even if you make friends or have close family. The concept of women, nimen waiguoren is too engrained. It’s probably this way in most of Asia too.
That’s not it though, a lot of local people don’t really want you to see/be part of the inner workings and they feel when you speak Chinese that it’s some kind of competitive thing. Worse with the educated types. Main problem I guess is the very low number of foreigners working and living here except for in factories or caregivers so people act so weird.
There’s just very few foreigners in regular society in Taiwan .
I think you can integrate with friendship groups, clubs, sports groups, interest groups etc pretty well if your Chinese is good enough. But then you are self selecting the Taiwanese you are spending time with.
With coworkers it’s really hard, to impossible if you ask me.
Agreed. It’s difficult , partly because of passive aggression and poor work cultures but mostly because most people here aren’t very outgoing and there’s a bit of envy of foreigners too especially amongst the guys. Taiwanese guys can be a bit insecure about that. When I was younger and better looking I used to get a lot of bitching about me and weird behaviour and comments .
You can but you’ll still regularly encounter 'oh where you from ’ or ’ your chopsticks so good ’ people regularly . Need a thick skin and you’ll almost always be the sole foreigner in the group .
It depends on the office , but I have never been interested much in the conversations at lunch save politeness. Not for individuals I’m close with, but in general. A lot of Taiwanese up to mid 30s live with parents, so it’s difficult as someone who has left their own country to really integrate.
I worked in one international startup which was a little different
Yeah let’s call a spade a spade most of them were super dull , overworked , underpaid , and in the old days folks couldn’t travel much overseas ……Very limited experiences …remember low cost travel only came in starting about twelve , thirteen years ago !
I did have some hard drinking bosses and sales guys as ‘friends’ though we used to get obliterated.
I doubt that makes the OP feel better.
It’s very annoying I have another big nose friend who is probably more sociable than me but this one in particular drives him crazy. Sometimes you have to be really on your game with EQ and handling interactions here guiding people it does get tedious. I love my fellow citizens at home cos they come with that inbuilt in, their DNA , at least some of em, they aren’t AFRAID of dealing with people . A big thing I don’t want my kids to be is have that feeling that people are somehow fundamentally different because they are a different colour. Relax. chill. Have a laugh (not giggle ).
I work with international clients who source in Asia. Many times, they feel the factory is laughing at them when in reality they are nervous or have some bad news to tell you.
It’s not my culture and I agree it doesn’t make me feel better but I’m not trying to change a culture. I recognize it and understand that it’s an opportunity to ask questions and not just push through.
A westerner’s firm handshake while looking someone in the eye is seen in my culture as honest and confident. Here, it seems arrogant or confrontational.
The thing is they wouldn’t giggleir do the avoidance when dealing with local people, so it’s still super annoying whichever way we cut it.
And Taiwanese business men. Meh their only culture is making money . You know that and I know that.
I completely agree with this. Outside of the office, I am basically accepted. At church, with friends, with people who enjoy the same sports. Night and day.
One way I have approached this is to do sports with people in the office. We just registered two triathlon relay teams with office people yesterday. But success has been limited.
My job is mostly writing and analyzing documents so in a way I don’t mind too much. And I don’t stick out much keeping to myself because most of the office does the same. It’s the nature of our work.
Dont worry about it, for the good being a foreigner in taiwan comes the bad. Just get used to it.
I was born in Taiwan and am actually half taiwanese (hapa hapa) but…even my closest taiwanese friends think that I “think” different and I “am” different from them. People i grew up with for petes sake.
They think if me as foreign. But at least being half taiwanese i am let in to the “secret circle” , which only ethnicity (taiwanese/chinese) allows you in.
So even though I was always singled out as “foreign” and yet I did have my taiwanese member card.
I knew a priest who spoke taiwanese better than i do, and hes 100pct italian. He will never be considered “really” taiwanese. YES taiwanese are in some ways racist. But the original inhabitants (who form part of the dna of most “real” taiwanese used to behead everyone who landed on Taiwan…so there has been improvement towards foreigners I think.
