it could be a good way to pick up some Chinese.
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Toronto isn’t a part of the US.
…yet.
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When I came here I was in temporary housing downtown, near Taipei 101. It took 35 minutes to get to school and 45-60 minutes to get back. The food was great, but there isn’t really a neighborhood.
Tianmu is a little more relaxed and homey. A slightly slower way of life. The people seem very nice and friendly, there are lots of nooks and crannies to seek out. The food situation is very good, but still not as convenient as downtown.
I’ve never lived in Da’an, but it seems to have the best restaurant situation (it seems like every time I want to eat something that I can’t get, Da’an has it). Da’an is slightly better for a commute (25 minutes best time, 50 minutes worst), but I do agree that it’s probably best to live either close to school or close to work. I’ve always chosen school.
It seems like you are a 3-person family. If so, housing won’t be too bad. If you want a very new apartment it will be expensive, but if you’re willing to live in a place that feels like it’s been lived in, you can find tons of affordable apartments. If you want a house, I’m pretty sure that you’ll need to live even farther north and in a situation where you can’t walk anywhere. I found a house in walking distance to the school, but by the reaction of people who visit me, this seems almost like finding a unicorn.
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: )) I would find a house just so I could see the unicon look on people 's faces !
I’d prefer a house but open to condo . will get to go and check out the real estate market ,fingers crossed.I read somewhere no subway to Tianmu, is taxi the only option then to get around or go downtown?
There are tonnes of buses running through tianmu and there are a few subway stops relatively close although not directly in Tianmu. It’s just off in the corner of Taipei city a bit. I used to live there and the part I liked most about it was that it was close to Yangmingshan national park . I’d also rather live in Shilin or or Zhishan area than Tianmu actually cos they are on the MRT line and a bit more lively. But Tianmu is also a really decent area cos it has a nice park mainly , be warned that most houses are old and decrepit looking in Taipei 
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I feel like a teenage boy will enjoy being in the city more. Tianmu isn’t very exciting. Plus more food options in the city. I liked living in Daan the most.
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In Tianmu, there are huge houses on Zhongshan Road, section 7, right next to the national park. As said, public transportation is affordable, efficient and reliable, no biggie. Your main concern then would be the monkeys during hikes: do not feed!
Section 6 on has houses and apartments, all price range, age, condition. Depends on your needs.
My coworker lives next to the joint embassy building, in an older building but it has a swimming pool for summer. It is 5 minute walk from TAS, supermarket, has its own bus stop at the entrance, you can walk to the mrt in 10 to 15 minutes, and you have a hospital next door. There is a nice riverpark next door for evening strolls and weekends you have Yangmingshan. Rents start at around 35k up. Just as an example.
Tianmu has several department store complexes, cinemas, lots of restaurants and local folk are used to having us foreigners all around. Lots of services in English for the expat community.
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Good to know ! My brief initial google search suggested Da’an as well, seems to be a charming, vibrant area with a big park in the middle of it which is quite attractive. Sorry about my ignorance but would you recommend it over Tianmu for a family with a teenager?, My husband and I are keen to explore new things , new places , new events but we also hope my very athletic son has relatively easy access to not just shopping malls but baseball diamonds , basketball courts , skateboard parks, mountain biking trails etc to enjoy the sports and outdoor activities he loves like he does here in Toronto. We can’t have everything and nothing would be perfect I know , but picking the right neighbourhood is a critical part of the move that will help tremendously with the adaptation so thank you for all your suggestions and feedback!
For all those activities I’d prefer Tianmu. My coworker has two boys, they go to swimming class, soccer club, etc. Sports courts aplenty. Even to the hot springs it is a skip away. The Shilin night market is also nearby. Tianmu is more family oriented and foreign friendly.
Daan I think is less sports friendly, IMHO, tightly packed, less parks, less space. It is more a college kids area, with cafes and restaurants and shopping and such. Nothing you would not find in Tianmu. But you can check it out, especially the touristy area of Yongkang street.
Again, getting around by public transportation, either metro or bus, is easy as pie. We have a monthly pass that allows us to take as many rides as we want, very convenient. And that is the key word: convenient. Choose what is convenient for you. If it is not convenient, do not take it.
A real estate agent might try to sell you the posh area of Xinyi. Sure, there will be hiking…every day half an hour to get to the mrt or 711. And an hour commute to school. And most fun around are basketball courts and night clubs.
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Awesome! Thanks for the insight!
I wish I could give more relevant insight, but our situation is different from @zhoul’s so our priorities are different. I have a son in 2nd grade at TAS, but no one would confuse him as being athletic (unfortunately, he is taking after his father this way). Obviously, this is quite a different perspective from that of a parent raising a rising freshman athlete. I will share our experience of TAS and life in Tienmu, and I hope it helps.
This is our third year at TAS and we are quite happy with the whole experience. I myself studied at International School Manila for middle school and high school, which is a very similar environment to TAS and was an experience I valued deeply. I have not been disappointed in TAS, so far. Indeed, as mentioned already, TAS’s facilities, environment, and community have all been everything we hoped for.
We made the decision for our son to go to an international school early because we wanted him to have a more rounded experience. Thus far, between TAS, TYPA, GDS, and the surrounding community in Tienmou (the sports college by the baseball stadium, green spaces like the newly installed zipline playground, the Catholic parish church, the community sports centers, and invitations from new friends to go to the ACC) - the past 3 years have been downright wonderful.
We moved from Da-an District to Beitou on the border of what most people would consider Tienmu. We had lived in Da-an for 4 years by the time we moved, and our place there downtown is right at an MRT station. It was so easy to get to most places where people wanted to meet or eat or hangout. Again, our kid was a toddler at that time, so not the same activities as a high school athlete. We valued the proximity to Da-an Forest Park, the Public Library next to it, Xinyi area around Taipei 101, SYS Memorial, our 3 favorite restaurants among the hundreds northeast of Jen Ai Circle, and both Dunhua South and Dunhua North Roads, and it was a big part of what made living in Da-an great.
When we moved to Beitou, I was surprised at how quiet – silent sometimes – the neighborhood becomes at night. Even my then-5 year old son commented on it on that first night when we moved. We were taking a stroll to a 7-11 that evening, and I thought it was hilarious when he turned to me and said, “it’s soooo quiet here” and I completely agreed with him.
These days, my wife and I travel often, so we manage our schedules around the kid’s daily and monthly school schedules. We don’t have live-in help, and we count on my in-laws to help us pick-up the kid from school when we cannot. So, getting comfortable with things to do and where to eat and play with the kid were important to figure out. Fortunately, our needs have been satisfied well.
We have been very lucky to be able to spend time at his school - as room parents, volunteering in PTA projects, etc. What I noticed most about our first year at TAS was the volume of email we received that was school-related and the number of events (talks, invited speakers, coffee hours) made available at the school. So, for me, this level of involvement and awareness is something I would never expect to have in a local school given my low level of Mandarin. And the depth of our conversations with our son’s teachers – in English as well as with the Mandarin language teachers – school counselors, and his coaches has been most valuable of all.
I can easily imagine how much less my involvement in my son’s schooling would have been had we stuck to our original plans to send him to a local school (our household registration zones us with Jen Ai Elementary School, which was part of our original plans for schooling when our kid was born) – like many of my interactions in daily life as a not-fluent Mandarin speaker, I try to muddle through on my own with a local issue until too many deadlines are missed leading to higher late penalties, before my wife then takes over when she is available. Living in the bubble around my son’s school has allowed me to focus in detail on his development and school-related activies – and I am so very grateful we had this option. This is a benefit I had not foreseen when we began the process for my son to apply to TAS.
My wife did express concern about the spoiled rich kid environment that many seem to have of TAS. And, yes, my son has asked us questions like why we don’t have a car… or a butler (I think we have explained well to him how lucky he is to have classmates from such a broad variety of backgrounds). I realize we have only been there a few years and at the earliest years of his school at that, but these do not seem to have been major issues for us. Not yet, at least. But I don’t expect it to - I know from my own personal experience growing up in ISM (from 5th grade to HS graduation), where I believe the disparity between what that school has versus the local systems are far greater than the differences between TAS vs Taiwan’s schools, that it isn’t as bad by a longshot as what people outside the school think. I completely agree with @Andrew0409’s views on this.
EDIT: one more thing about going to a school with an elite student body like ISM and TAS - while I was a student, except for my closest friends, I was unaware of the backgrounds of the families of my classmates. I understood they were affluent, and typically much better off than my family was, but it wasn’t an issue that concerned me. I would like to credit my folks for this – while I was hardly a model student, I bought into the idea that I had to do my best to get further along. As an adult looking back and - even today - reconnecting with fellow alumni (I’m heading to the 100th anniversary of the school in January), I am always amazed when I discover the backgrounds of the families - both expat and Filipino. Nevermind the celebrities and diplomats, but the magnates, politicians, heads of the military, and those whose wealth you don’t ask about: an incredible collection of people. But in school – during school – at least when I was there – none of that mattered unless you really looked hard. I expect my son to be equally oblivious while he is in school, which so far seems to have done a good job limiting what trappings of privilege are normally visible and that separate us.
We also applied to Morrison Taipei, and I was disappointed when they declined our son’s application. We had not yet made a decision on whether we wanted him to go to Morrison, which is a very small school, or to TAS. And I liked the idea of my son going to a very small school (before ISM, I lived in New York City and went to a parochial school). When we toured Morrison, I asked about the extracurriculars and school teams. We were told that pretty much everyone gets in to band if they ask, since the school is so small. Note: I think Morrison is currently opening it’s Linkou campus, and class sizes are expected to be more after they completely shutdown the downtown location – yet, I cannot see it approaching the scale of TAS for many years.
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Maybe @Toe_Save can comment on what’s available to an athlete in Taipei, especially with softball and hockey
Are you implying that public school is neutral in worldview and a Christian school is not? I’d agree that a Christian school is not neutral, but nor is a public school. Public schools quite clearly and aggressively promote their worldview disallowing and ideologically promoting theirs above others. The question is which worldview better represents reality. So, a public school would try just as hard to convert anyone to its on conception of the world, as a Christian school would theirs. So, one should consider that neutrality is a myth…it’s about which worldview better reflects reality.
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From Da An to Tienmu is a 30-45min (60min if you’re really unlucky) drive depending on traffic. I commute the opposite way.
I live up in the hills so plenty of hiking paths here… but note that they are paved with stones. Finally understood why when I was caught in a heavy rain while hiking… without the stones the path turns into a mudslide
If we end up moving back to Taiwan in 4 years, I would love to be able to send my son to one of these schools - but the cost is absolutely ridiculous (20K+ US a year???)!!! It is more expensive than most universities. I just can’t wrap my head around it. Homeschooling is likely the only option for us (our son will be 12 at the time).
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Speaking from personal experience don’t send him to KCIS
Good to know, thank you !
Thank you very much for taking the time to write, and sharing your experience. Truly grateful and deeply appreciated. The information will most certainly help us making a decision. Trying to identify the ideal neighbourhood to live in in a foreign city is no small task and undoubtfully risky. I am sure both Daan and Tianmu are nice areas for the right families and life styles. We may have to roll the dice once we have a chance to make the initial visit on the island to get a feel of the places and,hopefully , work with an experienced , knowledgable real estate agent who can cater the options to our family. Thank you again for your input. Much obliged ! perhaps we’ll see you at TAS next year : )
because ?
no, just pointing out that some Christian schools are active in promoting religious beliefs while others are not. I’m a Christian myself, and work at a Christian school, and I only think it’s fair to explain to parents if and how religious habits are taught at school 