from the news link:
Today’s Taipei is rich and hip. High-speed trains zip passengers along the west coast of the island at 350km/h (218mph). Taipei 101 - briefly the tallest building in the world - towers over the city, an emblem of its prosperity.
(Tainan)The newest factory - the nearly $20bn fab 18 in southern Taiwan - will soon start producing three-nanometre chips destined for next-generation iPhones.
“Compared to software engineers in the US, even at the best companies here, engineers are paid quite badly,” he said. “But compared to other industries in Taiwan the pay is good. So, if you work for a big electronic company after a few years, you’ll be able to get a mortgage, buy a car. You’ll be able to get married. So, people suck it up.”
“A young man who spent several years working at one of Taiwan’s largest electronics companies agrees: “I think Taiwan’s companies are bad at making big breakthroughs in technology. But they are very good at taking someone else’s idea and making it better. This can be done by trial and error, continuously tweaking small things.””
You need to have a nonconformist and out of the box mindset in order to make big breakthrough in tech. Taiwan culture is everything is follow the leader without question. One step out of the box you’re punished harshly, like Japan.
But big breakthrough in tech means little without manufacturing capacity behind it, and Taiwan is good at that.
I think being on the autism spectrum helps, but most society ostracizes people on the spectrum, it’s holding us back.
I can think of ways to improve production once I’m familiar with it were I given the opportunity.
Wholly unrelated, but never thought that I’d see the day where my apartment would appear on the accompanying photograph to an article on the front page of the BBC News site.
“Rich” - Despite the current 2nd Taiwan Miracle, everyone in Taiwan is still poor. The big money being made by these tech firms isn’t trickling down into local businesses and lower-tier workers. Instead it’s going into real estate or being moved out of the country.
“Hip” - Taipei has actually regressed and feels less international than when I arrived 10 years ago.
Sorry but I don’t see it. There hasn’t been an explosion in nice restaurants and luxury good stores\ as you’d expect in an area with significant wealth.
In fact Hsinchu only has 2 department stores, and one of them (Far Eastern) feels abandoned and close to closing. Lots of empty shop space last time I visited. Not exactly the sign of a thriving city.
Department stores? Weird metric, dude. They’re closing everywhere. Near my house in Northern Virginia, one closed and has become a parking lot for Amazon vans.
In Cali, I lived in a town with a median income of $105k - not ultra high end, but seriously solid. Not much high end in town - people shopped elsewhere when looking for high end.
Yeah it’s not very hip , unless an abundance of expensive coffeeshops means hip. It’s mostly full of old people. Some districts are still interesting like Ximen Ding.
Hsinchu has a lot of money and is improving (the shopping center in the centre was completely revitalized, zoo and parks renovated, some new pavements ) but should be a shining citadel with how much money washes thru the place. ENGINEERS as noted are too busy working though.
Like cooking instead of manufacturing, it requires extreme attention to detail and diligence and to be willing to come in at 3am to fix things or work 40 hours on a process.
Life scientists do similar things actually.
More houses are going up in Hsinchu now though. Zhubei is dull as dishwater but at least it’s nicely laid out. Pity the government (and the people often) are so damn backwards they can’t construct proper public transport systems.
Zhubei and Hsinchu should be thought of as one city separated by a river. The greater Hsinchu could be a nice place to live if they built a LRT route from the beach to train station to science park to HSR.
