if you think the traffic is ok you are in some serious denial. maybe its because i learnt to drive in the uk. but people here having no respect for pedestrians, for my safety and my life is something i cannot accept.
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Working is basically half of oneâs life unless you happen to be rich.
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I donât travel during rush hour only if I have to. It helps a lot.
Another example: it is wayyyy tooo humid for me ( not hotâŚbut HUMID) - i usually change 3 tshirt a dayâ well i found a new brand of shirt which make me sweat less or absorb bettter â all good
Please share 
thanks in advance.
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No itâs not. Itâs chaos chaos. Besides itâs not just that, the sidewalk is pathetic, and then thereâs all the usual crap you see on the news, like people dying from overworking, one food scare after another, people complaing about the shit money, fear-mongering crap like how 2 million Taiwanese people work in China (which is actually total bullshit, but people believe it), the pollution crap, corruption scandal etc. etc. etc. A day simply cannot pass without indignation.
Are you seriously unaware of those? If you donât like watching new on TV (which is yet another thing to complain about - the vomit-inducing piece of shit media, literally all fo them. They put Foxnews to shame when it comes to poor journalism), maybe some independent newslet on internet. I donât see how anyone could not feel negative if they follow the news.
Do you have information that disproves this? Iâd be curious to see it.
https://www.stat.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=41034&ctNode=6395&mp=4
It says in 2015 around 720k people work overseas, down by 2k from 2014, and grew by 10% since 2008 (which is like ⌠not a significant growth by any stretch of imagination). Of which 58% of them work in China, 15.4% work in Southeast Asia.
The 2 million Taiwanese people work in China rumor had been raging on internet since like 2010 or so, which is hilarious because China actually conducted a population survey and according to their official data only less than 200k Taiwanese people were living there.
The problem here is that itâs hard to find corresponding figures. They have not done any population survey ever since and this is the first time the government here ever released such report.
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Is there any way to count the Taiwanese who are over there on US etc. passports? (Iâm not saying it would bring the number up to 2m, just curious about how many there are.)
Long-time forum lurker here, Iâd like to offer my 2 kuai on the subject.
I was that guy for a while, during the year I spent on the 'wan. I complained a lot, and I also got the whole âif you hate it so much, why donât you leave?â thing pretty often. If I were to come back, I probably wouldnât complain half as much, because now I do know what the place is like.
But hereâs the rub: I didnât know what the place was like when I first signed up to stay there for one year. Sure, I had tried to learn as much as I could on the internet, but you really canât get a clear picture of what life is actually like in Taiwan partly because, in retrospect, it seems as if a lot of online discourse about Taiwan is self-censored due to a certain âno negativity allowedâ mentality.
I get it, many people love this place, have built their lives here and wouldnât trade it for any other. Iâm not judging. But when all you read online is about this wonderful place where the food is delicious, the people are super polite and everything is ultra-modern and super convenient, well⌠you might be in for a disappointment.
And thatâs kind of why I was so negative during my time there â I had already lived in several foreign countries but I was in for a rude awakening when I went to Taiwan (getting cheated and lied to in matters concerning my livelihood, for instance). And my answer to âif you dislike it so much, why donât you leave?â was always the same: âI am leaving next year, but until then Iâm stuck here.â
But yeah, thatâs all in the past now and Iâve come to terms with my time there. I certainly wouldnât be as negative if I were to go back, but I donât think it would be a bad thing if the image of Taiwan that is disseminated on blogs and the like were more⌠realistic. I get the fact that Taiwan is an underdog nation with a precarious diplomatic situation and that its inhabitants are fiercely chauvinistic and allergic to criticism (the only good adogah is an adogah who smiles a lot and says everyone is very keqi and the food is very haochi), but I got the impression there were a lot of ânodding dogâ laowai who had just internalized this hackneyed discourse in the hopes of scoring some Good Boy Points.
I also think itâs healthy to be able to blow off some steam, and the internet provides us with a safe outlet for that. During my time lurking on TW-related forums I saw more than one Guardian of Positivity suddenly go berserk, release a torrent of negativity and storm off the island for good measure. Besides, I think the people who do stay despite their complaints really do love the place deep inside. I know I didnât, and thatâs why I left.
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Itâs not just foreigners that are negative. A lot of locals are negative about one thing or another, there are plenty of choices of things to be negative about.
The difference is locals donât have opportunities back home in another country. If they want to be around home, they are stuck with whatever situation they have in Taiwan.
You probably spent the morning with him 
Nodding dog Laowai is great. Thatâs exactly what Taiwanese like. They love stupid foreigners who say what they want to hear.
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I have a lot ot complain about all the places I lived to be honest.
Texas- ridiculously hot. Only sport they care about is football. Food will make you obese. No ethnic food to be found. People drive these ridiculous pick up trucks that make huge black smoke. The more black smoke out the pips the better. No Asians so they ask you some of the stupidest questions over and over again like if you know Chinese is that like similar to Korean so you can also understand Korean?. Awful fruits. Got to b careful because literally everyone has a gun. The list goes on and on.
I can talk about Virginia, Florida, NY, Cali, china etc. everyplace sucked in its own way but was also an experience. You can adapt or complain.
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lol@ nodding dog foreigner.
i donât blame them though. Taiwanese judge all foreigners the same. so people want to limit the flak we are getting. i try not to care too much but i find myself trying to explain a lot of things i really shouldnât have to. such as all foreigners donât do this or that or whateverâŚ
Iâve also noticed thereâs an element of the standards to which you are held/to which you hold others. Refusing to critique a place simply because you hold its inhabitants/government to a lower standard is condescending at best and downright racist at worst.
Iâve met people from the âexpat bubbleâ in Western countries with a much higher standard of living than Taiwan who were constantly bitching about everything, far more than I ever saw foreigners doing so in Taiwan, and about pretty weak stuff compared to what you have to put up with there. And while this might seem to speak in favor of Taiwan, to my mind it meant the exact opposite â many expats didnât really expect much from Taiwan, whereas everything in [Western country] was supposed to be just right.
Of course the same thing happens with Chinese and Taiwanese people in their interactions with Westerners â many of them hold us to a much lower standard and feel comfortable in the notion that they can understand English (aka waiyu, or foreignerspeak) while foreigners could never hope to crack their super secret language, so a few words of broken Mandarin and a naive observation about Taiwan are rewarded with hollow praise and a pat on the back. Once you stop conforming to the âdumb laowaiâ stereotype and display a better grasp of the language, however, things ironically take a turn for the worse since youâre threatening the whole insider/outsider model their society is built on by crossing certain boundaries.
So all in all Iâd say that by rewarding conformist, docile laowai and punishing complainers, Taiwanese society already does a lot to promote a certain type of âgood laowaiâ staying on the island, even though theyâre not necessarily the ones who could contribute the most to their society (but then again, they donât need no stinkinâ contributions).
Yeah, I donât want to go off on a rant in a thread about ranters but that was another thing that really got to me when I was there, the notion of collective responsibility. Every now and then the news would run a story about some foreigner from [Country] who did [something bad], and God help anyone from [Country] who was in Taiwan at the time because he was in for a week of getting the stink eye and having to explain that ânot all people from [Country] do [bad thing]â.
Of course the Taiwanese apply the same standard to themselves so whenever something ugly leaks out (like the MRT incident with that British Youtuber) they will all offer âapologiesâ in an attempt to save the nationâs face even if they have never done anything wrong as individuals.
And yeah, I did feel like I had a hard time being treated as an individual rather than a cookie-cutter emanation of some noumenal Socratic Form.
I think I told you, before we came here, fellow compatriots who had been here before us painted a dire picture. An alien place without soap, deodorant or edible food. Not even ice cream or steak, they said. They predisposed most of us to a very negative experience. And they were totally wrong. I often wondered what kind of sadistic pleasure they derived from giving the wrong information.
Thatâs very interesting re: the point I was making about expectations. The place amply surpassed your expectations so you were very happy when you got there, whereas it fell below mine so I felt unhappy. Maybe the best way to get rid of complainers is to scare people shitless before they go to Taiwan? 
Yeah itâs pretty pathetic when locals complain a shit ton, yet when foreigners do it becomes a problem, though to me it seems like people now are starting to agree with what foreigners complain about (because really we complain about the same shit, except for things that only concern foreigners, like visa or getting a credit card mess). I could be wrong though as I almost never talk to foreigners here. Actually not even almost, I just donât do that.
When I get asked about Taiwan under a more international circumstance I tend to avoid the subject or shit talk about it. I wish people here were more like me.
i always think the best way to appreciate taiwan is to live in china firstâŚ
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Seeing that you donât agree with others, but posit the statements of others as a complaint, you might want to ask yourself if you are engaging in [psychological projection].
(Psychological projection - Wikipedia).
If not, why donât you answer the complaints posited by the âothers,â i.e. âforeigners.â
1 This place looks like a dump.
Yes or no.
2 The kids I teach have no logic.
What are your thoughts about this?
3 It always rains.
Obviously you live in Taipei City or Keelung.
How do you feel about the weather?
4 You will never be âconsidered Taiwaneseâ.
Is it important for you to be considered âTaiwanese?â
5 Pollution/other problems.
Do you like the pollution, and other problems?
6 X and Y is too expensive.
Do you want to buy property in Taipei City, or are you talking about drinks at Club XXX?
7 âAmerica is not like this and _____________â
Are you American or ___________?
âhow long have you lived here for?â and get a reply of, "10 years/12 years/5years:.
If it bothers them so much, why not just leave?
Maybe you are asking yourself the same question after just 3 years.
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