No, an English squirrel would have 10 pints of hazelnut cider and rip the parrots fucking wings off for looking at his nuts. Or write a comment about squirrels on the Guardian website.
That wasn’t no local parrot. It looked foreign to me. And it had been injecting steroids.
Grey squirrels are bloody foreigners anyway.
Okay, I give up. Which one - the squirrel or the parrot - is a metaphor for Forumosa and which one is a metaphor for Taiwanease? Or am I overthinking this and you lot have just gone wildly off track?
It’s obvious the squirrel is a metaphor for gun control laws (hence the “nuts”), while the parrot is the symbol of illegal immigration into the US: colorful and exotic but also 'cause of problems. The tree, depending on the species, is either a representation of environmental issues or a potent phallic symbol.
Obvious to you maybe. Further down the food chain where I’m lodged we’re all in agreement that Forumosa should adopt the image of a one-eyed green parrot wearing a pirate hat as its symbol as that sums up perfectly what the Forumosa community is all about. I can’t speak for Taiwanease but I can see them adopting the image of a squirrel standing disapprovingly before a large pile of nuts put away safely for the winter while we here at Forumosa fritter away our time engaging in frivolous pursuits.
Go Parrots!
The big difference i see is that Taiwanese is smaller and there is significantly less discussion with a smaller group. This shouldn’t be a surprise since it’s still a fairly new sight though. The benefit is that it’s a newer sight that is structurally superior (imo) since it’s easy to make changes to a sight that you are setting up vs making changes to a larger established sight. I don’t go over there much though. I get my Taiwan forum fix here and I’m getting busier now.
Maoman posts over there and JP is a mod. It must be better
There’s no doubt that Taiwanease stripped some good posters from here. There was an element who felt this place had become xenophobic, although if Taiwanease ever becomes popular enough to attract the noobs fresh off the boat, they’ll have to work hard to prevent ‘freedom of expression’ over there too.
What has been delightful though, is that some of the uglier long-termers also went across, along with all their rubbish and drivel.
That’s not missed at all.
Means he gave up his home country citizenship and did army time, then, just to be closer to Taiwan culture. But if that’s the case, why hang around on English-language expat forums… 
In my allegory the parrot was forumosa. I thought nobody had seen what I was digging at, thanks for either proving my sanity or joining me in my madness. 
I don’t think subsequent posts by people reflect my true meaning of the parrot and squirrel story.
I might retire to Taiwanease in my dotage.
Don’t even go there…
I found Taiwanease and Forumosa at the same time. But I chose Forumosa to register, because I thought the discussion was more interesting… I have never registered to Taiwanease before reading this post. I am now curious to see if I could identify some of the forumers that are on both sites… some are pretty easy to spot 
I like both sites. It will be interesting to see how they differentiate over time. Taiwanease has become more lively recently, and seems to have a more dedicated IRL community focus.
Isn’t that probably the biggest difference? Most of the regulars over on Taiwanease know each other IRL, don’t they? The flob was fairly cliquish when I started posting on here about four years ago (under another name), before the exodus. I’ve only met a very small handful of Forumosans in person and I kinda like being able to post here in separation to the rest of my social life.
Seems to me that the flob of today is less antagonistic than before, for whatever reason.
Fixed that for you.
I hear there are 620,000 single shrubberies in Taiwan. 
Op, i hope you found the answers you were looking for amongst seven pages of replies.
Guys, let’s keep this civil, and no cheap shots to the proprietors of either sites who can’t be glued 24/7 to this thread to defend themselves.
Thanks,
914
While this point is hardly decisive, I do note that only Taiwanease has had news and discussion of recent proposals to change the naturalization requirement, e.g., by eliminating the requirement that immigrants renounce their previous citizenship. Forumosa had some discussion of it before (though strangely, under “Living in Taiwan”–not “Dual Nationality”), but for the recent developments, one must hunt for the link to Taiwanease.