My husband has been travelling to and from Taiwan very regularly for almost five years now. As it seems very likely that this will continue indefinitely, we think that within a couple of years we will have a second home in Taiwan where we will spend a few months out of the year together as a family. My husband and I are very fond of Taiwan, so we would love for our kids to be able to speak Chinese so that they can fully enjoy their time there.
We would like to hire a Taiwanese au pair so that they can semi-immerse in Chinese beforehand and have a fun new friend to play with (we don’t need them to do housework). We have no idea where to look for this person. Are there agencies, or are we better off advertising somewhere?
I think this is going to be tough. Taiwanese don’t really have the concept of an au pair and childcare is No. 1 on the list of jobs that young Taiwanese women don’t want.
Perhaps you could try to contact the Department of Early Childhood and Family Education at National Taipei University of Education and try to get them to help place one of their students.
This will be a request out of the blue for them, they may not understand it (don’t use the word au pair–explain it), and they may be understandably suspicious–Bali is a third world country for Taiwanese and two Taiwanese students were just horribly murdered in Japan. Taiwanese unis also don’t seem to really understand the idea of placement.
If you can figure out how to use Ptt BBS, that would be a good place to post an notice–widely read by Taiwanese students.
I think she means BaLi, across the river from Danshui. The post doesn’t make sense otherwise.
But yeah - students would be your best bet. If you ask, you may be permitted to stick a notice on university noticeboards. The English-language departments would be a good place to start. As feiren says, Taiwanese people are really not interested in looking after other people’s rugrats (because that’s a job for, like, brown people) but if you emphasize the language-tuition side, it gives the job a bit more cachet. You can expect to pay a student NT$250-350/hour, I would guess, plus expenses; I mean an undergraduate who is not in teacher training.
I think they live in Bali/Indonesia with their children and want them to prepare for a future life in Taiwan. So they are looking for a native speaker to teach the kids Chinese while in Indonesia.
I suspect you’ve already looked into this, but I understand there’s a fair number of Chinese-speaking expats in Indonesia. Have you tried registering with local employment agencies? Just a thought. It’ll probably be cheaper, for one thing.
I wouldn’t expect too much from an au pair, though. Language acquisition without everyday use is very difficult. The kids will pick it up fast enough once they get here.
Yes there are many ethnic chinese in bali who can speak mandarin that will possibly be ideal? However, it doesnt hurt to post some sort of notice on taiwanese university bulletin boards. Or ask someone in taiwan to do that. Its possible an adventurous taiwan girl could be up for that?
Most of the Indonesian Chinese live in Jakarta which is not on the same island as us. That being said, it is not very common for the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia to speak Chinese. There was an official government policy that discriminated against Chinese language and culture here and it lasted for decades. The only ones I have met who did speak Chinese did not speak Mandarin. They spoke Cantonese or Shanghainese.
It’s not impossible to find one despite Taiwanese don’t have any idea of au pair!
Young generation in Taiwan are searching for any chances to go abroad, like the the most desirable destination is Australia (Working Holiday).
Young Taiwanese would love a oversea job which offers him/her a good chance to learn English.
Au pair, meaning “equal to” in French, is youngster who does some light house chores or takes care of host-kids in exchange for a change to live with a local family. It’s a fast way to learn a new language and culture!
Taiwanese don’t have any idea of au pair indeed so that I tried to coin another term last year when I was starting up the au pair services! It becomes very popular after my Taiwanese clients know this idea albeit in another substitute name.
[quote=“HomestayTaiwan”]Au pair, meaning “equal to” in French, is youngster who does some light house chores or takes care of host-kids in exchange for a change to live with a local family. It’s a fast way to learn a new language and culture!
Taiwanese don’t have any idea of au pair indeed so that I tried to coin another term last year when I was starting up the au pair services! It becomes very popular after my Taiwanese clients know this idea albeit in another substitute name.[/quote]
I used to encourage my Taiwanese students who wanted to travel to find au pair jobs. With Chinese on the rise, it’s not just English that opens doors these days.
I started out my travels as an Au Pair to an Italian family. Not easy, living with a different family in a different culture, but an amazing experience perhaps not in spite of, but because of these challenges. Plus I got to travel one week out of each month.
Go Au Pair Taiwanese travel bugs! It’s a great and cheap way to travel and really experience a different culture!