I hear teachers in Taipei complain from time to time about having to find part-time gigs and getting pinched on hours. My question, is there any place in Taiwan especially good for finding teaching jobs now? I hear Xinzhu has higher demand for teachers and the pay is good. I don’t get out of Taipei much so I don’t really have anything useful to tell them. Any thoughts?
Basically, it’s an equation involving four things:
A) size of the city/town (i.e. number of potential students);
B) wealth of parents and emphasis upon educational achievement;
C) number of other foreign teachers (competition);
D) cost of living.
It’s roughly (A * B)/(C * D).
Let’s compare four different scenarios: 1) Taipei; 2) certain second tier cities such as Taoyuan and Xinzhu; 3) most other cities (e.g. Gaoxiong, Taizhong, Tainan); 4) smaller towns (I’m also including places such as Taidong or Jiayi here which are basically just towns).
For 1), A and B are good, but C and D are bad, so it’s a mediocre option.
For 2), A is average, B is reasonable to good, C is generally quite good, and D is also at least average or good, so it turns out to be a fairly good option.
For 3), A is good, B is average, C is average (better than Taipei, but worse than Taoyuan or Xinzhu), and D is good (probably marginally better than Taoyuan or Xinzhu), so this turns out to be fairly mediocre also.
For 4), A is bad, B is bad (there are exceptions), C is good (and in some cases, there may be good cases of B that no one knows about or they don’t want to pursue them because of their location), D is generally quite good, though some things are actually more expensive than in the cities due to lack of availability. Generally, this option is not a good one at all, though as mentioned, there are some really good exceptions.
The point, of course, is that no one wants to live in Taoyuan or Xinzhu for a reason – they’re boring and/or god awful in terms of the urban landscape (on the latter point, I am only talking about Taoyuan as I’ve never been to Xinzhu).
You’d have to have something seriously wrong with you to be unable to find work in Taoyuan. Even the crystal meth addicts get jobs. If you’re looking for work teaching kids it’s got to be one of the hottest areas for work at the moment. As GIT say, Xinchu is also very easy for finding work.
If you want to teach adults then Taipei is probably still a better bet. Of course, that depends much more on your experience, qualifications, and charm. In Tapei there are many opportunities to earn 800, 900 or 1000 an hour teaching adults. The adult schools around Taoyuan will try and get away with paying as low as 500. They find people prepared to accept it, too 
[quote=“tomthorne”]You’d have to have something seriously wrong with you to be unable to find work in Taoyuan. Even the crystal meth addicts get jobs. If you’re looking for work teaching kids it’s got to be one of the hottest areas for work at the moment. As GIT say, Xinchu is also very easy for finding work.
If you want to teach adults then Taipei is probably still a better bet. Of course, that depends much more on your experience, qualifications, and charm. In Tapei there are many opportunities to earn 800, 900 or 1000 an hour teaching adults. The adult schools around Taoyuan will try and get away with paying as low as 500. They find people prepared to accept it, too [/quote]
I know. The guys I met in Taoyuan. Have you met that guy Joe whose girlfriend is the geomancer who hangs out near the train station? You’d know who I mean if you’d met him. He has one funny eye. It’s kind of cloudy, but he doesn’t have a cataract. I doubt he’s still there. A few years ago, my friend was out visiting me from Australia. We were walking down the street and we got to the corner of Zhongzheng and Nanping Roads right outside that really busy hotpot place, and a random foreigner came up to us and engaged us in conversation. Mid-conversation, he pulled out a tea bottle and a coffee mug. The tea bottle was full of gaoliang or something of the sort. So there we were standing on the corner with him loading up, while he told us about how he lost his job in Japan for drinking on the job, but in Taiwan, he refrains from drinking on the job (just drinks the rest of the time). My friend, who had been in Taiwan for a day or two was like, “WTF, this guy is a teacher?!” That’s when I knew I’d been in Taiwan too long.
It’s bizarre that anyone would take 500NTD/hour in Taoyuan unless they were literally fresh off the boat. The smart people in Taoyuan are all in really plum jobs, usually non-buxiban. There are certainly quite a few opportunities to set up group privates that make very nice money. There’s a lot of money in certain parts of Taoyuan as people use it as a commuter city to Taipei.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]
It’s bizarre that anyone would take 500NTD/hour in Taoyuan unless they were literally fresh off the boat. The smart people in Taoyuan are all in really plum jobs, usually non-buxiban. There are certainly quite a few opportunities to set up group privates that make very nice money. There’s a lot of money in certain parts of Taoyuan as people use it as a commuter city to Taipei.[/quote]
I wonder whether a lot of the older guys who do it are in semi-retirement. You don’t need much of an income from back home to live over here and the teaching work could just be their beer money.
Yeah, and to get them out of the house. Sure. Not really sure, given where else someone could live (either in Taiwan or elsewhere) for the same money as in Taoyuan, that Taoyuan would be my choice of retirement location though.
Yeah, I hadn’t really thought that one through 
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They can’t just be desperate, though, because the bilingual kindys in Taoyuan aren’t choosy in who they recruit. It is odd to work 500 an hour when you could easily teach kids for 70-80k a month.