I remember having to sing national anthems at school. There are two. Morning one is the national anthem, and the one when classes end is the flag lowering anthem.
Then when my mom took me to the states we had to say the pledge of allegiance, and I figured it was the same as singing the national anthem or whatever. I never heard the US national anthem in school much though, pledge of allegiance was about it.
I did remember seeing lots of strays, and dog crap as well as “blood” (betel nut stains) on the ground, and lots of trash everywhere.
If Taiwan can turn those things around to where there’s no more trash anywhere, they can do something about traffic. No idea how they were able to clean the streets up in such a short time.
If you saw “strays” they were actually adopted by the neighborhood, presumably with the promise that they will keep the dog out of trouble.
I used to remember teachers can hit you if you misbehave in class, or if you didn’t achieve certain academic performance… I don’t think they can do that anymore.
Kidnapping and theft was rampant in the 90s from what I heard. Theft is almost unheard of now.
From what I can see it’s almost like Taiwan and the US switched places. Now US has all these urban decay.
Oooh a good reminder! The NIA did not exist at that time; any residency affairs were handled by the local cops. As you’d expect, they were awesome at this job.
I recall special police groups sometimes late at night knocking on doors in buildings where there were low rent studios with ktv girls and gangster type guys…they’d check I.D.s. I assume looking for wanted criminals. Opened my door once and a few cops were there with M16 type rifles.
Maybe it was something like that.
In the early 1990s it was awful. Some buxibans didn’t even want to be bothered with teachers getting work permits. Very confusing process, and you would ger different answers depending on who you spoke with. My first ARC took several trips to get all the documentation straightened out. Got much better later in the decade, including eligibility for APRC, though that came too late for me.
Or if you lived in Taipei or just travelled up there you could always study at Flag Language Institute just near the main Foreign Affairs Police station to get visa extensions
I wasn’t in Taiwan in the 1990s, but I arrived in the early 2000s. I feel like that was the transition point where elements of the old chaos and excitement still lingered and there was always a middle-aged foreigner in a bar to recount his stories of what it used to be like.
Back in the early 2000s, the pay for an English teacher was excellent, but everyone said that the pay was exactly the same as it was 10 years previous, so I can only imagine how good it must have seemed to a young foreigner in the '90s. Also, being a “foreigner” was a big deal because there were so few of us, especially those who knew a bit of Chinese. I can’t imagine what a novelty that would have been in the '90s.
I really miss going to random bars and meeting jaded middle-aged foreigners who would recount stories of the crazy old days, just a handful of years earlier (although it sounded like a lifetime earlier). Crazy to think that boring fuckers like me are now the jaded middle-aged foreigners who frequent these bars.
I think my first teaching job in 1991 was 350/h but quickly went up to 450 or so. I was making 1000/h in my last role in 1998, at a more serious language center, the kind where they enforce homework and parents sit in on the class.
The photograph of her naked dead body was leaked to the mass media, including the [China Times…
… Eight media organizations, including the China Times, which ran the photograph of Pai’s body, were condemned during the first protest.
Jesus that’s horrifying…
I forgot all about this incident. Guess I kind of blocked it off in my mind since thinking about this story also reminds me of the horrific torture and murder of Junko Furuta.
Back then foreign husbands of Taiwanese wives were not eligible for residency or work permits (vice versa was okay). Children with a foreign father and Taiwanese mother were considered foreigners even if born in Taiwan, and had to have foreign passports and get ARCs. They were only allowed to live in Taiwan until they were 20 years old, then had to leave and apply for entry like every other foreigner- no points for being born here or having a Taiwanese mother.
There was also the unsolved murder of Peng Wan-ru, the director of the Democratic Progressive Party’s Women’s Affairs Department. Also the highly mystererious murders of Taoyuan County Commissioner Liu Pang-yu and seven others. None of these cases ever solved.
Oh, and Captain Yin Ching-feng was murdered because of some connection to the huge stinking Lafayette Frigate case. No one ever caught.
The key point about the feral dogs that were all over the city was that many of them has truly horrible cases of mange.
Scooter punks/kids wore jackets that looked bit like US letter jackets. Some had highly imaprropriate messages on the back.
Darlie Toothpaste was still Darkie toothpaste.
Coffee could be purchased in about six places in Taipei City and nowhere else (OK, maybe Taichung).
Wild chicken buses were hwo you got to Tainan etc.
The traffic in Taipei was epically bad–think Bangkok. The air pollution was so bad that once I couldn’t see the World Trade Center from Elephant mountain because the haze was so thick.
Garbage was dumped in practically every ravine and stream.
Shuangxi Creek in Shihlin was bascially black with pollution and nothing grew on its banks.
You didn’t have to wear a helmet when riding a scooter. Squatter villages dotted the city. English teachers made 4-5 times the median salary. There were some pretty odd foreigners knocking about. Families rode a single scooter. Both men and women has some pretty weird perms. Basically no one had travelled overseas. Roxy had a great record and CD collection at a time when knowing about music meant something. Dumplings cost about NT$1 per piece. Expensive beef noodles were NT$50. There was some pretty cool Taiwanese music and movies being made. You needed permits to enter mountain areas and an exit permit to leave Taiwan. There were a number of pretty hilarious discos. A yuppie bar called ‘Passion’ (maybe that was earlier). Telephones on tables. Clocks everywhere.
Most of this has been covered extensively elsewhere on this forum 20 years ago…
I can tell you 80s if you want ha ha. I remember people were very into Rick Astley and the Carpenters
Air pollution was terrible there was also a high chance of getting food poisoned. More or less no animal rights. Wild animals on sale as well as enslaved teenage girls at snake alley.
Buffalo town was the hot club. There were MTVs everywhere. People were very friendly to tourists. English teaching was at about the same pay rate as now and did not require a degree or criminal record check.
The girls were fun and way more open. There was only 2 Macdonalds and people would eat there just to get a Mac Donalds bag. 101 did not exists and that area was cheap farmland for the Waishen Ren.
I remember lots of little houses and having to be careful of snakes in Nei Hu
Pachinko bars were everywhere. Foreign buskers were everywhere too with no license needed.
There was a serial killer on the lose in Shirlin called the Wolf of Shirlin. There was a gangster called the Ox who was hiding in the mountains of Taichung after killing some cops and gangsters.
Any kind of food was on menu. Almost nobody obeyed any traffic laws. Hotels were cheap. House prices dirt cheap. Pretty much no big supermarkets. …to make international calls you had to go to the telecom office. No internet , no mobiles, no metro.
Yeah I might have exaggerate a little , I think global was about 450NT , but I had privates at a 1000NT in 1988
I could also go out on a Friday night with a 1000NT$ with a friend and the 1000 could last all night. Cigarettes were about 25$ I think. A Taiwan beer in a club about 55 dollars.
Yes. I had one of those collection points outside of an apartment building I lived in. Garbage was collected once a day, around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, so you can imagine the stench of it after laying around in the Kaohsiung heat.
