I Think I've Had Enough Of Taiwan Already

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
41

8 days of constant, dripping rain and greyness coupled with cold, humid weather interspersed with one and an half days of sunshine, shortly followed by a further 3 days of rain.[/quote]

I’ll trade you some Kaohsiung weather for that: relentlessly sunny, hot and dry. A dustbowl of bai bai soot and industrial particulates. The sun is my enemy. I rejoice when it rains here, which is hardly at all. I would consider your weather a reprieve

One of my hiking and biking buddies from Vermont has said that parts of New Zealand are similar to parts of Vermont. I say go, Llary…and don’t look back.

42

New Zealand is ok, but Bassman lives there.

43

And although unrelated, almas left that place. That’s good enough for me.

HG

44

HG wrote [quote]And although unrelated, almas left that place. That’s good enough for me. [/quote]
Nothing wrong with the Land of the Long White Cloud my friend. I left because I was desperate to get laid (with a woman).

45

Considered moving to Malaysia, in case you want to stay in Asia (and close to where you do business)? Living there is cheaper and much more comfortable / nicer than Taipei, even you are in the middle of Kuala Lumpur. As well air-travel is cheap from there. They don’t drive much better down there but KL has less traffic, and a big 4WD, which you should be able to afford if you have a car here (dunno), will be “defensive” so that others won’t bother you too much. Of course you need to like the weather there, which means heat and high humidity every day (and night).
Singapore is not a bad place for foreigners to live either, but more expensive.

46

i’ve had it with taiwan too. just makes me tired, not being able to find what i want when i want it.

47

That can really drain you. Hell, I’ve been here 12.5 years, I’m pretty fluent in Chinese, and I still find that to be a bit of a stumbling block sometimes.

If you find yourself getting pissed off too often, if you’re stuck in a rut, if you’re in a bad relationship to boot and feel like you need to get out, well – you probably should get the Fahrvergnugen outta here.

48

Ain’t that the truth… and in addition to all the fucknuttery we already put up with. I can walk into a store with the thing I already want in my hand, and say ‘I want another one of these’, but usually I’m not even half way to getting it at that point. Typical replies are:

1)“we don’t have it”… without further elaboration or suggestions where else to go
2) “What do you want that for?, you don’t need that”
3) “We don’t have it, buy this instead”
3)"go across the street to that other store… they have it (they never do)

49

“we don’t have it” doesn’t bother me. When people tell me a) that the company in question does not make such a product and then tries to sell me another product by said company when I know damned well that company makes that product or b) when they say that this product isn’t sold in Taiwan (which is also usually a blatant lie)
THOSE get to me.
2 and 3 piss me off to no end.
4 does not because at least they are pretending to be helpful.

50

[quote=“Rascal”]Considered moving to Malaysia, in case you want to stay in Asia (and close to where you do business)? Living there is cheaper and much more comfortable / nicer than Taipei, even you are in the middle of Kuala Lumpur. As well air-travel is cheap from there. They don’t drive much better down there but KL has less traffic, and a big 4WD, which you should be able to afford if you have a car here (dunno), will be “defensive” so that others won’t bother you too much. Of course you need to like the weather there, which means heat and high humidity every day (and night).
Singapore is not a bad place for foreigners to live either, but more expensive.[/quote]

I looked briefly at Malaysia but there was never a great deal to attract me there apart from the weather and I think the religion would drive me nuts. Plus there isn’t a huge music market so if I ever did leave Taiwan I might as well make it Japan. I drive a big 4WD in Taichung and it doesn’t help any… I still get everything from March GLAs to gravel trucks trying to play ‘car-human-sandwich’ with me :s

51

[quote=“redwagon”]So far, I have no regrets at all about leaving Taiwan after 18 years there. Yeah, sometimes it would be nice to pop out for late night munchies or something, but overall, I miss it like I’d miss an outbreak of herpes.
Llary, if I somehow precipitated your current crisis I apologize.[/quote]

Well I wasn’t too happy that half of the decent Taichung foreigner community has upped sticks this year but life goes on, eh? :wink:

I think I’ve decided that when my ARC comes up for expiration I’m just not going to try very hard to renew it. If it gets renewed, I’ll stay, if I get rejected, whoops, Japan…

52

[quote=“llary”]Well I wasn’t too happy that half of the decent Taichung foreigner community has upped sticks this year but life goes on, eh? :wink:

I think I’ve decided that when my ARC comes up for expiration I’m just not going to try very hard to renew it. If it gets renewed, I’ll stay, if I get rejected, whoops, Japan…[/quote]

Must have missed the bit about redwagon’s departure. There certainly does seem to have been something of an exodus. I guess those that have been around longer can fill us in if this is a cyclical norm.

However, considering what an upbeat place it was ten years ago - stocks were buoyant, people generally optimistic about the future - as long as China didn’t drop the bomb (the reduction of that threat is a BIG plus), martial law had ended and a vibrant democracy was taking shape, laws concerning women and abusive husbands were being put together, etc, which in a way lent a sense that even the petty bureaucratic nightmares in getting visas/businesses together would likewise one day see some decent and real changes. Base salaries for casual teachers were something like translatable to other places in the world that weren’t on UN travel warning lists. It was a very exciting place to be. However, I don’t get that feeling now. Seems to me the economic bite and vacuum from all that manufacturing shifting to China has quite naturally caused a shift in the minds of the local folks.

Obviously there are many who have managed to sort out a life that agrees with them in Taiwan and I’m sure many fresh of the boat today will manage the same.

However, for me, struggling in a Taipei office under petty and vicious management on a pittance relative to anything outside the country and having just left a pre-weiya meeting where the boss in mentioning New Year bonuses told us all to forget it, there wasn’t going to be any, and instead that he was thinking of sacking us all . . . well 20 minutes later when that head hunter called offering to double my salary if I’d shift to HK (which I loathed then and loathe even more now), well that was just too damned good to refuse.

I left a fantastic group of friends, a truly remarkable woman I was married to (but trusted the time away wouldn’t damage our marriage - it did, and that was all my fault and weakness) and a deep love for Taiwan, its people in general, it’s culture, food, and even all its foibles, and made that move to HK.

I now work in a foreign company, which is a true meritocracy, earning a wage that has risen steadily and is readily translatable to anywhere in the first world (though the higher costs cap some of those gains), have enjoyed some very nice promotions in recognition of my efforts and am generally positive about my future.

On the flip side, I’ve not met anything like the wonderful friends* I have in Taiwan - most of whom don’t post on Forumosa, the Forumosa community folks, many of whom I haven’t met, and the truly fantastic ones I have. And yeah, I miss Taiwan dearly. But there is no way in hell I would ever go back there to live on anything but my own highly stringent terms.

Erh, sorry for the ramble.

HG

  • I have a theory on this, and that is that Taiwan is just that much further up river than HK. That means the people that tend to end up there are generally more interesting and certainly more willing to try and adapt to a different culture. The foreign folks in HK can rarely utter a word in any other language even to save their lives and generally carry on here much as they did at home. There are deep, deep divisions between the locals and us and in many ways it is all justified.
53

[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]There certainly does seem to have been something of an exodus.

…Seems to me the economic bite and vacuum from all that manufacturing shifting to China has quite naturally caused a shift in the minds of the local folks.[/quote]

Words of wisdom from the HG. I packed up and ran because I could see myself doing the same job at 45 and totally unemployable back home in Oz. Where there’s growth there’s opportunity, and Taiwan is stuck in a low-growth rut now - has been since 2001. The likelihood of a return to the 90’s is remote unless there is some radical change in policy. This is unlikely to happen as, going forward, any Prez is likely to be hamstrung in what he/she can do. So no three links, no mass sell-off of SOEs, no roll-back of fiscal debt, and no end to the money-politics that reduces infrastructure development to a myriad of difang paixi payoffs. I saw the best of Taiwan (first turned up in 1995) and the worst (left about 6 weeks ago). The place is looking more and more like an unstable Latin American country than a sporty East Asian NIC. We can argue who is to blame for this poor performance, but ultimately, who cares about the color of the incompetence?

Llary, not sure what you’re looking for out of life, but as a businessman, the 'wan probably isn’t the best place to make money in East Asia.

54

[quote=“llary”]…long story, usual reasons.

I could possibly learn to live alongside all the backwards bullshit if I:

  • stop driving
  • live on my own
  • soundproof my entire house
  • only go outside twice a week
  • hire someone as a full-time government contact dogsbody
  • [color=red]punch everyone who shouts waiguoren in the face[/color]

So now what? I heard New Zealand was nice.[/quote]

Yeah, that one really gets to me too. The last time that happened was about two weeks ago as I was exiting the elevator in my apartment building. The youngster (early twenties) was accompanied by two ladies and obviously quite drunk. It was also 2am. At first I let it go, but I was still seething once I got back to my apartment (I had been making a late night 7-11 run). Actually the punk had shouted “Adogah!”, which I find more offensive (I realise it’s just the Taiwanese equivalent, but it just sounds nastier). The thought just popped into my head, hey, I’ve got a son on the way. What if someone does that when he’s with me. The thought just pushed me over the edge and I went downstairs to their apartment, banged on the door till the opened and confronted them. They apologised, but somehow it still pisses me off. It seems that this happens when I look openly friendly, i.e. smile and try not to scowl. Now I’m back to just scowling and staring back 'till they look away.

Somehow that doesn’t feel right either. But what’re you to do? Punch everyone in the head who calls you a waiguoren?
Apart from that I still love it here and am not ready to move along yet…

55

You are completely right that the harassment is more when you look friendly. I had started scowling pretty much constantly. And that was helping me be left alone. But I have since developed a fear of having one of those “bitter old lady” perma-scowls. So I have gone back to smiling. And thus I have gone back to being harassed.

56

All right well I might just be really naiev, but why is it bad if a Taiwanese asks you where you are from?

57

the first 700 goddamn times it happened it didn’t bother me… now it’s starting to get tiresome and predictable.
I wish some joker would break the monotony and actually ask me something clever and interesting like “where’s my cheese whiz, boy?”

58

When they asl where you’re from … just answer Bakuriestan … they have no clue, neither have I … :slight_smile:

59

What I have started doing is answering all their questions before they ask them. If I’m walking down the street and I suddenly hear, “Hello!!!” I quickly say:

“Hello. I’m fine today. I’m from the United States - Ohio. I’m here teaching English and love it here.”

It’s priceless to watch their faces as they realized you answered the only 5 questions they know how to ask.
–“How are you?”
–“Where are you from?”
–“What part of the United States/Which State?”
–“What are you doing in Taiwan?”
–“Do you like it here?”

They usually say “Good” and that’s the end of the conversation.

To the OP, I can’t tell you if you should stay or go. I can only say that adjusting to ANY culture that is not your own is going to be difficult. And Taiwan is a far cry from a peaceful, quiet country. It has a lot of nice benefits other countries you go to may not have, but peace and quiet is NOT one of them. If that’s something you feel you can adjust to over time, great. If not, it’s understandable.

Matt

60

You’re right, it’s a trifling matter compared to automatically ascribing a proportion of culpability and thus financial responsibility for a crash not of your own making, for example.

HG