No doubt. Apparently Fujian cuisine is one of the eight great regional cuisines of China, but I’m not buying it.
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Yeah, all that slippery, gelatinous sweet/salty seafood…blech.
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To enjoy this stuff properly, get thee to Tainan or Kaohsiung. The Fujianese who settled in Taiwan were apparently two separate groups–one in the north, one in the south–who I’ve heard did not much like each other. Hand down it’s the guys in the south who know what they are doing in preparing basic Fujianese snacks: zongzi, squid balls, and other tasty fare. : D
Guy
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Been there, done that, hated it. 
well its no worse than cantonese food… which is a lot more famous but equally bland.
Probably not. With China gaining more and more power Taiwan prospects are kinda grim. There are several laws in effect, and several projects, to make Taiwan follow paths of Hong Kong/Singapore (attract more foreign specialists, more foreign students, try to make English an official language or at least make all top universities English-only). But problem is - Taiwan is not a city-state. Another important thing is the dominance of unspoken rules over laws in many aspects, this cultural thing. To become rich developed country in all aspects you need government institutions to work properly. In Taiwan they work, of course, but in Taiwanese way.
You’re right, Taiwan is not a city state. Like Lee Kuan Yew said, when you have a small population, you can’t get a critical mass of talent. So you need to build an efficient infrastructure to attract foriegners. While foreign talent is always welcome, Taiwan has enough indigenous engineering and health care firepower.
What hasn’t Taiwan done that it could do to improve its English infrastructure? Visitors already say English proficiency in Taiwan is superior to Japan’s.
Every kid is required to learn English from third-grade (?) on.Whether he/she’s going to put in the effort to actually speak it well is a matter of personal preference.
Taiwan needs to sign some free trade deals and make more babies, and it will rise again.
You can always become more global. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle, better English is one of the most important factors for attracting foreigners and more foreigners means the locals’ English will get better (the foreigners are part of the population now). From what I can see people are more turned off by lack of decent English versions for documents and websites than day to day communication.
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This. The government fucked up royally by using the tender system for its own document and website translation. It meant the lowest bid almost always got the tender with the corresponding risible language quality. They should at least have set up an audit unit of native speakers to control and monitor the quality.
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English understanding isn’t too bad in Taiwan but proficiency is quite rare. That could be a problem for sourcing staff who can market to a global audience. Certainly they can take orders and use email.
I think the cultural nuances of interacting with foreigners is where a lot of Taiwanese struggle and that’s just due to less exposure to Westerners and other countries beyond China, Japan and Korea. So that leaves a gap which quite a few ABCs are happy to step into.
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Show me a funny government form in English.
I don’t know why any ABC would want to work in Taiwan right now. The job opportunities in the US for the average ABT are boundless.
Why would anyone go back to Taiwan and work in…customer service?
Locally born Taiwanese that emigrate come back because their parents bitch that they are lonely… then you have really miserable people wishing they were back in the USA
ABCs only generally to back to take care of aging grandparents and then go back once they croak.
So…everyone in Taiwan works in customer service?
I was responding to this:
Documents are not all forms. Show us a govt website that’s actually properly translated. 
My dad got the Republic of China Yearbook in the mail every year, and the English was fine.
Good for him! Maybe he can convince all the ministries, agencies and departments to use whatever translation agency does the Yearbook…
…maybe… 
Don’t know how you just concluded ‘customer service’ from this.