Living in Hengchung/Kenting or Taitung

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
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1

I searched around the forums for some info and definitely found some, but not enough to satiate my curiosity and stop me from posting a question anyway!

My situation is thus: I live in Taichung with my Taiwanese girlfriend and have been here for about a year. I actually really like Taichung and have enjoyed living here for a number of reasons, but we’re considering moving, perhaps only temporarily (i.e. 1 year or so) to the south. My gf really wants to live and work down there at some point and coming up pretty soon the timing will be pretty good for both of us.

We’re thinking either Hengchun and the Kenting area, or Taitung city area.

For me, work and language aren’t really an issue as I speak what’s considered by most ‘fluent’ Chinese, and I’m also in the fortunate situation of being able to work from my computer fulltime.

What I AM looking for would be fun stuff to do as per beaches, day trips, etc go, a pleasant enough town/city to live vibe wise, and at least SOME western food and/or amenities. I’ve never even BEEN down south yet, but after looking around, it seemed like a lot of foreigners would do Taitung over Kenting and seemed to hate different parts due to shitty towns and/or tourism.

Any ideas anyone? Any advice/ideas/experience would be much appreciated!

2

its nice, we are planning on moving down that area as well. there is NO city type stuff down there. Taidong yes, Kaohsiung/Pingtung yes, but once you start getting close to kenting its not so city like. no big stores etc. if you like short hills, lots of farm land and forest and nature, then yes. if you need work teaching, maybe not the best. but if you are secure financially despite your location, its a nice spot. very windy and VERY hot. if you need a city kaohsiung is about 2ish hours from kenting. Taidong city has most things a city normally has as far as i know. also lots of nice natural areas there!

3

Taidong City sort of has stuff big cities have. It has a Carrefour, but it doesn’t have a Costco. It doesn’t have a lot in the way of shopping generally, though you won’t have problems finding all the essentials. It doesn’t have a cinema. It has a few nightlife options. I personally am not so impressed by the limited number of restaurants I’ve been to, but others think they’re okay (though I never hear people absolutely rave about them). The kind of restaurants I’ve been taken to tend to be the kind of places that some Taiwanese think foreigners would be interested in (maybe they actually are), but they’ve been those kind of pretty run of the mill Asian-fusion or quasi-Western places that exist everywhere here that I don’t think do either thing particularly well. I generally tend to avoid those or “Western” places generally simply because I think they’re kind of over-priced for the quality and quantity of the food, but maybe you’re not so fussy.

Really, the reason to live in Taidong is not for Taidong City itself, although that’s fairly easy to get around, doesn’t have much, if any pollution or congestion, etc. (though the drivers are perhaps even more insane here, it’s just that there are fewer of them). The reason to live in Taidong City is because it’s very laid back and there is very easy access to outdoor pursuits and generally nice scenery, a lot of which you will have completely to yourself. You can really be out of the city in nearly complete countryside in ten minutes. There are tons and tons of places you can go if you’re into hiking or cycling, and there’s surfing too.

I previously lived in Taoyuan city for about two and a half years, and I’ve been living here in Taidong County (not City) for almost two years (with about five months in between the two spent travelling). There are certain adjustments in terms of the pace of life and also how backwards some people can be, but I wouldn’t leave here to live elsewhere in Taiwan now. I don’t even really like going back to the west coast or north at all now.

Kending doesn’t have a train station, so you’d need to either take a bus or private transportation to Pingdong City. Kending is also not a city in any sense of the word, and you’d need to go elsewhere to get a lot of things. Personally, I’m not so sure I’d like to be there. It’s a real tourist town that must be fairly dead during the week, but is packed to the rafters on weekends.

Taidong does have a train station, but you pretty much can’t get any more remote in terms of train stations. It is quite isolated generally. There is talk of faster trains in the future, but as it currently stands, Taipei is about seven hours away and Gaoxiong is about three hours away.

Whilst you won’t have any work issues, you might need to think about your girlfriend. The work options for Taiwanese are fairly limited in both Kending and Taidong. Where I live, some people have their own little businesses, the majority of people are pretty poor farmhands, and the middle class people work for the government. There are a few wealthy people who own hobby farms or tourism businesses, but those people often made their money elsewhere and then moved here. In other words, there aren’t a lot of options simply because there isn’t a lot here (in the way of industry or larger businesses generally). When we first came here, my wife looked for jobs and it was difficult to find anything reasonable at all (in terms of pay and time off each month), especially since there is very active affirmative action (favouring aborigines and locals generally) that clearly favoured “jobs for the boys” over competency, punctuality for job interviews, etc. That’s actually part of a wider general attitude that you might encounter here, but wouldn’t become fully aware of until you’d been here a while.

4

You mentioned that you are able to work from your computer, but what kind of work does your girlfriend want to find? Will living in a bigger center be more of an advantage to her? Other than the town of Hengchun or Taidong there is probably little work available outside the service industry.

Kenting has plenty of Western food, and a little too much “vibe” for me on the weekends, although it gets just about right late Sunday night when most people pack it up and go home.

5

The thing about Kending is that once you get off the main strip it’s actually really pretty quiet and nice. There are no jobs as such beyond selling tat on the street though.

Hengchun is a fair sized town, good for shopping and supplies.

It’s pretty amazing to me you have been here a year in Taichung and never been South! That throws up some warning signs as to your ability or desire to live in a rural area (rural as in Taiwan rural :wink:).

6

I’d definitely choose Taitung out of your two options. Besides having more appeal to me as a place to live, it’s also an easy enough drive up the East Coast to Hualien and the multitude of attractions in between, a comfortable drive down to the Hengchun Peninsula, a not-too-bad drive across to Kaohsiung if you need to visit a big city, an easy ferry ride to Green Island, and a quick flight away from Taipei.

I’m in much the same situation as you in that I do nearly all of my work at my computer at home, and I’d move to Taitung tomorrow if only I could induce the wife to live so far away from her family. My only cause for hesitation would be whether I’d be able to find suitable schooling for my daughter there.

7

No.

8

Taidong doesn’t even have a cinema :astonished: ? Having said that, I never go the cinema anyway. Still seems incredible, though.

I chatted to a guy who lives down in Kending and he was saying that there is a close-knit gang of expats down there. However, unless you like surfing and smoking weed you won’t have much in common with most of them :laughing: . The majority of them are married and own restaurants or guest houses. There are a couple of teachers (I believe there is a buxiban or two in Hengchung). Supposedly it gets reaaaalllly boring there off-season. I can’t talk, though. I live in East Taoyuan where all year round is off-season.

9

Nope, no cinema. Hualian is where my students go if they really want to see a movie. That said, who goes to the cinema anymore anyway? We watch everything online. This place must have been unbearable before the internet though. By the way, if you are thinking of going to the cinema, you can go to Zhongyuan, near Zhongli, and there is a second run cinema there. You can probably bullshit them into the 100NTD tickets (for two movies).

There’s a relatively close knit expat scene in Taidong City. Everyone seems to know everyone, even if they haven’t met. I don’t hang around with them or go to the usual haunts though.

10

wow, i didnt know taidong had no cinema. even pingdong has 2.

the schooling thing would be a big consideration. the general south pingdong area i would consider to be pretty poor, but really depends on the exact school. i would home school if it were possible in your situation. I would assume taidong city area would be better.

11

Havent heard of too many cinemas going under. You would think someone would build one in Taidong, especially if there is no competition?

12

I can only assume that the moving pictures on the silver screen might freak out the locals, much as the Luminere brothers did when they showed a train a 100+ years ago. You have to ease these Taidong lot in gently. Perhaps if we start with some polaroids and move up from there?

13

The cinema was apparently in a rather tenuous financial position before it mysteriously burned down. Having received the insurance payout, the owner chose not to rebuild.

The local govmint occasionally plays films for the locals when they perceive they are missing out on something of cultural importance, for example Avatar and Seediq Bale. :whistle:

14

I’d rather have a child attend a school in Taidong where children actually live as children and mix with children who live in the real world away from the droll, sheltered mundane lives that the kids in other cities must endure throughout their childhood.
The standard of education may not be on a par with Taipei, but who cares? The whole system in Taiwan sucks anyway and I’d swap life skills, play and proper social education with reams of boring, pointless books that don’t educate anyway.

15

I’d rather have a child attend a school in Taidong where children actually live as children and mix with children who live in the real world away from the droll, sheltered mundane lives that the kids in other cities must endure throughout their childhood.
The standard of education may not be on a par with Taipei, but who cares? The whole system in Taiwan sucks anyway and I’d swap life skills, play and proper social education with reams of boring, pointless books that don’t educate anyway.[/quote]

I am glad i grew up when we had no computers and everyone actually played outside with other kids.

Modern kids are growing up book and computer smart but LIFE DUMB. And this may later manifest itself in many social issues. People-to-people interactions and handling thereof.

16

this is happening right now. these kids you mention, look at the parents, same same.

i agree, kids need real life education too, here they rarely get that. back home i see it happen far less too.

17

The cinema was apparently in a rather tenuous financial position before it mysteriously burned down. Having received the insurance payout, the owner chose not to rebuild.

The local govmint occasionally plays films for the locals when they perceive they are missing out on something of cultural importance, for example Avatar and Seediq Bale. :whistle:[/quote]

which was the bigger hit with the locals there? Avatar or Seedig?

18

I’d rather have a child attend a school in Taidong where children actually live as children and mix with children who live in the real world away from the droll, sheltered mundane lives that the kids in other cities must endure throughout their childhood.
The standard of education may not be on a par with Taipei, but who cares? The whole system in Taiwan sucks anyway and I’d swap life skills, play and proper social education with reams of boring, pointless books that don’t educate anyway.[/quote]

Except they don’t get life skills or a proper social education. They also only sort of get to play. They get to play in as much as the school day is shorter than that of the average kid in the north, and they’re less likely to attend buxiban. However, Taidong is not some Finnish-like developmental wonderland. Firstly, what they do at school is generally more of the same. Secondly, many of the kids at my school live in the school dorms because their familes are quite poor. I have students who come from families where there is no refrigerator in the house or where they live in a one bedroom house and all of the kids have to sleep on couches or the floor of the living room. Some of my colleagues send the left over lunches home with some students so that their families will have adequate food. Many of my students’ parents are alcoholics, have mental health issues, etc. and are completely irresponsible. Many kids here have been abandoned by parents who have either left them with their grandparents or other relatives, and only return a few times a year, or who have gone for good. A good 50% or more of my students have never been out of Taidong County, and may not have even been out of our immediate area. It’s not like their parents provide them with books or generally do stuff with them. Most of these kids are dragged up through childhood, if that. Many are left entirely to their own devices, which may mean they spend their entire free time in front of a television or else getting up to mischief. I suspect few would have really had the social framework around them to even get out into nature and explore it in a productive way.

I am against the general state of education in the more advanced parts of Taiwan, but down here, the absence of a draconian workload in education is not replaced by vast opportunities in other ways. It is replaced by a great poverty of opportunities and spirit. Let’s not romanticise poverty. Unfortunately, as screwed up as the general education system here is, for many in this part of Taiwan at least, it may be their only opportunity to break a tragic cycle.

19

Wow I agree with that almost 100%, it does happen! Well said. The countryside is no wonderland panacea to the ills of the city. The kids I know in Miaoli also spend inordinate amounts of time watching TV and playing online games in their spare time. At the same time, their educational opportunities are more limited , the infrastructure can be poor (although Taiwan is pretty good about this usually…having post office/police station/hospital nearby most of the time), the main impediment is the VERY low incomes.

20

I agree largely with what you are saying, but financial poverty of the parents is not what we are talking about here. The schools in general are not that bad considering the service they provide, and not everyone is poverty stricken in Taidong. I am guessing that you do not teach in the city - certainly where I live, the majority of children come from stable backgrounds.
Having said this, though, neglect of children is a constant throughout Taiwan. It is not uncommon for parents to see their children only once a week or even bi-weekly, as the children have been palmed off on their grandparents. How many children who live in Taipei actually leave Taipei or visit other places on a regular basis? I know children who haven’t, and I know adults who have only got as far as Taichung or YiLan - the rest of Taiwan being a complete mystery to them.
Go out to places near YamingShan and JinShan and you can see almost exactly the same conditions you have described above.
It is not the school’s job to provide financial security to the families in the area, or to provide a supportive family background - it is the school’s job to provide an education and the schools in Taidong do this to a more than fair degree and under very difficult circumstances. A child with a supportive background in Taidong will at least grow up learning that there are children who are both better off and worse off than he or she is, and will learn to appreciate what he or she has, unlike in Taipei, where worth is often only measured in wealth, material possessions and grades.
And at least children in rural areas do actually grow up naturally to become adults instead of succumbing to the pressures of an intensive academic life, developing mental issues themselves or eventually flinging themselves off a building. I read of a top-grade student this week who did this because he couldn’t cope with the pressure, and I also read of one last week who took his own life in a different manner. Suicide amongst teenagers seems to be a regular occurrence in Taipei.

And going back home. I wouldn’t for the life of me send a child to an inner-city school. Some of the schools in the UK make an average school in Taidong look like Eton.