Dear Friends, I am grateful in advance for your time!
I am english, my partner is Taiwanese and has lived in the UK for many years.
We want to come to Taiwan, we are self-employed and we don’t really have family roots so we could live anywhere we choose.
I want to teach privately, piano plus English conversation, I am fortunate to have good qualifications in both those subjects.
We are ready for a new chapter in our lives, and the ratio of earning money to paying rent seems a load better in Taiwan than in england! :lick:
We guess it could take 6-9 months to get enough pupils to live off and that’s ok (just).
Here is what we are wondering:
Option A; move to Tainan, cultural place, get pupils through adverts, then word of mouth, rent affordable.
Option B move to Tianmu in Taipei, apparently foreigners feel relaxed there; though the rent is high, maybe its easy to get pupils through european schools / universities… we have a couple of contacts in Taipei universities.
Option C move to Kaohsiung, rent is cheap and the living is easy?
In Tainan and Kaohsiung I guess we could afford to rent a house rather than a flat. In a flat I’m a bit nervous in case neighbours
don’t want to hear my grand piano piano all day. But my other half says flats are better built than in england, with better sound-proofing.
A German friend from Tainan says when he visits, strangers come up to him and want to be photographed next to a foreigner, not sure if he is exaggerating but I guess that could be a bit annoying after a while. I have beginners level Mandarin, 
hopefully it will start to come more fluently when I get out there. I hope to attract advanced level piano pupils. Which city / part would you suggest to live in? Many thanks indeed!
To teach piano, I’d think you would have to be on a spousal visa, so I hope you mean “husband” or “wife” rather than “live-in snugglebunny”.
Unless you can speak Mandarin fluently or are a world class pianist, I think your only hope is living in Taipei and getting students from the American and European schools.
There are plenty of Taiwanese piano teachers that can speak Mandarin as their native language. You will have to compete against them.
Hi Ophelia
To echo and add to other posters’ comments - you would need to be married if you wanted to take the easiest path to living and working here. If you aren’t, it would be quite difficult for you personally to do so unless you were to take the usual route and become a full time English teacher. Most working visas are obtained through your employer, so getting one as a self-employed person is quite tricky. (Though not impossible. There’s more information on the Business form on opening a rep office or business in Taiwan. These routes involve some outlay.)
As to being a piano teacher, don’t worry too much about your neighbours complaining. The general rule here is that the teacher goes to the student’s house.
As I understand it, there are already a number of English-speaking teachers who serve the international schoolstudent market, so you might have trouble breaking in there. On the plus side, this widens the scope for areas you could live.
You might find a market in parents who are interested in both piano and English lessons for their children. So much of this grey market is based on networks and word of mouth, so it will probably take a little while to build up contacts. If your partner is Taiwanese this will make everything much easier for you.