My time in Finland this year and in the Baltic(EE and LT) nations talking people living there, both immigrants and native peoples are mostly very happy or in case of immigrants much happier than where they came from (Finland has lots of happy people). Here in Taiwan I get mixed answers, no clear here being utopia or not, so thought poll this cohort here
It’s weird that your poll goes from merely “ok, better than where i came from” straight to “Very Happy, its Utopia”. I picked the former, but my feelings are actually somewhere in the middle. That is, I’m a lot happier in Taiwan than at home in the UK, but it’s far from a Utopia.
I agree. There needs to be something between utopia and so so.
Maybe delete and start the poll again with more options before everybody answers it. For me honestly it’s so so at most. I don’t think Taiwan really helped me with anything much except low cost of living , low taxes and a decent healthcare system…that’s it, they didn’t give permanent residents an ID card, didn’t give my family any social welfare at all and Taiwanese society makes it very hard to integrate in a lot of ways. Local employers didn’t treat me very well although they will say they treated me better than locals 
. The number of immigrants and also diversity is very small so many immigrants are more isolated here as well. I live here because of family and I suspect it’s the same for many of us.
That’s my opinion for what’s it worth. YMMV.
Didn’t you find your spouse here?
I hope she doesn’t read forumosa!
Guy
I found her nothing to do with Taiwan. She herself isn’t a big fan of Taiwan especially working here. Working in Taiwan kinda sucks let’s face it.
Okay, okay.
Guy
What are all the not-happy-at-all’s still doing here? 
Well, except for you-know-who.
So can not fix it now (after 5 min. it says no) but four levels I think is enough. Thinking about Finland it has Sisu like Japan’s Ganbaru(é ‘ĺĽµă‚‹) which makes people happy, basically over coming hard times like harsh cold in Finland or Earthquakes in Japan means something like beating the odds to reach the good life, so you get the good life. I think Japanese more more shy and less direct than Finn’s to say this but actions show most are good with life.
links
Personally, I’m happy, but for reasons that might not apply to everyone.
I am a quiet person that is happy alone, prefers to spend time reading or contemplating and enjoys solitude. So the entire “disconnection” part of being in such a different culture doesn’t affect me that much. If anything, I’m happy people are leaving me alone.
I also find people in Taiwan to be a lot nicer than my home country. Every time I go there, I end up feeling anxious because everyone is so damn confrontational. I know the Taiwanese way is not ideal either but at least it makes me feel better.
Personally, even when I’ll have kids and spent 20 years here, I’ll be fine if I’ll be considered a foreigner.
Seems pretty similar to the old 拼命, 努力， 辛苦 concepts in Taiwan. I don’t think most people go for that anymore though.
Ever heard of “hedonic adaptation”?
No matter which country we move to, no matter what good or bad happens in our life, no matter where we stay, no matter who we are with, our baseline of happiness eventually go back to same level after some time
I wonder do they do sarcasm in Finland
Better than where I came from. But I love ecology and hate snow…people are low down the ladder of my shits given most days. Wouldn’t mind cooler summers, but my home country hit nearly 50c so, meh.
If it wasn’t very close to utopia for me why I would voluntarily live here for almost 8 years now 
There are only two things that really bother me in Taiwan:
Number 1 you can fix by mindset change and renting rather than owning (I would have to pay rent for 50+ years for my current apartment just to cover the cost of it, not even mention interest, tax, renovation costs every couple years etc.…)
Number 2 you can fix by working remotely for a western company or starting your own thing 
To sum up Taiwan is utopia for me, especially from Taizhong down south where the weather is hot and sunny all year round. Taipei is way too cold and depressing this time of year for me.
That’s also the reason why I absolutely cannot understand how there can be happy people in places like Finland… I would be totally miserable in a place where it’s cold for most of the year.
There’s no money that could convince me to move to a country like Finland. Living in hot place is absolute no 1 priority for my everyday happiness
There are surveys about this with much larger sample size.
Scandinavia rarely ranks well because they are expensive and cold (cold people and cold weather).
I have lived briefly as a foreigner in Sweden and it was a truly traumatic experience for me as somebody from a warmer more open culture to get dropped into the iceberg that was Sweden back then. There was no social media back then so imagine the challenge of meeting new people there at the time ! I think I related the story of a girl in a bar dunking a beer over my head because she thought I was lying that I was from overseas. Wtf.
And I did manage to make a few friends but ironically most of them were from…Finland :).
I had other Irish friends who were there at the time and they had a totally different experience because their boss introduced them to local life so it depends on your setup too.
Most shops closed by lunchtime on Saturdays for the whole weekend back then. Liquor sales stopped at 7pm Friday nights in the stores. Cigarettes and drinking outside cost an arm and a leg. Jeepers.
The best bit was the skinny dipping in the lakes in Summer, truly beautiful country.
Only people who ever approached me on the street were drug dealers around my age , after a while of chatting they asked me did I want to join them as they did their rounds haha. I said nah next time ;).
These days the whole world is getting a bit more like Sweden every year but still not quite there yet thank God.
And yeah I wasn’t there in the Winter not sure I would survive one but their houses are toasty in the winter so not so bad.
Happier than my home country for sure, but i come from England, which these days is trying its best to revert back to the Victorian era. So no surprises there.
Generally i’m happy here. I feel like i’ve got quite a lot of freedom to do whatever i like. England feels very stifling. And learning a new language is quite a rewarding out of your comfort zone experience, its always fun when i have some small Chinese interactions during the day. although i’m sure all you fluent speakers are way past that.
As for negatives, the lack of vision for the future here is a bit depressing but i’m not sure that situation is different anywhere, the whole world seems on a downtrend where we are all going to be beholden to our increasingly powerful corporate overlords.
Doesn’t look like that in Russia and China and Israel and Ukraine they are way worse places for human rights, last thing I’m worrying about is google or MS right now
Can I ask who said Taiwan was utopia ?
Genuinely curious on the reasons.