Black Canadian here. I got accepted to both schools and got the Huayu scholarship to learn Mandarin. I planning to commit about 3 years learning Mandarin in Taiwan and I am going into this hoping that at the end of it I can be decent enough to use professionally. I do policy work in govt adjacent org if that matters. A few questions I had in mind, TIA:
Would you recommend NTU CLD or NCKU if cost is of no concern?
I have travelled quite a bit in Asia so I expect some curiosity about my race etc but would this be an issue when trying get rentals or accessing services especially in smaller towns?
Being in Taipei City would place you closer to government connections should that eventually be one of your goals. You’d also get better public transport (better than any city in Canada, really), higher costs (though cheaper than just about any city in Canada, really), and often shittier weather.
Being in Tainan puts you closer to older forms of settlement in Taiwan (going back to the 17th century), lower costs, more sunshine, and shittier (and sometimes no) public transport.
Both NTU and NCKU are good universities, so neither would be disastrous, I think. I am uncertain however how blackness is understood in the south. Here in Taipei there are a fair number of Ethiopians working as researchers in the university district (I meet them regularly at NTUST, where they’ve trained the resident baristas to make coffee the way they like it!), as well as folks from the Caribbean and elsewhere in the diaspora around town.
If you can, let us know what you eventually decide.