Before I went to Taiwan I used Forumosa Friends (same as several other personals websites, just other branding but, same database) to find some people with similar interests in Taipei. My experience (in 2008) was that while many people there are probably open for romance, few people seem to actually see this as the main reason to join there.
For me it worked: I found several people with similar interests… talked online for a while before I came here… and when finally arriving, I already knew some people to ask questions, hang out with, and even help me a bit with some language issues (virtually no Chinese here either).
The pro is that huge ammounts of people are in the database there, and many of them do speak english.
The con is that it’s not free to actually contact people. I didn’t care much, since it looked like the best way to get to know people here. I think you can theoretically also use it reasonably well without paying, since by now they seem to have a (free) chat system - plus from the username you can mostly use Google (or try out) to find the MSN/Live messenger address of many people, or find their blog etc.
by the way, MSN is extremely popular here, so whatever you use right now for IMs, maybe look into MSN/Live messenger, or some multi messenger that can “speak” MSN.
