Taiwan then and now

Seems I was wrong. Gogoro could already be a unicorn now. If not now, then definitely with it’s IPO. Insanity. Hope investors know what they’d be getting into.

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I heard it’s still like that in some places. Especially those close to swimming pools.

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This is quite a thread. When I arrived in Taichung and started using Forumosa (or perhaps it was Segue then), the old-timers had been around during martial law. Now I’m hearing that 15-20 years is “back in the day” so guess I’m an old-timer now. There was still a bit of the old Wild West feeling in Taichung then.

I’ve been back in the UK for 6 years now and didn’t use Forumosa much for a few years before that. Family life and all that I guess. It coincided with the time I stopped riding scooters much.

My wife and daughters visit family in Zhongli once or twice a year; I come back less frequently since I have to keep making the money for all those flights. I do miss it though. I often think that Taiwan would be a great place for a kind of working retirement.

I don’t know that things are massively different now from 20 years ago though? Granted, technology has changed many things all over (well, everywhere except the govt websites!), and there are more MRT lines. Also I guess there are more than two westerners now in my old district in Beitun. But people and places haven’t really changed that much overall. That’s a good thing I think.

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I heard you were dead

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I’m not. I didn’t notice.

Not as far as I know. At least, whenever I try to walk through a wall, there’s a loud noise.

Some familiar names on here, and some that I feel I should know. Have you always been Rocket or did you have a different account before?

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His unrelenting cheerful attitude should tip you off. : D

Guy

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I only know the Then, certainly not the Now. But I thought Taipei and Taiwan were great places. But I guess those that lived in the “dark ages” didn’t know what this new level of “enlightenment” really means.
We were all at that time just gobsmacked that we had an MRT, would you believe it?? And OMG there is a Carrefour?? The heck is that? And I had one of the very first cell phones, thing cost 80,000nt and costs an awful lot to use too (good thing the company paid for it). Get on the train pull out my Motorola brick from my briefcase and I may as well be Bond !

And we had NO CHINESE TOURISTS , so that was different I am sure.

Some of us are old enough to remember back in the day when they gave US citizens a five year multiple visa stamp in the passport limited to sixty days per stay and able to be extended twice for a total of 180 days per stay, then you did a visa run. Just any ol excuse at the local fuzz shop got you the extra sixty days. Write on a piece of paper “staying with family” works.

And they didn’t care what job you worked as there was NO RESTRICTIONS. How about that huH?? Those were good days.

You knew every single nice cafe that opened up in Taipei, there were no chain cafes. Same with every new western restaurant, because there were not as many.

I don’t know so much about the NOW (past 1999) but the THEN in the 70s, 80s, 90s were pretty good. The 90s started to be bad job wise as they started to require work permits and all that shit and the five year multiple visa thing went away for “mericans”.

Never should have gone away. America keeps Taiwan Taiwan so Americans should get preferential treatment over Europeans, Japanese and what not who do NOT keep their forces nearby and keep China at bay.

Theres lots of new stores now im sure (we had to go to HK to get Western sized clothing but that made it kinda fun)> But those of us that lived in the Dark Ages , we had our fun. Even though most of that time was spent without a cell phone (the horror, how did ANYONE live??). We had this cheaper alternative for a short time that simply didnt work…Anyone remember that one?

Remember phones you had to actually DIAL ?? Well our house phones were like that. You called someone at their house to see if they were there. And you made a time to meet up somewhere and then you went there and just waited and waited (if it was a girl it could be hours). Once out of the house you were out of contact…basically IN ORBIT. Later we got the BB Call. The original one didnt show who called you. So when it went off , you called everyone on your short list to see who called you !!

Back in those dark times, I had two cafes in Taipei I would visit on a daily basis, and the counter girl will tell me who called there and left me a note looking for me. Thats how we lived back then …Those were DARK TIMES indeed but we still managed to make them FUN.

Anyone remember that infamous cafe in Taipei where there were phones at every table and people sitting at other tables could call your table and chat?? That was "internet dating MARK 1 ".

Oh GASP, you went to cafes to meet people, and you looked around and saw somebody interesting and you walked over and TALKED TO THEM?? What a concept !

Worked Saturday mornings/? yeah we did that, but nobody really worked. It was like a mini chat party for 3 hours. Got us out of the house early and then you got together with your buds to do stuff from noon till whenever.

GPS?? oh yeah you didn’t need those, you remember how to get anywhere you wanted to go or you stumbled around and asked people. Taiwan is a rock , you cant go too far, its not Texas.

ZARA and H and M?? Those brands did not even EXIST.
WE WERE CAVEMEN essentially.

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Good write up Tommy, but no, this is not different. :grin:

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According to some here they’d nearly want you arrested if you said hello to them in a cafe. Sucks.

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MOdern times my friend. Now you go to cafes, plug in your headphone, open up your puter and you chatted with people all over the world and was oblivious to those around you. They were invisible. And they were NOT to engage with you oh no.

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i thought chinese tourists over ran all the scenic spots no?

Well we did not have them then. All the scenic spots were pretty non crowded except for chinese new year times.

Yes, during the Ma administration. After Tsai became president, the number of Chinese tourists trickled down, and now with the pandemic, the tap has been turned off completely.

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Its got more organised and restricted. The chaos has been curbed by tidier minds. You can’t park a car hardly anywhere for free in Tainan, and its getting tight for scooters and even bicycles.

You need to show a Taiwanese drivers licence now to register a vehicle.

When I first got to Tainan, first weekend I asked at the tourist office about the beach at Anping. No information, but NOT RECOMMENDED. No facilities there and quite LONELY (tremble).

Sounded good to me, and I was right. For quite a few years it was the antidote to Tainan city life and the antithesis of The Night Market Experience.

Now its overun, the soothing of the waves has to compete with the hideousness of open-air KMTV, there are huge concrete benches (Taiwan loves concrete) where the mob watches the sunset while eating delicious snacks, and the nicest, most LONELY (tremble) bits, which were too scary for the crowds, have been legally stolen by developers.

IOW its fucked.

I’d think there’d be other similar examples around the country. With development comes restriction, because development involves concentration of reources in the hands of the rich.

They key here, as I see it, is to stay one step ahead of these guys. Figure out where they go, and hang out where they do not. : D

Guy

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At best, that tactic still involves retreat and loss, and one doesn’t have the infinite space of the steppes to retreat into.

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Indeed. Nothing is permanent in Taiwan—or elsewhere for that matter!

Guy

Too neutral, and also too general.

This is not just “change”, its a particular type of negative change, where “the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer” or perhaps rather “the rich get richer, and everyone gets poorer” mantra, is applied to freedoms rather than finances.

While this mantra may be nearly universal, there are cultural reasons (myopic self-interest and unawareness, conformity, guanchi, face, love of shinyness, etc, etc) that it is a particularly corrosive corrollary to development here.

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A post was split to a new topic: From then and now

I acknowledge that finding our path in Taiwan requires specific tactics that may not apply in the same way everywhere.

But I also contend that the movement of people in Taiwan is actually quite predictable. To give an example from the north: if almost everyone leaves Taipei on the weekend to go to Yilan, well, find somewhere else to go. I favour certain high rise office districts in the capital on the weekend because I have observed that they do indeed empty out at that time.

In short: when they flow this way, I flow that way.

Guy