Taxi driver / foreign spouse

As I have an ARC based on marriage I’m allowed to work here in Taiwan. I was asking my wife what work do they have here in Taiwan and my wife said that the only work would be to drive a taxi, especially here in Kinmen.

What documents are needed to become a taxi driver here in Taiwan? Would an ARC combined with a regular domestic Taiwanese driving licence be enough? In my home country Thailand I know that a regular domestic car driving license wouldn’t be enough to become a taxi driver. A special taxi driving license is required to become a taxi driver. I guess that here in Taiwan it’s similar to Thailand, isn’t it?

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Your English is really good, how’s your Chinese?

I believe you need a “professional driver’s license”, and foreign spouses can apply according to this information

Whether having a license would mean it’s actually feasible or the best option for you to drive a taxi in Kinmen is another question, no clue.

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I studied the website using Google Translate and it seems that due to the written test I would have to learn Mandarin first. I can speak some Teochew though as my grandfather was born in Shantou but unfortunately Taiwan’s official language is Mandarin. My wife is claiming that she never heard Mandarin until she was about 7 years old so why they are using Mandarin in Taiwan as an official language is another question.

Well, there’s a political history to it, but it’s true. Kinmen is Hokkien speaking historically, I imagine you could get by with it there including at government agencies, if you could speak it, but not sure. I understand Teochew is quite different. For the written test you will need written Chinese, whether or not you can speak Mandarin seems kind of besides the point.

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I’m surprised there is a test.

I’ve met taxi drivers who don’t speak Mandarin, and taxi drivers who can’t read. Sometimes they can’t do either.

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Really? I am in Taipei, maybe you’re not. I can’t recall meeting a taxi driver who can’t speak Mandarin. I have yet to inquire about their reading abilities, but in general people learn to read here. I know a fair amount of old-timers are illiterate, but I imagine they’ve been grandfathered in in some way. Probably there’s ways around things for younger people who can’t read.

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Maybe also they give the test in English. I’d check with the Kinmen motor vehicles office.

I’m in New Taipei. Have taken lots of taxis recently as my wife has said no public transport with the baby… Lots of times their Mandarin is not good enough to hold a conversation. I often give the drivers business cards with the addresses on them, but I’ve had a few reply with 看無 khuànn-bô. They can always understand addresses in Mandarin though, so me or my wife will usually read it to them. A lot of them are probably driving a relative’s taxi, but a few I’ve had are definitely the real drivers.

That’s odd, I had some that did not understand my spoken Chinese so I write it and all can understand and read it (sometimes in a Japanese way but still they read it !). There have a few times the spoken tone was wrong (me) and was fixed by writing the street as the taxi went the wrong way. (This happens with my co workers, she is local sometimes a common streets that sound alike will be mistaken if you you no speak it well). And some can not read business cards because the print is too small not that they can not read, just write it in the air with my fingers gets the point sometimes.

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There’s more you can do.
You can work in convenience stores.
Be that “foreigner who works at 7-11” on Kinmen.
You’ll be just famous.
Same thing with bubble tea shops.

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Thai milk tea stand…

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Get your taxi license. Then android phone with google maps, google translate with the camera translation feature.

When you pickup a fare ask them to write the address or show you the address. Take a picture with your phone, input to google maps, you’re on your way!

And start practicing your mandarin.

I’m half joking, half serious. I think it would be hard to drive a taxi this way. But new york city is full of cab drivers whose English isn’t very good, so I suppose you could do it in Taiwan if you can learn Mandarin to an OK level and use something like google maps to locate addresses.

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My wife was working for many years in Xiamen before and only went back to Kinmen for giving birth to our daughter. Then when I planned to relocate back to Thailand together with my family the whole world closed all the borders. Going to quarantine in Thailand is no option at all, especially when my wife can only go to Thailand as a tourist. After me and my wife would register our marriage in Thailand she would need to go to a Thai embassy somewhere to apply for a long-term visa again. Which is involving quarantine again and again. Going back to Xiamen is also not possible as I would need a Chinese visa which as you know is impossible to get without going to another country. I heard that some travel agencies could apply for a Chinese visa for you by sending your passport from Taiwan to Hong Kong but then is another problem that they would never do this for Thai passport holders at all. Am I just stuck here in Kinmen for the next few years without any feasible working option?

Not sure we have anyone living there here on the board. It’s known for being rural and kind of stuck in time. It gets a lot of tourists from Taiwan for that reason, but I guess pretty dried up now. Maybe you can consider coming to Taiwan itself.

We don’t have any friends in Taiwan (the big island) at all so to be forced to go there instead going to Thailand or to Xiamen where we have lots of friends wouldn’t be very nice. The food in Taiwan (the big island) is quite good but we like the food in Thailand and Xiamen more. I think that I can live a few years from my savings here in Kinmen without having to work but if this situation lasts well into the 2030s I would have to find another solution.

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Do you have connections back home so you can import goods from Thailand and sell them in Kinmen?

Here is how to become a taxi driver in Taiwan:

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If they are middle-aged or older, maybe they have presbyopia and cannot read the business cards without glasses.

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You’d need some pretty serious Mandarin to work at 7. Those guys are often fielding many requests at once, parcels, bill payments, enquiries on over-complicated special deals of the month, etc.

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Or they just don’t know where the address is, that would be a common response. Otherwise, why would they bother looking?

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They often say don’t understand before they even look at the address, so the indication to me is that they know they won’t be able to read it, and therefore don’t try.

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