When is the right time to leave

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
21

I was in a similar mindset first round here after four years and in my late 20s. I knew my prospects back home would be dimmer the longer I stayed and had gotten what I needed out of learning Chinese. Languages look good on your resume and can be a great addition to your main skills. But for most, they’re not a career by themselves unless you want to translate/edit etc.

I applied for grad schools back home with the goal that I would eventually be able to use language skills I had picked up in my future career and maybe come back to Taiwan one day. Got into one of my target schools then focused on an industry that I wanted to be in and used a friend’s connection to get an unpaid internship at a big company during the first year. This is how I got my foot in the door.

I then followed up with the connections I made at the company until graduation and got a job offer. Worked harder than everyone around me and quickly moved up. Along the way, received offers to relocate to Shanghai and HK. Turned them down for personal reasons at the time. (Glad I did :wink:). Eventually I found a niche within my industry where Taiwan was a key part and convinced my company to move my team and build an office here.

Second time around in Taiwan life is much better. The more established you are in your career the more opportunities seem to find you. I’ve had companies/recruiters reach out to me and consider my experience here an asset. My network here is now better than ever with friends from the first round, classmates, former co-workers, and people in the industry. Enough to where if I wanted to go out on my own, I could.

In order to answer the question of what is the right time to leave, you need to identify what your goals are. My suggestion would be to not just pick a career, but pick an industry and start building your connections right away. People loving sharing their experience and the more you reach out the more opportunities find you.

Good luck.

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Well, an invasion may well not succeed. But ofc even a failed attack would be very unpleasant. Missile rain on Taipei. Better not live too close to anything of strategic value.

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Also, if the US implodes into domestic schism and ceases to be an international factor, it is definitely time to get out of Dodge. The temptation will be too great for Xi.

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Yeah it’s like being next to a tiger. A tiger’s gonna tiger if you turn your back.

Cf The PRC’s annexation of Tibet shortly after the British pulled out of India. Mao saw his chance and made his move.

Guy

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Weeeell, or probably more relevant, they had just booted the Nationalist Chinese out of the Chinese mainland so why not use this freed-up huge army to easily annex Tibet.

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I think having kids counts for a lot. Namely, when they start getting school age, your home country will probably (depending on where you are from ofc) be better for their education.

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image

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maybe OP is from a country where there is none?

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I’ve been here since 1999. Around 2007 I’d decided I’d had it with Taiwan, packed my bags, and led my family of 4 to the promised land that is America.

It was a disaster. I worked full time as a public school teacher, my wife worked full time as a manager in a hotel. We were making decent money, but we were still far from able to afford an apartment in Seattle. We were living with my parents at the time and the relationship got really strained. My dad started to look at me like, “What? Are you still here?” and I couldn’t even entertain the idea of moving out. Rent? Childcare? Car insurance? The cost of gas? It just wasn’t possible.

I was back in Taiwan 10 months later. It’s just easier for us to live here.

I think what led me to going back home in the first place were unrealistic expectations. I left Seattle in the late 90s, when the economy was booming, and returned during an economic apocalypse. I also found that the Seattle I remembered was gone in some respects. Friends had moved on, places I’d loved were closed, etc.

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What?!?!

I realized public education in the US had problems, but this makes no sense at all.

Guy

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Scary story for me who’s planning to return to Japan 7~10 years after I lived there.

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I don’t think you should be scared. Housing is getting cheaper, not more expensive, there—though of course other challenges remain.

Guy

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Have given this some thought recently as I am approaching a decade in Taiwan later this year. I’m in my mid 30s by the way. I’ve attained permanent residency, which was a goal of mine, I like the idea of being able to come back without having to start from scratch.

I considered trying my hand elsewhere teaching internationally, but decided it would be best to stay at my then current job for at least 2 years so it didn’t look terrible on my resume. I got my APRC shortly after starting that job. Jump ahead a couple years later, and COVID-19 hits the world and Taiwan is about the best place to be. I did leave that job after about 2 years and started looking around and got the best job I’ve had in Taiwan so far.

But yeah, a lot of things about Taiwan still grate on me… I suppose I’m probably still in the frustration stage of culture shock, but trying my best to get through to the adjustment stage. I seem to be bouncing back and forth between these two stages. I’ve been reading a lot of books about Taiwan recently to help me through to stage 3, but then mostly work place stuff sets me back to stage 2. Ideally, I think I’d like to work in a decidedly Western setting and live here, but those are quite few, can be difficult to get into, or I don’t have the right skills/qualifications for them. Also, my language skills are abysmal, especially after being here for so long. I can just get out a few survival phrases and can read a few hundred characters. My pronunciation is garbage and I’ve yet to put in any formal study. I guess I’d rather invest the time and money elsewhere, try to earn more and invest more, and eventually gain a reasonable level of independent wealth.

I also really have a hard time relating to people here. The way they think is just so…foreign to me. They also almost always seem to say and think the same things and I generally find them an uninteresting lot.

Yet in the back of my mind, I know that taking care of elderly parents is pretty much an inevitability that will bring me back to the US for an undetermined amount of time. Not really looking forward to that and I only have a few vague ideas of what I could do while I’m there, likely substitute teaching as a stop gap measure and then trying to figure out something from there. But who knows? Perhaps that experience will make me treasure Taiwan and I’ll yearn to come back.

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34

This definitely must factor in, moreso than the vague Chinese takeover on the horizon (which will probably be attempted in some form at some point, and even if unsuccessful will be at least a pain in the ass). For me, I came here in a large part because of COVID.

I’d gone home twice from two different countries, the first time I was in my early 20s and thought I should get a real job after 2 years overseas. I went home and was quickly bored, the real job didn’t materialize, and I found that I had changed a lot and fit in even less than before. So, I left again.

Second time I went home after 8 years overseas, this time for school and a much longer stay. I quickly found that the grass was greener on the other side, but it was too late. Staying longer didn’t yield more opportunities.

When COVID broke in early 2020 I was just in a position to leave Canada again and I set my sights on pretty much anywhere. My interests leaned warmwards, so although Kazakhstan was on the list early it was scrubbed because of the weather (thank goodness, as it turns out). After 5 months of applying to assistant professor posts all round the world and getting nothing, I decided to focus on a few countries and used lists of best places to be an expat to help narrow it down. Taiwan, in addition to ranking high on expat lists, was the only country in the world not looking at lockdowns and recessions. So, I made getting a job here a priority and have been lucky enough to get something right up my alley which is overall a very good situation (there are challenges with the way things are done here, but that would happen anywhere, it even happened back home in Canada).

And then I finally get to my answer to the big question. The right time to leave is when the opportunities have dried up and you are going to something better. As others have said, you should have something lined up before you go or you might find that there isn’t something better. If you’re in a good place where you are, what is the reason for leaving? You mentioned a masters, is it something that you can use to further your career somewhere else, or is it basically useless outside of Taiwan?

I’ll stay in this job until it gets unmanageable and someone else offers me more money and benefits; I’ll stay in Taiwan for the same amount of time.

@ChewDawg makes a reasonable point about the civil service gravy train, if you can get in (pretty competitive these days) and deal with the bureaucracy and mind-numbing work/stupidity that you will encounter as a civil servant, there is some interesting work that you might be able to do (depending on that masters, for example) and in places like Canada they have unionized themselves into a very nice (taxpayer funded) situation.

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Good call!

Guy

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as it turns out, yes!

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The China threat isn’t something I really take into consideration much, call me crazy, but I’m just not that worried about it.

I definitely feel you on your experiences living abroad. Seems we have kind of a similar background and temperment perhaps. I lived in Korea for about a year and a half in my early twenties and felt compelled to go back home and “get a real job” or try to start some kind of business. I was there for a couple years and neither really worked out. I really missed the expat life, didn’t feel like I fit in all that well back home either and was also bored as hell. God… after a decade here, and with all the “woke” BS happening nowadays, I would sure as hell feel like a real fish out of water living back home again. I guess my point is I feel like I fit in with other expats and also third culture kids.

To answer your question, there is no reason for leaving…for now. It’s just a thought that came to mind recently, I read this thread and just decided to express my thoughts. Perhaps another 4-5 years will be enough time before giving it some real thought. But it will depend on my financial situation and personal and family circumstances.

I didn’t write anything in this thread about a masters… but yes, I have one, and it can definitely be used just about anywhere… here, back home, other countries, you name it. One of the main reasons why I got it. I have considered other places, but COVID has essentially put the kibosh on those plans for probably the next few years, unless I need to be back home for taking care of parents. If I were to go to another country, perhaps somewhere in the Middle East where a lot of money can be made in just a few years. I even considered China because there are some well paying jobs, but I consider that place completely off the table now.

You made an interesting choice. Seems you picked lifestyle over money. Taiwan is definitely not the best place for making money, but yeah, lifestyle can be great here. If you stick it out a few more years, an APRC can be had and you can come back whenever you want.

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Idk people say that but again is that true? I would imagine the average English teacher makes 75k to 80k NTD. Take out tax and that’s already roughly 80-90% of average Canadian salary (pre-tax 68k CAD, something around 50k post tax, that’s ). Add in cost of living difference and it’s obviously above Canadian average.

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I know how this feels, but I would say my mindset has completely changed from my first time living here for a couple of reasons.

One is the language barrier. In my opinion, I’ve found by investing time to learn the language there are a lot of really well educated worldly people here with varied interests. Any sort of hobby you can find like minded people if you aren’t limiting yourself to just English. Additionally, if you’re just speaking English many of the people you meet just want to practice with you and conversations are naturally limited. The more I learn the more I believe people are pretty much the same everywhere.

The second probably has to do with not being a teacher. If you’re a teacher then I’d bet you’re running into a wider swath of society through students/parents and thus more of the average Joe/less interesting (to you). Hobbies help. Or if you don’t like teaching doing something you love and meeting people in your line of work.

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I don’t have much to add, but:

To me, your list sounds like Taiwan should be more of a vacation destination for you rather than a place to live. Maybe it’s really time to try living somewhere else to get rid of the cons and then try to come back for some extended vacation / WFH-period every year.

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