The Spanish Wikipedia article for Tamsui says that some people in Tamsui still have Spanish as the mother tongue. If Wikipedia says so, it must be true.
Holy crap. Today I’ve learned I’m not only living in one of the main foreigner districts of Taipei, but the reason I still don’t understand the Chinese here is that they’re speaking Spanish. I’ve been [very lazily and very sporadically] studying the wrong language!
Haha interestiingly another famous Tamshui resident , Wade, managed to Romanize Chinese but the problem was he actually Romanized Taiwan Guoyu.
Tamshui.
Keelung
He probably only figured it out later that Tamshui and Xiamen weren’t the best places to figure out what standardised Mandarin should sound like but too late the damage was done.
The pub called “The Farmhouse” used to attract richer foreigners around Chungshan North Road and the Pig and Whistle in Tian Mu.
Western foreigners will be back again when Covid restrictions ease up.
Combat Zone bars Malibu West and My Place are popular with foreigners, middle-aged men anyway, most any evening. Including some flight crews but that may change now that the Imperial Hotel is shut down and being demolished.
Farmhouse, the opposite of rich people, maybe now now locals and maybe a few Filipino on weekends but they go other places more like Zhongli and Taoyuan train station areas where they have the Southeast Asian clubs and bars and food and cheap shopping and shipping and short time hotel to meet up partner on the day off.
Maybe covid changed things. But i thought many universities offering visas were great. Especially in the countryside ones or at least not the huge cities, where there are less people so the foreigners tend to congregate more.
Life in Tienmu is rather cliquey and has little representation of Taiwan. I suggest you make friends with locals and long-term foreigners, otherwise why are you here? Perhaps you’re on a work assignment/you’re here short term.