Where to live in Taichung?

After coming back for three weeks with our 7 month old baby we’re planning to move over from the UK to Taichung at some point, probably next summer. We’d plan to stay for 1-2 years.

Accommodation is something I’d be keen to pin down sooner rather than later. Parents in law have a large house in Changhua City which we could have a floor of but for my sanity we’ve agreed renting in Taichung is a better option - close enough to family for baby sitting duties, but with own space so I can cook what I want, when I want and don’t have to smile 24/7. Have been asking around and people have suggested the area around the Science Museum as one of the nicer parts of the city. I’m looking for the following:

Open spaces nearby - don’t want to drive to go and play in the park
Car parking space
Reasonably modern, hopefully furnished apartment
Variety of shops and restaurants in area
Not too far from high speed rail station

We walked around the Science Museum area and it does indeed seem a nice area. One really nice building caght my eye - Caves Books was on the ground floor, I think it was called the Science Tower or something similar. There were a few for rent signs in windows, letting agent next door told as two apartments were available, both about 50 ping, 3 bedrooms each for over 40,000NT a month plus about 3,000NT management fee. Now I don’t really know my pings from my pongs so not sure if this is particularly large for a 3 bedroom apartment. I do know it is way to expensive for us though. Could probably go up to 25,000NT for a 3 bedroom place but no more.

So, a few questions:
Should I be looking in a different area, or is this likely to be a particularly over priced building and perhaps other more reasonable places are available?

What other areas could be a possibility for a family in Taichung?

What kind of pingage would a decent sized three bedroom apartment be?

Thanks for any help or advice.
Steve

Where will you be working? That’s the key point. Why live in the city center (noisy, expensive and polluted) otherwise?

As for the High Speed Train, it is outside of the city; why do you want to live near it?

[quote=“almas john”]Where will you be working? That’s the key point. Why live in the city center (noisy, expensive and polluted) otherwise?

As for the High Speed Train, it is outside of the city; why do you want to live near it?[/quote]

Location isn’t much of an issue with regard to my work as will hopefully be doing much of it at home, remotely. Though wil need to travel quite a lot too. I really don’t know the area around Taichung but much of what I have seen outside of the city centre is also noisy and polluted and while I’ve seen open spaces they are not really as an amenity, rather paddy fields etc.

I’ve got this (probably unreasonable) hope that I wouldn’t need to use the car much and would rather be able to walk to restaurants, a market or two, a variety of shops and maybe even a department store. My wife also has friends who live around Taichung.

As for the high speed train, I just envisage having to travel either to the airport or Taipei quite a lot. When I say close to it I’m aware it is outside of the city, but would prefer to live somewhere where I wouldn’t need to cross the city to get to it.

All this is just a wish list - I’m well aware we’re going to have to compromise somewhere.

Thanks for the response,
Steve

[quote=“MeiLiMao”][quote=“almas john”]Where will you be working? That’s the key point. Why live in the city center (noisy, expensive and polluted) otherwise?

As for the High Speed Train, it is outside of the city; why do you want to live near it?[/quote]

Location isn’t much of an issue with regard to my work as will hopefully be doing much of it at home, remotely. Though wil need to travel quite a lot too. I really don’t know the area around Taichung but much of what I have seen outside of the city centre is also noisy and polluted and while I’ve seen open spaces they are not really as an amenity, rather paddy fields etc.

I’ve got this (probably unreasonable) hope that I wouldn’t need to use the car much and would rather be able to walk to restaurants, a market or two, a variety of shops and maybe even a department store. My wife also has friends who live around Taichung.

As for the high speed train, I just envisage having to travel either to the airport or Taipei quite a lot. When I say close to it I’m aware it is outside of the city, but would prefer to live somewhere where I wouldn’t need to cross the city to get to it.

All this is just a wish list - I’m well aware we’re going to have to compromise somewhere.

Thanks for the response,
Steve[/quote]25k should be enough for a decent-sized place provided it’s not right in the new city centre (near Sogo and the Science Museum), or extremely flashy. You should get still somewhere fairly clean and modern for that.

So I guess you’d be best to look at the south-west quarter of the city, bounded by Taizhonggang Road to the north, and the green strip from Nova to the science museum to the east. The further away from the centre you go, the more you’ll get for your money of course.

Hard to recommend any specific apartment complexes - there are so many. I’d actually suggest going through an agent to save a lot of legwork. Yes, you have to pay them half a month’s rent, but it could save you a load of hassle.

Try Yong-Fu Road, off Zhonggang Road, not far from Tunghai University. I had friends living there in this megacomplex called like “Yong Fu Community” or something or other. You can’t miss it. Great apartments, not that old (10 years or less), 30 pings (3 bedroom) 10K a month. 25K is WAY too much for Taichung unless it’s posh and big. I’ve seen swank 1BR apartments for 10K in Taichung, I also saw grubby studios for 3K a month.

I live down in the south, a block away from the WenHsin / FuXing intersection. It has good points – there are lots of parks, the roads are wide, it’s incredibly convenient to get to just about anywhere (WenHsin to the north and west of the city, JianGuo to the east, the HSR is five minutes away, the highway is even closer, and there are roads straight out to TaiPing and Nantou). It’s also cheap – I pay NT$12k/mo for a two-floor, 50 ping “tou tian” (a place with a ground floor opening straight onto the road), with plenty of almost-private parking on the huge sidewalk.

It also has bad points – there’s nothing to eat except local fare (and most pretty poor local fare at that), most of the roads around here have no sidewalk (which is a problem with six dogs), and it’s allegedly the “gangster area” of the gangster city, though I’ve never seen anything like that around here at all.

There’s a surprisingly nice area a little way north of here, west of WenHsin S. Rd, near the statue park. Nice buildings, pedestrian areas, lots of little restaurants and the like, quiet. fairly cheap. Less convenient, though.

Many thanks for the replies - all of the suggestions sound good, I’ll have a look into the areas suggested. Glad to hear we should be able to find somewhere for well under 25k.

Thanks again for the info.
Steve

[quote=“MeiLiMao”]After coming back for three weeks with our 7 month old baby we’re planning to move over from the UK to Taichung at some point, probably next summer. We’d plan to stay for 1-2 years.

Accommodation is something I’d be keen to pin down sooner rather than later. Parents in law have a large house in Changhua (Zhanghua) City which we could have a floor of but for my sanity we’ve agreed renting in Taichung is a better option - close enough to family for baby sitting duties, but with own space so I can cook what I want, when I want and don’t have to smile 24/7. Have been asking around and people have suggested the area around the Science Museum as one of the nicer parts of the city. I’m looking for the following:

Open spaces nearby - don’t want to drive to go and play in the park
Car parking space
Reasonably modern, hopefully furnished apartment
Variety of shops and restaurants in area
Not too far from high speed rail station[/quote]

Based on your budget, desire for proximity to green space and need to travel I would recommend a good look at the Dong Hai university area (on Zhonggang road towards Longjing).

If you can find one available for rent then NT$25k/month would get you a reasonably sized furnished house (not apartment) around You Yuan road or Dong Hai Bie Shu area.

You have Art Street (Yi Shu Jie) and Dong Hai nightmarket plus easy access to both freeways 1 and 3. If you are one of those who absolutely has to eat Western food every day you might not be so happy, but otherwise there is a great selection of Japanese, Chinese and Korean food all the way down You Yuan road and the nearby Xi Tun road.

Most importantly you are within close reach of Taichung Metropolitan park. There are very few housing options right outside the park so whatever housing you found in Dong Hai would involve a longish walk or short drive, but it’s worth it because the metropolitan park is probably once of Taiwan’s nicest green spaces.

The only downside is that Dong Hai is relatively far from the rest of Taichung City, but hopping onto the freeway would make an easy trip to Zhanghua or the HSR.

If you still looking for your living place, i can show you a very nice apartment which near Yongfu road.82pin with 4roomsand parking space.And there are lots of nice places you can choce in Taichung.0918986172Sally

One my teachers at Tunghai lived at Yong Fu. It’s really nice and if I recall right, he said it wasn’t expensive. We had a class pizza party at his house one day instead of having class. Was nice :smiley:

Any suggestions/recommendations on where to live in Taichung? I’m moving there this September if I get accepted to 中國醫藥大學/China Medical University (fingers crossed!). They’ll give me student accommodation for the first six months or so but after that I’m on my own.

  • I put a premium on clean(-ish) air. Last time I was there I was shocked at how polluted (I assume by scooters mostly and cars) the air was in downtown. Didn’t get a chance to visit the outskirts but I’m hoping it’s at least not as bad as it is in downtown. To give you an idea of “breathable” air I’m from Tokyo and I find the air here quite ok, at least compared to downtown Taipei and Taichung.
  • 30 mins-1 hr away from school. I’m willing to ride a scooter (will definitely wear one of those masks that supposedly filters out fumes!).
  • I don’t mind sharing with a friend or two provided that we each get our own bedrooms.
  • My budget’s somewhere around TWD15,000 up to 20,000.

On the side, do apartments in Taiwan come with a bathtub?

Generally, no. But you can find them if you look long and hard enough. I suggest you use the time while you’re living in uni accommodation to look for a nice place. Speak to a local estate agent and tell them what you’re looking for and your price range.

6 month is enough time to check out spaces and places you might like to live in. About air in downtown Taichung, I never thought it is as bad as you’re suggesting.

Check out Dong Hai Bie Shu (Utopia) up Zhong Gang Street in direction to Shalu, it’s up a mountain, windy, you find shops&food&crowds and everything else and it’s still reasonably close to downtown Taichung.

Lots of newer high rise places have bathtubs, they usually aren’t very big though. As for places to stay, there are tonnes of options in Taichung, no problem to find a decent place for 15000-20000. Your post is not very clear, if you want to share or not, etc. Basically Taichung is an easy place to find accomodation, one area that many people like to stay is around the art museum and nearby parks, that’s just one option.

For that price range you could get a lovely place in the mountain areas of Taiping or Dakun.

Search is your friend.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=72592

I remember there were some awesome houses up in Daken that the locals wouldn’t go near, because they reckoned they were damaged by the big earthquake in 1999.

[quote=“headhonchoII”]Search is your friend.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=72592[/quote]
Thanks for that, HH. :thumbsup: I merged the threads to make it easier on everyone.

It depends on how intensively you’ll be studying and what you consider a good standard of living. For $15-20k you could live in one of the newer apartments around 學士路 where the university is located. There is a small park there and it’s within walking distance to Zhonghua nightmarket, 一中街/中友百貨, lots of restaurants, cheap movie theaters etc. There’s a pretty nice building on 學士/進化 with decent modern apartments in this price range. A lot of your classmates will probably be living nearby too. If you are coming here to study then you will find the inconvenience of idyllic mountain life quickly gets old.

This is the park area I’m talking about.

And this is the apt building.

With that budget you could live anywhere. Lots of foreigners live in the Ta-ken area, out Dongshan Road, in the cookie cutter houses there. Probably many people looking for roommies. It’s 25 min from the university. There are accessible hiking trails and great cycling on that side of the city.

The area around People’s Park close to the bars and near some nice eateries, English bookstore, and Nova, is another place popular with foreigners. 10 mins from the hospital, right up Ying Tsai Rd.

The simplest thing to do is wait until you get here, then find a part of the city that you decide you like, and then move there. There are great places to live everywhere in and around the city, and any place you pick will have great places to live. A lot of it depends on what you like doing – shopping? Hiking? Drinking? Cycling? Camping? Swimming?

Also, don’t be fooled by the apparently pollution. There’s a permanent haze in part because of the dust blown off the rivers. Much of it is pollution, but not all. The air quality isn’t bad, and the weather is wonderful.

Vorkosigan