Some more
Those issues have been reported in English. People are just not much interested in them.
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Yep. Taiwan tends to be under the radar for both the good and the bad.
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The air quality problem is due to ‘stagnation’ folks.
Yep that must be the problem.
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a writer wrote on environmental problems. Whether it can be deactivated extensively or not may be subjective, though.
https://international.thenewslens.com/author/Nate%2520Maynard%2520?_gl=1
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The elephant in the room - a worrying demographic problem with no easy fix or motivation to do anything about it (immigrant workers don’t count).
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Thanks for pulling up these threds but I did not have Forumosa in mind when I said some expats. I was thinking more other sites like reddit where so much of the posts are about trivial or sunshiney stuff.
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With all due respect, this explains a lot.
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Perhaps it’s because I’m on this forum and not on reddit, but I didn’t realize there was any shortage of expats discussing Taiwan’s faults. I feel like people in general (myself included) are pretty good at complaining about any place they live.
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I’ve thought there are not much of long term expats in Taiwan, but many are travelers or recent arrivals or ABTs in US.
Yeah, the subreddit may as well be run by ministry of tourism. They ban you if you don’t follow their narrative.
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Are you serious? Jeeez, I didn’t know it was that bad.
Well, I’m using absurdity for demonstrative effect, but they do stick to the narrative. It may be overstating to say that they ban people for that reason only. The community are Taiwan true-believers and the mods push that narrative. Posting something negative alone won’t get you banned, but defending it hard might and the mods are more lenient to the “Taiwan is great” camp. Independence-skeptics are downvoted into nonexistence. That’s true on most social media, though.
I check it out there time to time and all I see are ‘Taiwan is great’ posts or silly stuff. This is why I never bother to comment. The folks who can’t tolerate anything negative said about Taiwan are exactly who I mean by ‘expats’ in my title.
I don’t think so. Local stories are exactly what foreign journalists based in a country are expected to report on. Otherwise why base a foreign journalist here in the first place.
for PRC. Geopolitical things.
how much of then are expats?
I think you are talking about the foreign journalists who came here after being kicked out of China. There are many foreign journalists based here who have been here for a long time and report mainly on Taiwan.
LOL, that really does say it all about how Taiwanese think of us. No matter how long we have been here, we will always be ‘foreigners’.
Man, I couldn’t have said it any better. The society is conservative, not welcoming of immigrants, job opportunities are limited and the environmental issues are terrible. Even now when this is probably the best Taiwan has been in years, there are huge problems with water, the air, and crime. If anything, people here are even more against foreigners and would be up in arms if immigration was encouraged.
A lot of Taiwanese can’t have proper conversations because they lack knowledge of serious issues that don’t have anything to do with work and they can’t think for themselves.
What gets me upset is that Taiwan does not seem interested in tackling its problems head on but instead prefers to stick its head in the sand. Some of the replies on this thread show that criticism of Taiwan or just pointing out a lack of criticism is unwelcome.
I’ve learned to ignore the foreigner or laowai remarks but you are right. It shouldn’t be happening so often. It’s even worse when parents see you and say ‘look, a laowai’ to their kids because it means they will grow up with that exact same attitude.
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They don’t exactly send them here. Many of them work for multiple agencies or have their own thing going. The TV reports seldom get screen time. News isn’t what it used to be.
Oh, don’t say that. That’s the hot button issue for some here. It’s been done to death on other threads.
I totally get it. It doesn’t bother me yet but I feel like it would annoy the hell out of me if and when I am fluent in Mandarin and have a whole family here.
About the other issues, would you still feel the same if you had qualified for double citizenship?
I’ve been here for over 3 years, and while Taiwan has its faults and things that annoy me, I think it’s a pretty amazing place and the years I’ve been here are the best I’ve had in my life. But I’m also the type of person who consciously designs my life the exact way that I want it.
-My job is intentionally completely online, so I don’t have to deal with people ever.
-My wife is my soulmate.
-I learned Mandarin up to a certain level so my daily life here runs smoothly.
-I started to make friends here this past year, and I’ve discovered tons of nice, positive, down-to-earth cool people (both natives and foreigners).
-I don’t drive a car or scooter here, so I don’t have to deal with traffic.
Life here is pretty damn good. I love how safe it is, the cost of living is reasonable, the public transportation is the best in the world, NHI is a lot better than dealing with US health insurance, the food diversity and quality is solid here once you figure out where the good places are, Taiwan is also a great base for traveling. I find people here much more civilized, friendly and welcoming than where I’m from (USA).
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