I’ve lived in Taiwan for 6 years, across 3 different periods, and 4 different cities. I’ve worked in a few industries, speak some of the language, and even attained a master’s degree at one of the top-tier universities!
I truly consider Taiwan to be my 2nd home and love its strangeness (to me).
If anyone’s curious about what it’s like to live here, plop down a question!
As an astute follower (no humility here) of your every word, I have a question you may not want to answer on this forum. If so, you can email me at ewhackett@gmail.com. My emails are read by the NSA, the Peanut Farmers of America, and myself.
As someone who is very worried about the continued existence of democracy in Taiwan, I would like to know how the average citizen of this beautiful country is thinking about the threats posed by China? Especially now that the world's two most prominent dictators have seemingly joined forces in an agreement of mutual support. If Russia invades Ukraine, the world's attention will shift to Europe, which may give China an opening to be more militarily aggressive toward Taiwan.
BTW, I hear that you have been nominated to have your picture on jars of a famous peanut butter - you would be holding a tuna in one hand and a PB&T sandwich in the other. I had written in to suggest rather than a sandwich, you should be holding a bottle of beer, but the suggestion was not accepted.
Sushi and chunky peanut butter - a new culinary trend?
Sure Edward, actually I think if you hit 'reply' to one of the Substack emails it sends it to my inbox, try that out and I'll take a look at your risque inquiry!
As for your question, that's a toughie. Politics is one of the few subjects that is usually taboo to discuss between foreigners and locals.
It's not that I haven't, but for how big of a deal it is (foreigners talk about the subject all the time amongst ourselves), it's just not a *thing* to discuss with acquaintances, let alone strangers.
My impression: The older generations here are generally pro-China, the younger generations the complete opposite. Many of them strive for an identity and want to call the country Taiwan (not the Republic of China). I wish this could happen tomorrow myself, but, well, I'm sure you're aware why that's not really possible with everything going on.
As for the general angst felt about China's looming threat, well, I'm not quite sure. No one is happy about it, of course, but China has been threatening to invade this peaceful country for over 70 years now.
All I can think is there may be a generalized attitude of accustomedness. ie. If you poke my shoulder once a day for 70 years, I'm not going to overreact and sock you in the face with a sledgehammer if you start poking me twice a day for 2 years (even if I'd wanted to do it all along). These are just my 2 cents as a foreigner though, I'm sure many people have a different opinion here. I also don't read the local news (Mandarin), so there may be far more panic than I realize and it's just not expressed to me.
PS. One day the world will see JJPBTB(eer) on storeshelves near you.
I'll have to share more of my adventures here in the future then :)
For the pandemic, oh boy was I lucky. The population is roughly 23 million and we've had 19,455 cases in total as of yesterday. That probably sums it up haha.
I put it down to a few reasons why they were so successful maintaining a bubble from the craziness:
1. It's an island and they've followed a strict quarantine for all visitors coming here. Mandatory 2 week quarantine hotel stay. It was mostly government subsidized at first and then became a bit more of a shared cost later on. But this was the big one IMO.
2. Mask culture. No one gave a flying crap about 'MY RIGHTS!!!' here when asked to wear masks indoors and then later on outdoors. They've had previous outbreaks in the past with other viruses and I suppose that helped the culture adjust to wearing masks more readily. Ever since I first visited in the country (and others in Asia), I noticed its common courtesy to wear a mask whenever you have the flu/cold etc.
3. The tracing system. Whenever you go into a store/restaurant/public building here, you can either write down your name/number/time or scan a QR code which sends that info to a national hotline via text. Pretty simple but almost completely adopted country-wide. So whenever an outbreak occurred, the health department was able to find nearly every place and contact a patient went, then they'd ask those people to test and quarantine for a few days. Massively effective.
In the end, we only had one 'big' outbreak back in May 2021, before that it was almost 0 cases every day, so life was very normal here (luckily). That outbreak lasted about 2.5 months with a heavy lockdown (I finally got to feel y'all's pain), and then went back to low single digits for months.
Recently Omicron finally reared its ugly head and we have between 10-50 cases a day, but luckily by now it's 81%/75%/28% for first, second, and booster vaccinated. We were very lucky we had such a long bout with no cases--the country had a very hard time getting it's hands on vaccines, especially with a certain huge aggressive country to the west of us getting millions of doses cancelled repeatedly behind the scenes. But that background is a story for another time.
Hi Justin, hope it is ok to ask a few questions about living in Taiwan :)
1) What is the hardest thing in attuning yourself to living in Taiwan?
2) What is the most surprising thing that you've grown to appreciate about living in Taiwan?
3) How would you describe your experience with the Taiwanese people?
4) What is the most important thing you would like people to know about Taiwan and the Taiwanese? For example, I have always perceived Taiwan to be such a nation of contrasts. They are allowed to break out in fights inside the Parliament (which is wild to me) and yet culturally ingrained in the Asian traditional ways.
This is all. Look forward to reading your sharing. It is always fascinating to learn about other people's living experiences in countries that are foreign to their own. Thank you for giving us this opportunity for Q&A. Stay well and safe.
1) The language barrier was probably the biggest. Then a huge #2 (pun intended) is the bureaucracy here with large organizations. Can chock up a lot of it to cultural differences, but still, I can't begin to tell you the number of frustrating experiences I've had with banks and visa application processes. At least the government is aware of this in recent years and are implementing some really cool programs to fix it. Nice to see the welcome changes.
2) The food. It can be scary when first being greeted with organs and chicken feet at many diners, but then you slowly get introduced to such amazing dishes I found myself longing for them anytime I moved out of the country. There's just such a wide variety of food to try, even if the staple is rice and noodles (two foods I don't really eat regularly lol).
3) Amazing! They are some of the kindest most generous people I have met while travelling the world. I've been invited for Christmas dinner in strangers homes, been given free desserts, and countless other acts of kindness simply for being a strange foreigner in a strange land. Also the lack of theft here is nuts, stuff can be left on park benches for days without people touching it (or the police will eventually get it and call the owners). Many stories of wallets returned full of cash, iphones left on benches for hours and still laying there in busy parks, etc. I'm always amazed at this.
4) Hmm, that's a tough one. I suppose the biggest thing would be the general stereotype of the country. I grew up only knowing of Taiwan as the place where my ballcap and electronics were made. After living here I've found it to be full of some of the most beautiful places and people I have ever had the pleasure of encountering in my life. I'm looking forward to making a giant "appreciation" article one day full of all the amazing pictures I've taken.
Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, Justin. I think you are much more brave and adventurous than I am. I still have such an aversion to innards, organs, chicken feet and etc. And I am Asian! Haha
I did not realise Taiwan is that kind of safe. Thought only Japan is that safe, in terms of leaving wallet full of cash on public places and it'll still be there. That's good to know.
There's a strong Japanese influence in Taipei which I was surprised to discover. It was interesting to see how the two cultures blend in its own unique way.
I look forward to reading your appreciation article about living in Taiwan and those amazing pictures. Take care and stay well :)
Haha I definitely don't imbibe in the organs and such, well, more than once anyway. And yea, Taiwan is ranked #2 in the world for safety in terms of violent crimes I believe. It's a nice aspect of the culture. The Japanese architecture is amazing and I find old gems spread all over the island, often in hidden backalleys and small towns--they're beautiful.
Lovely...I have only managed to see a small fraction of Taiwan and Taipei in my 2 trips there. Way before Covid. I was already quite amazed. I hope we get to see those beautiful pictures you took some day, especially of the back alleys and small towns :)
That's a common (valid) complaint here. Most of my Taiwanese friends absolutely hate their jobs, or at least the hours they have to put in. Combine that with a general low level of pay for many jobs and you have disgruntlement. The low cost of living makes up for a lot of that I imagine.
But yea, people work an INSANE number of hours here, but there are signs of improvement slowly over the years. I hope this progresses much faster in the future.
Hi Marlaine, that's gotta be one of the best things about living in Taiwan--everything is *relatively* cheap!
It's an odd juxtaposition, as the country is, as far as I always hear from friends back home and in other countries, far more developed than people generally assume. That being said, they have their problems like every other country. A big one includes a lack of income growth for the average person. Fortunately, until COVID, inflation stayed between -0.5% and 2%, so the costs haven't crept up too high over the years.
When I first came here in 2009, I challenged myself to live off of about $3 US a day for food and succeeded. Think of ramen noodles and making your own tea at work kind of stuff (absolute basics). Nowadays, it's climbed a lot, in particularly rent and in the last year food.
On the other hand, stuff like train tickets and super comfy long distance buses are crazy cheap, in the range of $5 to $20 for 5 hour rides. Even taking a super high speed train is only around $30 to cross the entire country. Other people choose to buy a used scooter (not the standup NA version) for $400 and ride it for 10 years with $100 maintenance a year. Healthcare for me is $30 a month--amazing.
Outside of that, booze is around the same price, hotels are about half the price, and name-brand electronics are (surprisingly) about 30% more expensive. (I know, weird).
As for compared to *my* income, that really depends on how my online wordlings are doing! But generally, a lot of the population makes around $1000 to $2000 a month outside of the big city (Taipei). I could go on and on about this so feel free to ask more specifics!
I have a question about Taiwan food. Is it easy to get Vegeterian food i.e. no chicken stock used or lard in their cooking. ? Also, did you have issues with language communication or English is spoken by all?
Hey Rajeev, great question. Taiwan has a large Buddhist population so you can bet vegetarian is an option readily available all around. Whether or not you like that particular vegetarian food is another question. But luckily, operating small restaurants almost seems like one of the country's main pastimes. Food options is never something to worry about unless hiking up top some of the tallest mountains here.
As for language communication, you can bet I've had my share of 'war stories' on this front. But I have to say, over the 12 years I've been frequenting the country, the level of English has increased drastically. It's also a weird kind of English, if you go outside of the main city of Taipei, it's not the easiest to find someone fully fluent in English. But everyone below roughly 40 can usually speak a lot of key sentences. And almost every important building (hospital/DMV/train station) has a fluent staff member on hand to help foreigners in need.
All street signs are also in Romanized English, so everything can be looked up on Google maps pretty easily. Translating it to an old uncle taxi driver on the other hand can end up being one of those 'war stories' I mentioned above.
Most foreigners that live here a little while get a basic grasp of 10-20 key Mandarin sentences, and that combined with the rising level of English spoken here usually means *true* language barriers aren't encountered too often. But they certainly do still happen. In those rare occasions for someone like me with beginner-intermediate Mandarin, I always have a wonderful Taiwanese friend or two on speed dial willing to help.
As an astute follower (no humility here) of your every word, I have a question you may not want to answer on this forum. If so, you can email me at ewhackett@gmail.com. My emails are read by the NSA, the Peanut Farmers of America, and myself.
As someone who is very worried about the continued existence of democracy in Taiwan, I would like to know how the average citizen of this beautiful country is thinking about the threats posed by China? Especially now that the world's two most prominent dictators have seemingly joined forces in an agreement of mutual support. If Russia invades Ukraine, the world's attention will shift to Europe, which may give China an opening to be more militarily aggressive toward Taiwan.
BTW, I hear that you have been nominated to have your picture on jars of a famous peanut butter - you would be holding a tuna in one hand and a PB&T sandwich in the other. I had written in to suggest rather than a sandwich, you should be holding a bottle of beer, but the suggestion was not accepted.
Sushi and chunky peanut butter - a new culinary trend?
Sure Edward, actually I think if you hit 'reply' to one of the Substack emails it sends it to my inbox, try that out and I'll take a look at your risque inquiry!
As for your question, that's a toughie. Politics is one of the few subjects that is usually taboo to discuss between foreigners and locals.
It's not that I haven't, but for how big of a deal it is (foreigners talk about the subject all the time amongst ourselves), it's just not a *thing* to discuss with acquaintances, let alone strangers.
My impression: The older generations here are generally pro-China, the younger generations the complete opposite. Many of them strive for an identity and want to call the country Taiwan (not the Republic of China). I wish this could happen tomorrow myself, but, well, I'm sure you're aware why that's not really possible with everything going on.
As for the general angst felt about China's looming threat, well, I'm not quite sure. No one is happy about it, of course, but China has been threatening to invade this peaceful country for over 70 years now.
All I can think is there may be a generalized attitude of accustomedness. ie. If you poke my shoulder once a day for 70 years, I'm not going to overreact and sock you in the face with a sledgehammer if you start poking me twice a day for 2 years (even if I'd wanted to do it all along). These are just my 2 cents as a foreigner though, I'm sure many people have a different opinion here. I also don't read the local news (Mandarin), so there may be far more panic than I realize and it's just not expressed to me.
PS. One day the world will see JJPBTB(eer) on storeshelves near you.
So interesting, JJ! I've only been to Hong Kong and Singapore but am always curious about other cultures and cities.
I'd be interested to learn about the off-the-tourist beat places you've visited to escape the big city.
Also curious about how they fared during the pandemic and what measures are in place there to combat spread ( yeah, sorry, I'm being the nosy nurse!)
I'll have to share more of my adventures here in the future then :)
For the pandemic, oh boy was I lucky. The population is roughly 23 million and we've had 19,455 cases in total as of yesterday. That probably sums it up haha.
I put it down to a few reasons why they were so successful maintaining a bubble from the craziness:
1. It's an island and they've followed a strict quarantine for all visitors coming here. Mandatory 2 week quarantine hotel stay. It was mostly government subsidized at first and then became a bit more of a shared cost later on. But this was the big one IMO.
2. Mask culture. No one gave a flying crap about 'MY RIGHTS!!!' here when asked to wear masks indoors and then later on outdoors. They've had previous outbreaks in the past with other viruses and I suppose that helped the culture adjust to wearing masks more readily. Ever since I first visited in the country (and others in Asia), I noticed its common courtesy to wear a mask whenever you have the flu/cold etc.
3. The tracing system. Whenever you go into a store/restaurant/public building here, you can either write down your name/number/time or scan a QR code which sends that info to a national hotline via text. Pretty simple but almost completely adopted country-wide. So whenever an outbreak occurred, the health department was able to find nearly every place and contact a patient went, then they'd ask those people to test and quarantine for a few days. Massively effective.
In the end, we only had one 'big' outbreak back in May 2021, before that it was almost 0 cases every day, so life was very normal here (luckily). That outbreak lasted about 2.5 months with a heavy lockdown (I finally got to feel y'all's pain), and then went back to low single digits for months.
Recently Omicron finally reared its ugly head and we have between 10-50 cases a day, but luckily by now it's 81%/75%/28% for first, second, and booster vaccinated. We were very lucky we had such a long bout with no cases--the country had a very hard time getting it's hands on vaccines, especially with a certain huge aggressive country to the west of us getting millions of doses cancelled repeatedly behind the scenes. But that background is a story for another time.
Thanks Barb
Wow - that's amazing. Kinda like NZ with the strict quarantine ( not the subsidized part!) and I beleive NZ also has that tracing system.
So interesting the different attitude re masking too. I remember seeing the odd person on the subway in Hong Kong with masks on and was intrigued.
Sounds like a great place to be right now. If only peeps here would shut up and listen/learn!
Look forward to more stories from you :)
Hi Justin, hope it is ok to ask a few questions about living in Taiwan :)
1) What is the hardest thing in attuning yourself to living in Taiwan?
2) What is the most surprising thing that you've grown to appreciate about living in Taiwan?
3) How would you describe your experience with the Taiwanese people?
4) What is the most important thing you would like people to know about Taiwan and the Taiwanese? For example, I have always perceived Taiwan to be such a nation of contrasts. They are allowed to break out in fights inside the Parliament (which is wild to me) and yet culturally ingrained in the Asian traditional ways.
This is all. Look forward to reading your sharing. It is always fascinating to learn about other people's living experiences in countries that are foreign to their own. Thank you for giving us this opportunity for Q&A. Stay well and safe.
Shir thing Shirley,
1) The language barrier was probably the biggest. Then a huge #2 (pun intended) is the bureaucracy here with large organizations. Can chock up a lot of it to cultural differences, but still, I can't begin to tell you the number of frustrating experiences I've had with banks and visa application processes. At least the government is aware of this in recent years and are implementing some really cool programs to fix it. Nice to see the welcome changes.
2) The food. It can be scary when first being greeted with organs and chicken feet at many diners, but then you slowly get introduced to such amazing dishes I found myself longing for them anytime I moved out of the country. There's just such a wide variety of food to try, even if the staple is rice and noodles (two foods I don't really eat regularly lol).
3) Amazing! They are some of the kindest most generous people I have met while travelling the world. I've been invited for Christmas dinner in strangers homes, been given free desserts, and countless other acts of kindness simply for being a strange foreigner in a strange land. Also the lack of theft here is nuts, stuff can be left on park benches for days without people touching it (or the police will eventually get it and call the owners). Many stories of wallets returned full of cash, iphones left on benches for hours and still laying there in busy parks, etc. I'm always amazed at this.
4) Hmm, that's a tough one. I suppose the biggest thing would be the general stereotype of the country. I grew up only knowing of Taiwan as the place where my ballcap and electronics were made. After living here I've found it to be full of some of the most beautiful places and people I have ever had the pleasure of encountering in my life. I'm looking forward to making a giant "appreciation" article one day full of all the amazing pictures I've taken.
Thanks!
Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, Justin. I think you are much more brave and adventurous than I am. I still have such an aversion to innards, organs, chicken feet and etc. And I am Asian! Haha
I did not realise Taiwan is that kind of safe. Thought only Japan is that safe, in terms of leaving wallet full of cash on public places and it'll still be there. That's good to know.
There's a strong Japanese influence in Taipei which I was surprised to discover. It was interesting to see how the two cultures blend in its own unique way.
I look forward to reading your appreciation article about living in Taiwan and those amazing pictures. Take care and stay well :)
Haha I definitely don't imbibe in the organs and such, well, more than once anyway. And yea, Taiwan is ranked #2 in the world for safety in terms of violent crimes I believe. It's a nice aspect of the culture. The Japanese architecture is amazing and I find old gems spread all over the island, often in hidden backalleys and small towns--they're beautiful.
Lovely...I have only managed to see a small fraction of Taiwan and Taipei in my 2 trips there. Way before Covid. I was already quite amazed. I hope we get to see those beautiful pictures you took some day, especially of the back alleys and small towns :)
What's the work culture like in Taiwan? Do people take a laid back approach to work or are they more on the workaholic end of the spectrum?
That's a common (valid) complaint here. Most of my Taiwanese friends absolutely hate their jobs, or at least the hours they have to put in. Combine that with a general low level of pay for many jobs and you have disgruntlement. The low cost of living makes up for a lot of that I imagine.
But yea, people work an INSANE number of hours here, but there are signs of improvement slowly over the years. I hope this progresses much faster in the future.
Hi Justin. How does the cost of living in Taiwan compare with your income?
Hi Marlaine, that's gotta be one of the best things about living in Taiwan--everything is *relatively* cheap!
It's an odd juxtaposition, as the country is, as far as I always hear from friends back home and in other countries, far more developed than people generally assume. That being said, they have their problems like every other country. A big one includes a lack of income growth for the average person. Fortunately, until COVID, inflation stayed between -0.5% and 2%, so the costs haven't crept up too high over the years.
When I first came here in 2009, I challenged myself to live off of about $3 US a day for food and succeeded. Think of ramen noodles and making your own tea at work kind of stuff (absolute basics). Nowadays, it's climbed a lot, in particularly rent and in the last year food.
On the other hand, stuff like train tickets and super comfy long distance buses are crazy cheap, in the range of $5 to $20 for 5 hour rides. Even taking a super high speed train is only around $30 to cross the entire country. Other people choose to buy a used scooter (not the standup NA version) for $400 and ride it for 10 years with $100 maintenance a year. Healthcare for me is $30 a month--amazing.
Outside of that, booze is around the same price, hotels are about half the price, and name-brand electronics are (surprisingly) about 30% more expensive. (I know, weird).
As for compared to *my* income, that really depends on how my online wordlings are doing! But generally, a lot of the population makes around $1000 to $2000 a month outside of the big city (Taipei). I could go on and on about this so feel free to ask more specifics!
Hello JJ:
I have a question about Taiwan food. Is it easy to get Vegeterian food i.e. no chicken stock used or lard in their cooking. ? Also, did you have issues with language communication or English is spoken by all?
Hey Rajeev, great question. Taiwan has a large Buddhist population so you can bet vegetarian is an option readily available all around. Whether or not you like that particular vegetarian food is another question. But luckily, operating small restaurants almost seems like one of the country's main pastimes. Food options is never something to worry about unless hiking up top some of the tallest mountains here.
As for language communication, you can bet I've had my share of 'war stories' on this front. But I have to say, over the 12 years I've been frequenting the country, the level of English has increased drastically. It's also a weird kind of English, if you go outside of the main city of Taipei, it's not the easiest to find someone fully fluent in English. But everyone below roughly 40 can usually speak a lot of key sentences. And almost every important building (hospital/DMV/train station) has a fluent staff member on hand to help foreigners in need.
All street signs are also in Romanized English, so everything can be looked up on Google maps pretty easily. Translating it to an old uncle taxi driver on the other hand can end up being one of those 'war stories' I mentioned above.
Most foreigners that live here a little while get a basic grasp of 10-20 key Mandarin sentences, and that combined with the rising level of English spoken here usually means *true* language barriers aren't encountered too often. But they certainly do still happen. In those rare occasions for someone like me with beginner-intermediate Mandarin, I always have a wonderful Taiwanese friend or two on speed dial willing to help.