I hope some of the ideas in this post may be of some use to some of you thinking about making the move back home or to a third country, or currently trying to see what if anything is good about living in Taiwan.
It's 4 months since I and my Taiwanese wife left Taiwan after I'd lived there for 5.5 years, plus a year in China.
Our new home is in Wellington, New Zealand.
I have a totally new career - Economist (vs English Teacher / Co-ordinator in Taiwan).
The fact that I am checking out Forumosa after 4 months away from Taiwan is telling. There are certainly aspects of living in Taiwan that I miss, and this posting is an effort to outline what I see as the essence of what is great about Taiwan and what is great about western countries (but particularly NZ, as that is my current experience). After living in Asia for so long, I had become so "localised" in many ways (and I don't mean "going native") that I sort of forgot what it was like to live and work back in a western country.
I had three choices facing me around the middle of last year when I began thinking about moving on from Taiwan:
1) stay in Taiwan indefinitely
2) move back to South Africa, where I grew up
3) take advantage of my NZ ancestry and move there
Being a numbers-oriented guy, I actually devised a simple Excel spreadsheet taking into account all the factors I could think of that appealed to me about the three countries. I assigned weightings(representing importance) to these various factors and then assigned values for these factors for each country. Factors ranged from climate and job opps to my need for peace and quiet, absence of crime, and absence of natural disasters. Yes, yes, if you're not totally freaked out at this point, read on.
The results for ME (the point is they will differ for everyone, depending on what weighting you assgn to each variable), put NZ at 100, TWN at 86 and SA at 79 (I designed the programme to automatically scale the highest-scoring place up to 100 and the others relatively, to make easy comparison, similar (in a very weak way) to the Cost of Living comparison done each year by Mercer which sets NY as the standard at 100).
Having made up my mind (no, not based purely on these numbers!), I set about planning the move. Throw in a wife requiring a visa based on partnership (an inconvenience) and two cats (a downright nightmare considering NZ's ill-informed head-in-the-sand approach to Taiwan's animal health status - but I digress) and it was all quite stressful.
Then there were the job applications. No one was much interested in hiring me while I was still overseas. By "chance" I managed to chat to three different companies during a short (8 day) trip over to see my family for the first time in 8 years last October, and ended up getting three job offers!
Here are the issues as I see them right now. First,
Taiwan's positives:
Finances: This is by FAR the biggest positive in Taiwan, in my opinion, and there are several aspects to it, dealt with below.
I was fortunate in that I did earn very well in Taiwan; indeed, I was probably close to the upper limit of the earning spectrum for language-teaching work in the country. Taiwan (perhaps joint with S Korea) just can't be beat in terms of low taxes and cheap EVERYTHING. Of course Thailand may be cheaper, but the wages suck for language teachers; ditto for China.
Even on a good salary, I was paying around 7% tax in Taiwan overall. My starting salary here was about the same as I earned in Taiwan, but I paid 24% tax overall (with the last chunk of my salary being taxed at 34.3%). That's basically an extra NT$17-18,000 in tax per MONTH over here.
Subsidised healthcare: I know this is basically non-existent in the US; we have it in NZ, but only for the age groups of which we are not a part. Minimum NT$1,200 just to visit the doctor. Add medicines.
Transport: you MUST have a car if you live anywhere other than in the city centre, which we didn't want to do as it was one of the main reasons for moving. Wellington's public transport is relatively good; we live about 6 minutes' walk from a train station. From there it's about 20 minutes on the train to the city centre, but we still need a car to do anything on weekends.
We will spend about NT$6,000 a month on transport this year taking into account depreciation on the car. In Taiwan we both walked to work, spending maybe NT$1,000 a month on transport between us.
Food: Forget eating out. Well, Pizza Hut is cheaper than TWN, but that's about where it ends. They had a special going for three months here - a large pizza for NT$130, but that's over now. The simplest zi-zhu-can meal costs NT$150 here, so it's back to sandwiches for me for lunch. Fortunately my wife gets one free meal at her hotel every day, and she's developing her culinary skills in the evenings - I'm still an AWFUL cook.
Accommodation: We paid NT16,810 a month including management fee for our 40 square metre (450 sq.ft.) apartment in Taipei's Xinyi District. It was a rotten old building, albeit a highrise, filthy dirty with non-stop drilling by all and sundry at all times of the day and even night. It was on a fancy street in the priciest neighbourhood.
Here in NZ we rent a 100 square metre (1100 square foot) house - 3.5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and an open plan kitchen/living room area literally as big as our previous apartment, along with 670 sq.m. of land (7,400 sq.ft.). The problem is, we pay NT$29,600 a month, so per square metre it works out cheaper than Taiwan, but you ain't gonna find a 40 sq.m. house here, so you're going to be forking over a bigger portion of your salary.
Overseas travel: I suppose I could've put this under the "Finance" section, but for me the issue is more about
access than cost. For most people living in NZ, "overseas" means Australia or Fiji. Sad. It's just so far from everything else. SA would've been the same. Taiwan is just so central to so many places; indeed, probably more so than most countries in Asia, with the exception of the main hubs.
General convenience Life in Taiwan is EASY for a very large majority of people, even the office salaryman / engineer working 55 hours a week. This is largely a result of the high density living (which, yes, results in noise and pollution), which creates economies of scale opportunities. The result is a 1,000 different services and a million products at your front door. And this is the situation to a greater or lesser extent in all of Taiwan's major and even provincial towns, from Taipei to Hualian. Anyone living in subhurbia in a western country is going to be miles away from any substantial range of services and products. (We're fortunate in our living arrangements, and it's still 400 m down a hill to the nearest shop of ANY sort - how many people in Taiwan can claim that!)
That salaryman / engineer on his/her NT$40,000 a month will afford a decent enough place in Xindian / Zhonghe or wherever, and will have the latest cellphone, 29 inch LCD TV and will drive a late model car. That just wouldn't happen in SA or NZ.
Now, none of the positive comments I have made about Taiwan discount any of the negatives. The OP made several of these abundantly clear, and I do agree with many of them. In addition, the following are factors that pushed me out of my comfort zone which was Taiwan.
NZ (Western country?) Positives
Peace & Quiet / SpaceClearly there are very few places in Taiwan that can provide this in any measure while still being only 1 km from a shopping centre and even closer to public transport. This is one of the biggest plusses of being in a bigger country (and is not really a negative that is any fault of the Taiwanese - the current population size was determined by previous generations, and the space on the island is limited).
Working environment I can honestly say that I have never worked in a more pleasant work environment where I am appreciated, respected and groomed for better things than where I am now. To be fair, I was pretty happy in my last job in Taiwan (and will never completely eliminate from my mind the option of going back), but the overall approach to human resources in Taiwan is quite horrific (and I never experienced anything close to as bad as many other posters have).
My company spends up to NT$70,000 on me on personal development courses of my choice each year, sends me to conferences around the country, has weekly drinks on Friday afternoon where we gather to chew the fat informally, and has an 8-weekly "fireside chat" system whereby I can air any concerns in an informal, yet structured environment. We have also had a weekend away to plan strategy, have ongoing computers and other workshops, and are encouraged to purchase or recommend any tools that will help us do our jobs better, which the company pays for. Any chance of this ever happening in TWN?
Career Opps I taught English for 6.5 years. I think I was pretty good at it, but as I have mentioned, I reached a sort of a peak. For people for whom teaching is a passion, this may be all they need for the rest of their lives. While I enjoy teaching, and may well return to it at some stage, at this time I needed to find something more. That was unlikely to happen in Taiwan. If I had stayed in my perfectly OK job for ten years, I would probably have been doing exactly the same thing.
Moving back overseas has given me career opps that would not have been possible in Taiwan. Although I work for a relatively small firm, a career path for the next 3-4 years has already been mapped for me, and who knows where I will go from there, but I won't be forced to move country again to move up.
Although there are instances of expats in Taiwan moving into more career-path-oriented jobs, I believe they are few and far between. I would be interested to hear from other posters who have transitioned from language-related work (including technical writing) to something quite different in TWN.
The overall pattern seems to be that you have to leave TWN, join a multi-national, and then getvsent back!
Joint Honours
Climate I never thought it would ever be the case, but I actually miss some aspects of Taiwan's climate. A hot day here in summer is 22 degrees celsius (72 farenheit)! Cape Town has by far a better climate than anywhere in NZ or Taiwan, but I do wish it would heat up a bit more here.
Offsetting that, though, is the natural beauty here, which can't be beaten (although I am sure is matched by many cities around the world, not including Taipei). No matter how dismal the weather, Wellington is exceptionally beautiful, whether it's the fog coming down over the hills, or the windswept sea with the Interislander ferry ploughing through the rough waters under grey skies. And there is also that bit - grey skies here are common, but not a paint name like Taipei Grey.
People: Moving back to a western country after so long away was hard for me. I didn't realise how much I had become "localised" in both positive and negative ways. It's funny how people always talk about the rudeness / forthrightness of the TWNese, but I found the curtness of Kiwis really jolting on arrival (and still haven't fully adjusted). I personally feel that a lot of the rudeness / racism etc we see in Taiwan is borne out of ignorance or just a lack of thought or concern for others (not excusing it), while in western countries people are intentionally blunt.
Lessons learned There are several things I have learned in making the move back to a western country that may be useful to other posters:
1) DON'T STAGNATE. If you are teaching "Aa Apple" five hours a day, your brain is shrinking! Add in Friday night drinks and things look even worse! Do something with that extra time you have (and there's a heck of a lot of it in Taiwan if you are English-teaching and choose to teach less than 30 hours a week). I was so bored after my first 6 months in Taiwan teaching 8 year-olds that I started studying just for stimulation. Five years later I had a second BA, in Economics and Chinese (sorry to say, much more Econ than Chinese!), without which changing careers would have been next to impossible.
Those of you who have been in Taiwan for three, four, five years and haven't progressed your skills, wake up and get moving! Study anything that will give you something to put on your CV other than teaching kids (unless that's your calling). Of course Chinese is a good thing to have, but it could be anything you could put to use back home - for most of us, that skill will not be English teaching.
Interviewers will look at those 3, 4, 5, 10 years in "Asia - you know, Thailand, Taiwan, whatever, same place isn't it" and wonder why you chose to smoke pot and hang out with prostitutes for a decade. Because that's what people in "Thailand" do, remember. If they can't see that you have used those years in some meaningful way, you're just wasting their time.
2) Do your h/work. I spent 100's if not 1,000's of hours researching work and life opps not only in NZ, but in particular cities and even subhurbs in NZ before I made the move. The result was that by the time I came over in October to visit family, I had narrowed our choice of home town down to 2 cities, and after 2 days trying to get through Auckland's Taipei-type traffic (and cruddy public tranport to boot), I had narrowed it down to 3 subhurbs in Wellington!
3) Time your move: Saying "I'm going to leave Taiwan in 2 years and 5 months" is a flawed plan, unless you know that you will be beginning a new round of studies or some pre-determined job at that time. If you are as clueless about the future as I was last year, you need to look at when the best time is to make the move. What time of year do most people look for / start new jobs (remember there may a substantial time lag between these two) and more importantly, does this country / state / city you are considering currently have a need for people with your skills? We moved to NZ at a time when they had the lowest unemployment rate in the OECD (3.5%; it's now 3.8%, still very low). To be honest, this was just fluke, because I didn't plan it. You might not be as lucky, so have a look at what the job market is doing in general.
It may be worth sticking at that very mediocre teaching job for another 8 months earning some cash until things swing up again in your home country / country of choice rather than sitting in Mom & Dad's house twiddling your thumbs, or worse, arriving in a new country with few job prospects.
4) Expect a long re-adjustment period (yes, yes, the "reverse culture shock" thing). Even now, I am still battling to get to grips with parts of life here that were part of the first 22+ years of my life but were absent for the last 6.5.eg. queueing for more than 3 minutes for anything; directness of people as discussed above; what standards of service to expect and demand etc.
Personally, I believe it is only a matter of time until
we are back in Asia. NZ is a fantastic place, and it is unlikely we will be going anywhere very soon, but at this stage in our lives there is more roaming left to be done. Heck, for the financial reasons laid out above and after buying a house last week, I calculated that on our old TWN salaries, we could've afforded our lifestyle there AND paid off the house just as quickly (ie paying rent and mortgage!), even without tenants renting our NZ house!
But it's much more than money, too. Asia gets in the blood of some of us, and getting it out ain't an easy thing to do. And I'm not sure it's something I
want to do.
