u/komnenos

Not to mention odd design choices. I've stayed at hotels that have kid stickers plastered all over the side or a ceiling that to my horror was a VERY bright glow in the dark skyscape with hundreds of bright stars, dragons, spaceships and the moon. It was about as bright as having the lights on and as someone who can't go to sleep in a bright room I got no sleep. Who in the hell thought that was a good idea?

Start asking your boomer neighbors for their stories. It might be too late to talk to most of the 90+ crowd who lived through the colonial period but there are still heaps of people 60+ years old who lived a good portion of their lives through the KMT dictatorship.

You're welcome!

Also I'm not sure if you know this or not but you probably won't find good gigs posted on there until February or even March. That's because that will be when schools start looking for positions for the Fall of 2027. Right now the only positions you'll see for most reputable schools will be due to the need to fill a position due to an emergency.

Worked two China jobs and never used an agency.

First one was through Dave's ESL cafe.

Second one was through connections, I had a colleague/friend whose sister in law worked at another school in a better location and put me in touch with her.

I've met others who have made similar or worse mistakes and even then many of us will have a number of stories about a bumpy first year.

I disliked my first job but we had a tight group of foreign teachers and I was able to use my connections with them to find work at a better place. Any chance you could do the same?

Can I ask what hotels were like prior to covid? I moved here in 2021 and even shitty hole in the wall hotels can still be pretty pricy.

What time of year were you in Taiwan?

I kinda get it, during the seven to eight months of hellish heat having an uncovered window can really warm up a room.

But I also hate it. As someone who needs natural light to stay awake and likes seeing the outside it's frustrating how common it is to get on a bus, train, or plane and the first thing the person at the window does is close the window or curtain and start doom scrolling. Am I the only one who likes to look outside? Heck, Eva and Starlux have disabled the ability to undim the windows until the plane is landing every time I've flown with them. What the hell is the point of me buying a window seat if I can't look outside?

I find it interest how it seems that most buildings built post 2000 or so don't have bars but those built beforehand will have them.

How have you (or others) worked on their grip? I've gotten to the point where I can do a good number of pull ups and chin ups but every few times I do it one of my joints flares up.

As a history nerd who got interested in genealogy to help understand the history and place of my own family within the greater world it's always surprised me just how few people under... 60 seem to care about family history. I loved listening to tales from my grandparents and looking at old photos or piecing together family mysteries.

i.e. "was great grandpa REALLY his father's son or did the Swedish neighbor have an affair with my great great grandma while her husband was serving jail time? Why was my great great great grandpa in an insane asylum (answer was probably that he was a civil war vet, lost a brother in the civil war and another brother to suicide)? Where DID my rare last name come from and mean? Who were my grandpa's birth parents and why did they put him up for adoption? I've got more questions every time I go on a search. But every time I go onto the genealogy forums it seems like everyone else is at least twice my age if not more.

I've witnessed at least several Taichung bus drivers break down, swearing, cursing and holding back tears with every read light.

In my experience the southeast Asians from Vietnam are THE best. I've lost count of the women who came over as wives and then ONLY speak Chinese with family. Also met heaps of Vietnamese in the service industry who speak better Chinese than 95% of the Western foreigners I've met. Other southeast Asians come close but there just seems to be something about the Vietnamese that makes it easier for them to pick up the language.

After the southeast Asians in my experience everyone else is similar, maybe Koreans and Japanese? The languages are similarish.

What do you mean by South Africans? Like they CAN speak more Chinese? Sadly in my experience it's more of the same whether Black, White, or Coloured. I've met hundreds over my 7.5 years between Taiwan and China and only a few have spoken more than A1 Chinese. Heck I've known several who have said "I already Speak Afrikaans, English, and (insert African language), why would I want to learn another bloody tongue?"

Americans tend to rate themselves higher than their ability actually bears witness to.

Ha, that might be me. I just say I'm intermediate, curious what your experience has been with Americans. Sometimes I surprise myself by what I can understand and can convey, other times the opposite. I've met so few non southeast Asian foreigners who speak Chinese that I'm honestly surprised at those who can speak more than canned phrases and survival words to care on assessing their true ability.

Would it be okay to ask what sort of work you are in? I've gradually eased myself into academia and have found that being at least lower advanced seems to be the norm in the humanities but besides this tiny sliver of non southeast Asian foreigners the only other folks I can think of who would need to be as proficient in Chinese are literal translators or interpreters.

These are all just my experiences, I'd love to hear yours. Again I've found it pretty depressing how few foreigners care to learn more than beginner Chinese so it's a bit cool that their are some like you who somehow have had a completely different experience.

When was your mom born? I believe you 100% but I've read a number of accounts from 1895-1910 or so that were particularly brutal. Though I think things very much settled down afterwards and Taiwanese have a number of reasons to be nostalgic for the later colonial regime.

Hell, I've met older folks in their 60s and 70s who witnessed or were told by those of their parents' generation where the KMT would kill dessenters or sink their bodies.

i.e. I once had a chat with an old local next to a nice park in Taichung and he told me that he remembered seeing and hearing the KMT torture and murder people just a few meters from where we were chatting.. This man was probably 70-80 or so and the events he witnessed are still in living memory. I wonder how many memories people of his generation have of their parents or grandparents with the Japanese massacres of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Yeah, I've read a number of reports by Taiwanese/Chinese and missionaries of the years between 1895-1910 and it seemed like there were a good series of revolts, massacres, protests and the like for years on end before things died down. Curious if anyone has any reading selections for the years 1910-'45 but it does seem like things simmered down.

Hot dang, Seattleite born and raised with family on Orcas and that is one fact I don't think most here know!

Heck, I'd extend that to all colors and creeds, most non southeast Asian foreigners I've met in Taiwan speak little or no Chinese. On the other hand I hear Vietnamese accented Chinese quite often from different service workers and something like 1/4th of my Taiwanese students have a Vietnamese mom who only uses Chinese with their kids.

Right there with you. Going from being a language student at NCKU to being a public school foreign teacher was a MASSIVE change. I went from being the guy who struggled and ground their way through months of classes only to barely pass to being the one with the highest Chinese ability in the room by a big margin. And my Chinese is shit.

Most foreigners I met in the teaching program and out and about (engineers, marketing, business, banking, etc.) just didn't care and many lived in little foreigner bubbles only going to foreigner friendly restaurants or bars. Even more so in Taipei.

It was a weird experience because in Taipei every foreign man and his dog speaks reasonably fluent Chinese.

Damn, I wish I had the same impression.

After 4.5 years in Taiwan the foreigners I've found who speak the least Chinese are in Taipei but overall their level is more or less what I found across the island. The overwhelming majority of foreigners I've met just don't care. I've been stuck in a B1-B2 hell forever and most non southeast Asian foreigners I've met speak miserably little Chinese. Teachers, engineers, even guys who opened local businesses despite them all living in Taiwan 10+ years speak little to none.

As someone with learning difficulties who learns Chinese regardless and has seen how much of a positive impact it has had on my life it's jarring how many long term foreigners (like 90% if not more) don't care.

Again, I wish I had the same experience as you.

Edit: corrected a word

Huh, have things changed that much since I left Beijing in 2019? I lived there from '15-'19 and taxi drivers would chatter non stop once I so much as said 你好.

yes. although there’s a lot of white folks in china, so it’s not as unheard of anymore. it’s a hard language.

Eh, even then from my experience living in Beijing it was still rare when I lived there circa 2015-19. Only met a few folks over the years who spoke Chinese beyond the most basic small talk and even thats pushing it. Same in Taiwan. Most people in my experience just don't put any effort in or give up after the first hurdles very early on.

Not only tourists. After three years in Beijing and four and a half in Taiwan I feel like most long termers speak at an A1 level if that. I'm always pleasantly surprised when I meet another non southeast Asian foreigner who is in B1-B2 hell like me or has transcended to some level of real fluency.

I still remember my first crowd. A few friends and I went to Zhengzhou to see if it was as bad as they said and were pleasantly surprised by how friendly everyone was. At one park an older man in a wheelchair wheeled up to us and hit me with the classic 你會說中文嗎？After an emphatic 我們會說中文 he let out an "aiyou!" got whobbled out of his wheelchair, shook our hands and offered us cigarettes.

Slowly a crowd of 10-20 formed around us and the old man, when I said 中不中 people literally clapped and the grandpa almost started wheeping with surprise. A bunch of people took our wechat numbers and I still get life updates from the random 鄭州人 I met that day.

Have you listened to both? My gf is Taiwanese 四縣 Hakka fluent in the language and anecdotally can understand Cantonese far more than Taiwanese only fluent in Mandarin and Taiwanese.