TWENTY-TWO: The Truth About Taiwan

 Special to the Kemptville Advance

August 2004

Most Canadians come to Taiwan to make money. That is a fact. A few have come to experience the Chinese culture and to study the language, but most are here to take advantage of the opportunity to make a good income.

Many come to Taiwan immediately after completing university, as a means of paying off their student loans. Others have come because they had difficulty finding work in Canada for one reason or another.

Still others are here with the hopes of saving up a nest egg for their retirement years.  They work as English teachers, editors, translators, engineers, in private business and the entertainment industry. They make considerably more money than they do at home. Some will learn the language, assimilate comfortably into the culture, and never leave. Some will fall in love with an Asian native, put down roots and start a family.

I have learned, however, that it is next to impossible to make the amount of money that Teach and Travel promoters claim you can earn. The TESOL (Teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages) course that I took in preparation for this journey claimed that I could make $2,300 Canadian per month, teaching 30 hours per week, with an additional private tutoring opportunity of about $3,000 Canadian per month. You do the math. That is a heck of a lot of money considering the cost of living is quoted at $500 Canadian per person per month for accommodations and food.

Let me tell you right now that the only way this magic trick can be accomplished is with an extraordinary amount of overtime, self sacrifice, and a certain amount of illegal activity.

You can live on $500 Canadian per month in Taiwan if you eat nothing but local food every day (I’m talking about over-cooked veggies soaked in oil, undercooked meat, noodles and rice - period) and rent an overcrowded, under-serviced apartment that you share with several other people.

You must risk your life on the streets of Taipei in a scooter or become a victim of the overcrowded, disorganized public transit system. Essentially, you will give up your social life except for the occasional pizza (on cheap night) and beers from the local 7-11. Going out for a night on the town will be pretty pricey with cover charges of $12 to $40 dollars per person and drinks at about $7 to $12 each.

Western-style restaurants are very expensive and cooking at home can break the budget also.

I have known people during my time here who have managed to save an impressive amount of money but they practically killed themselves doing it. Many say they would never do it again, and they would not recommend this experience to their friends, despite the earning opportunity.

I have not saved any money during my time in Taiwan. Work schedules have been difficult to maintain during the SARS era and the hand-and-mouth virus scare.

Any extra money that I had went to trips home. But let me find the silver lining in this experience. I have gained many things that one cannot put a price on.

For months I have been writing in a negative vein about my time here in Taiwan. I should point out that there is always something of value to be learned through immersing yourself in another culture, particularly one that is so completely different from your own. You learn about all the astonishingly different ways that people can live and think and behave. And you learn the ways in which we are all the same.

Children are the same the world over with their yet-to-be-molded personalities and characters. Working with them always brings a smile to my face and allows me the freedom to be a bit of a child myself. It is a mental challenge of an altogether different kind, to teach a roomful of children of another culture.

Being several light years away from one’s home has an amazing way of putting things into perspective.

You begin to realize that the things you thought were important don’t amount to a hill o’ beans and those things you took for granted become incredibly precious. I have learned that some memories have smells.

Like the time I woke up dreaming of the smell of my daughter’s freshly washed hair. And the time, last spring, that I realized I missed the smell of tulips pushing their heads through damp earth. Green has a smell.

Meeting expats in Taiwan from many other countries has also taught me a thing or two. For example, it is true that Canadians are received as some of the friendliest and most polite people in the world when we are traveling overseas. But, like the Americans, we tend to think that the world somehow revolves around us. Just because the Taiwanese embrace and celebrate Western culture and all things North American - from food to music to fashion - doesn’t mean that they know who Sarah McLachlan is in Australia. Their loss.

 And I have discovered that it is possible to have perfectly content children with no mention of Christmas or Halloween, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. I am humbled and hushed. All falls into perspective from this distance.

I don’t know how much longer I will choose to stay in this foreign country. But it hasn’t been all bad. As a result of some of these eye-opening incidents, I have met some real-life angels. And I am forever changed in both big and small ways through the experience.

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