Are You Fit for Taitung?

If waiting 97 seconds at a stop light on your scooter on Zhonghshan Road in Taipei, to wait 90 more seconds just to complete your three-point left hand turn, has ever triggered your teacher voice inside your head to go,

" You can do better  ______ /<--- (Insert name of defeated Ex-pat soul here)."  

Your soul may be inter-locked with thousands of other frustrated English teachers on this island.

 Let's talk about other options for living in Taiwan if you don't want to be like your fellow Expats who do nothing about rotting their souls away at stop lights under skies that make the Shanghai skyline look blue.

With air quality always in the green, secret surfing coves around every corner, and virtually unexplored hot springs and waterfalls, any vacationer can easily fall in love with Taitung; situated along Taiwan's stunning east coast. Vacationing in Taitung and living in Taitung are two different animals of course.

My experience of living in Taitung taught me that I probably should have asked myself these questions before heading to Taitung on a whim last winter.


1.) How resourceful are you?- Have you ever written something like this on the FB group Taiwan English Teacher Job Openings, "I'm looking for a job. Any leads?" If so, you probably aren't the most resourceful person. You need to be on top of your game in Taitung if you want to find work.  In a place where you can go chill at a waterfall for an hour on your lunch break, jobs aren't going to come oozing out of a cup, and into your lap. You need to effectively manage all of your resources by at least having the following ready for disposal; updated CV, pictures of you teaching students, teaching demo videos, bullet point lists of your most valuable teaching skills,  Once, this is all organized and you have already Googled buxibans in Taitung in both English and Chinese, you are then free to start online networking with people looking for additional assistance for securing work.  Use this same mind-set before you go online and ask a question like, "Are there any jobs in Taitung?"

2.)  Do you like nature as much as your Tinder profile says you do? - Nothing attracts a guy more than  pictures of a girl on Tinder doing something that he enjoys.  Personally, I enjoy hiking, cycling, and anything outdoors. So, if I see a picture of a girl on top of a mountain, that is going to instantly get my attention.  Unfortunately, girls have been informed of this not-so secret fetish men have for girls that enjoy doing similar activities. You don't have to be working for the LA homicide  detective department to figure out that some girls may snap a selfie at the top of a mountain that they ascended via their brother's car. Then, they update their Tinder profile pic with the tag line,  " I'm an outdoorsy kind of girl."  Guys are just as guilty. Guys know that girls  tend to have an infatuation with the idea of their man ruffing it out in the woods for weeks at a time while growing a beard.  If you just threw up those waterfall shots on Tinder in a desperate plea to catch the babes, you may want to reconsider moving to Taitung. You will find yourself with way too much time on your hands if you can't sit under a tree with a bag of chips and a beer for an hour while listening to the river crash against the rocks.

3.) How is your patience with uneducated people?  Does dealing with somebody with a case of the stupids make you bat-shit crazy? Taitung City may be a little bit different from where I lived. The name of the village I lived was Zhiben, which I aptly called, "Hen Bun," as in the word for very stupid in Mandarin.  The village consisted mostly of old farmers that were not well-educated. To be fair, they were some of the nicest people you could ever meet.  However, if you have to buy fruit from them once, or deal with them on a daily basis, you will experience a great variance in patience levels.

For evidence,  I couldn't even make this story up if I tried.  When I moved from Taitung to Douliou, I walked into a shop that transports your scooter to different cities. I told the worker that I needed to have my scooter sent to Douliou, a city on Taiwan's uglier west coast. She proceeded to tell me in Mandarin that she didn't know how to read Mandarin, and asked me if I could help HER.  That's kind of like if you go to pay your bill at a restaurant, and the clerk says, " Uh, I don't know how to use our computer. Any chance you can ring this up for me?" I couldn't believe it.

4.) Do you surf? The surfer community here is the raddest, the sickest, the bruhest. No, seriously. I have nothing but respect for the surfers around there; the same respect that they treated this 39 year old newbie to the waves with. The hiking, cycling, waterfalls, and hot springs are everywhere around Taitung. However,  you will eventually get sick of the same trails; so you should take up a new hobby if you don't already surf.

5.) Do you have hobbies?- Another Hen Bun/ Taitung story I could not make up. I walked into the laundromat at 5 a.m. I heard a raucous outside the laundromat. People were shouting at an ox that had came up onto the road from his usual resting spot under the highway.  With more time on my hands than I could imagine, I started a blog that day about the Taitung Ox. My house was already filled with painted rocks. My walls were filled with my comedy set cartooned and colored inside the house also. You really need to find a lot of  hobbies if you want to live in Taitung.

6.) Do you like socializing with Taiwanese people? - At one point , my co-worker and I nearly counted the foreigners in Taitung on one hand. So, the social events are few and far between. If you don't particularly like hanging out with Taiwanese people, this can be a major drawback.  I would trust Taiwanese people with my wallet.  I still find their lives to be robotic;  study, find a job, find a wife, have kids, and die; while occasionally mumbling three things: that's too dangerous,that's not convenient, it's too hot.