Sincere post

[Simon]

Wow guys interesting opinions!

If any one is going to Taiwan I found TEALIT.com that was recommended on EF previously really helpful for all the practical stuff.

For anyone that is in Taiwan now I am going to be in Yangmei in Taoyuan County does anyone know of any good teachers nearby? or is it a commute to Taipei?

Thanks.

Simon

[Buddy]

Luo Dexiu is in Taipei.

[Formosa Neijia]

the food in taiwan sucks arse, don't listen to ed. Mike's on the ball re the degree/ESL situation. without a degree (in anything) in taiwan you can still find work but can't get a proper visa so you have to leave the country once a month which sucks, and all the employers will screw you around.

taiwan might be "easier" to live than mainland china....but it's also pretty lame compared to the mainland. it's less exotic or exciting or something - the mainland is fucked up, the mass brainwashing and ignorance and fear and mistrust throughout the society, but at least that kind of makes things interesting? taiwan is super boring, people's idea of fun is walking really slowly and annoyingly through a crowded night market. also it's much more expensive than china.

lots of people seem to like it here though so you might be one of them. the training is good, anyway.

This made me laugh. I feel guilty now for not taking you to some good restaurants. My fault.

The food here (Taiwan) is great. Better than any place I've ever seen. But you have to be able to read menus and must have been here a while to know the best places. Still, even the street food is good and it's pretty safe. Even eating out of 7-11 when I first got here, I only got sick like twice. Consider how often you've had the runs after eating at Taco Bell and you'll see that's not too bad.

Taiwan is easier to live in than the mainland, if what I hear about "over there" is true. But it's also more expensive here. You will pay for convenience. But you can make life very comfortable here if you want.

As for boring, Taiwan is as exciting as you want to make it. If you get out and travel around, meet new people, and generally get involved then it can be a pretty exciting place to live.

If you're sold on doing nothing but xingyi, I would advise you that Taipei has some really good xingyi players, but not too many. So there's no xingyi "scene" here, if you get what I mean. If you want to be in the xingyi capital of the world, Taipei probably isn't for you.

I've been here almost 9 years now and as you can tell from the advice, some people love each place and some hate it with a lot of opinions in between. Where you fall in that spectrum will depend on many factors that only you know about (and many that you aren't aware of yet). My advice is buy cheap tickets to both and try them out for a month. Then choose.

If you want help finding a teacher, my Martial Artist's Guide to Taipei will really help you out: http://formosaneijia.com/my_products/

Good luck.

[wuwei]

Yes I still think that everything about Shanxi and Taiwan is so different that it is a no brainer to decide which you prefer once you spend a trip to both places.

[CaliG]

There are also a lot of other cities in China/Asia that have some good CMAl.

I am a native american and know english very well and thought about teach english. Not sure considering I don't have a degree.

Tim, Mike Strong's right it'd be hard to get a job in Taipei or get a working visa without a degree. Of course that doesn't mean that's impossible but it would probably be awhile before you were happy with your work situation.

Although if you have blond hair and blues eyes it would be easier, because in Taiwan that's what they think an ESL teacher should look like (just as some people seeking to learn CMA think their teacher should be Chinese).

On the other hand it is harder to find work in Taiwan for those who don't fit that mold. We may not like it but that's how it is.

I had a few years of experience teaching in China and in Europe, while my wife (then girlfriend at the time) had some experience. We both applied for summer jobs in Taiwan with our pictures included and they agreed to hire her but never got back to me. She's European and I am made up of other stuff.

But in the mainland we didn't have this problem. With a population of 1.3 billion they need ESL teachers where ever they can find them, so my face wasn't an issue there.

Btw, http://www.tefl.com is a good place to find work. Also http://www.buxiban.com if it is still up.

[bailewen]

With 12k saved up, he could go to Shanxi for a good 2-3 years and be completely free of the burden of getting a job.

You can get around the visa issue by going to HK first. In HK you can get a 6 month tourist visa. What most people do is leave the country briefly every 6 months to someplace cheap and fun like Thailand. That will cut into your 3 year budget so maybe only 2 years if you consider the expense of leaving the mainland briefly every 6 months for either Hong Kong or Thailand. I think that getting a part time teaching job is the way to go though. Get youself a TEFL cert. You can do it online. I did. It cost me about $300 and about 6 weeks of study. With the cert you can get a teaching job. Since you don't need the money and won't make much anyways, your contractual negotiations should center mainly around keeping your teaching hours down, say only 12 hours a week or something. At that level, the social life will be a bonus and it will be good to have friends and even a few connections. If you want good relations you will do better with a public school. The general pattern is that public schools pay like crap but treat you really well. Private schools pay better but treat you like crap. They often expect you to work through the summer or even spring vacations and sometimes weekends etc. Public schools are generally just so glad to have you that they will be much more flexible about scheduling. They give you 6 weeks off in summer and again in winter/spring. . . they just don't pay much but you don't need the money. You need the visa.

The other thing about getting hooked up with a school is the way it gives your life some structure when you are just landing in a new country which reminds me of another, possibly far better option than a work visa. Shanxi is cheap, even for China. You should go as a student. Find a language school. That's actually what I did my first couple years. I had Chinese classed M-F from 8am till noon in a class filled with other non-English speaking foreigners. (Koreans, Japanese, a handful of Europeans and maybe 1 or 2 other English speakers in the class). My tuition was about $900/year. They provided my visa, a place to get sanitary food and a reasonable social life. Doesn't sound like much but when taking the leap to a developing country (Shanxi is not like Beijing) it really counts for a lot.

Good luck and have fun.

If you ever decide you want to learn Baji, drop by Xi'an sometime.

[TimHml]

Thank you for in information guys. I have 9 months to make this decision because that is when my leas is up so that will give me enough to travel to both places to make sure this is what I want to do.

Thank you.

[Buddy]

For the mainland guys, I have a good idea what he could get from my teacher in 3 years, a fair amount, but Luo is pretty open. Is it the same on the mainland? Certainly they seem much more open in the past for sincere learners, but will he have to one or two jibengong for a couple of years first?

[edededed]

I do think that teachers in Taiwan may be more open in general, but of course everyone will have different experiences.

Tim:

Let us know how you do!

[Michael]

Great info. from Omar, but AFAIK, if you have a USA passport and get a non-work visa in HK or elsewhere for the Chinese mainland, it will have the requirement that you leave the mainland every 30 days. Now if you're from Australia, France, Canada, or some other country that isn't playing tit-for-tat games with China, that requirement to leave the country and get your passport stamped every 30 days doesn't exist. Some visa info

Also, visa situations can change at the drop of a hat. There were all sorts of restrictions imposed in 2008 from Jan. 1 until the end of the olympics.

[bailewen]

That's the rule but the last time I went to HK I just paid a small extra fee and my hotel front desk produced a 6 month tourist visa for me in about 3 days. It only cost me like and extra 50 bucks or so. This was back in 2001.

[Michael]

The PRC govt. began making Americans do the 30 day passport stamping in 2005.

Let me add that you can certainly get teaching jobs in mainland China without any credentials whatsoever; the only true requirement is to be a native English speaker. Bachelor's degrees give more opportunities and Omar's idea about getting the TEFL is excellent, but there are plenty of outfits I know of in Guangzhou that will hire people without credentials and arrange proper work visas for them.

[bailewen]

That's another thing that they started cracking down on though. Right around 2006 or so the govt started cracking down on uncredentialed teachers. That's when and why I got my cert. Suddenly my school wanted to see a degree (which I don't have) They (the govt, not my school) got sick of all the uneducated teachers there. Lots of them didn't weren't (probably still aren't) even native speakers of English themselves.

[edededed]

That's the main problem (for them) - how to know if one is really a native speaker or not? For most people there, they just don't know.

[kreese]

We should have an Taipei EF meetup so Dave C. can show us all of this good food. And being the senior member, he is expected to pay. That's what my Rough Guide to Taiwan told me, anyhow...