Living in Taiwan

Taiwan rocks!

I've been here since June last year and love it. I'm not here for the long-term, though, as my wife (a Taiwanese) and I are moving on to Australia soon.

Taiwan is China minus communism. People are entrepeneurial, hard working and resourceful. You can see this just by taking a walk around any city - life and business alive around every corner.

This in stark contrast from where I lived before, London and Rome, where the preoccupation about terrorism, regulations, 'best practice', etc... means that society is losing its dynamism.

Another thing that is very noticeable here is that kids are... kids. In London people are afraid of them... the 'hoodies'. Life in the UK has become so expensive and repressive that kids have nothing else to do but organise themselves into gangs and knife someone on a regular basis. OK, I'm exagerrating a bit, but you catch my drift.

I would say that Taiwan is a breath of fresh air for anyone wanting to escape the Western nonsense and explore a totally different culture.

I agree with what lozmatic said, and more.
Having lived in a wonderful town in western Canada for nearly forty years, many of my friends at home asked me why leave now.
The drug culture.
When I first arrived in Canada in the early 70s, folks smoked a little pot, and that was it.
Today, scum bags are pushing hard drugs to innocent kids in elementary schools, and our bleeding heart politicians are doing exactly the opposite of what should be done. They are building more and better facilities for the addicts, and often near schools and churches so that these drug crazed zombies do not feel being driven away from the mainstream society. Furthermore, there are now "needle exchanges" all over town. The welfare of these drug addicts now have precedence over the law abiding & clean living tax paying public.
Consuming and traffiking illegal drugs is well, illegal; and until these criminal perpetrators are punished accordingly, the problem can only get worse.
As a member of the society, I simply find this unacceptable, and the only solution is to leave such madness.
Taiwan is not totally drug free either, but the signs at the airport clearly suggests that importing and traffiking drugs is punishable by death. So far, I do not see any visible drug related issues in our community, and from talking to teachers, drugs are not tolerated and there are no problems in any levels of the school system here.

JC