#3. convenience stores... esp the onigiri. and the hot tea... you cant get decent hot tea anywhere in the us!! you can't

[zhuhongs]

i'm thinking of moving to taiwan after college, how has it been treating you? a lot of people i know who did move to taiwan only talk about how hard the language is (even if they're taiwanese 🥲) but i wanna now how like, your everyday life is!

oooo, that sounds so exciting, wherever you end up i hope you enjoy it! But yea, so I live just outside of Taipei in New Taipei but New Taipei is actually huge and there are many parts of New taipei that are like super far from Taipei proper and are pretty hard to live in without a having a scooter or car. I'm assuming you've been to taiwan before if you think you want to move there but ya never know! I tbh knew very little abt taiwan before coming here but yea. Just giving you an idea of where I live and that i can't speak for all of Taiwan, just my area thats just outside of taipei but still served by their metro system (which is honestly super dope, shout out to the MRT).

So like I overall love living here sm, I'd love to live here someday for work or smth and not just studying abroad. The transportation is amazing, the nature is. so lovely. Like tbh no matter where I am in the city I am no more than 10 km away from the river or the mountains and everything is so green and nice. However in order to be so green all the time, taipei is very rainy and very humid. Legit my hair was such a nightmare when i got here, if you are from a dry climate, you will notice so many changes. Like my skin is rlly nice bc of the moisture, but my hair was unmanageable so i chopped it off. But I also have was less allergies now. If youre originally from a humid climate it should be nbd.

My daily life is honestly pretty easy. I live in a dorm so I didn't have to deal with things like speaking to a landlord or finding someone who would rent to me, or having to deal with utility bills, or dealing with the semi confusing garbage disposal system. But, I do know ppl that did have to do these things and speak way less chinese than I do and were just fine. Honestly, ppl say that you can live in the Taipei area without speaking chinese and be just fine bc most ppl speak english. Tbh idk how anyone does that, I rarely speak to anyone in english here but I think thats bc I always try speaking chinese first. Most people can speak a decent amount but unless you speak to them in english first theyll speak in chinese. I feel like most things you can learn just by living your daily life and learning high frequency words and when all else fails use google translate. But honestly, my life is very easy and pleasant. If I'm hungry I can easily go to a food stall or grocery store or convenience store near where I live. If I really don't want to leave the house, I can order food with a reasonable delivery fee (well reasonable to me, ik food prices are going up here).

Personally, I find that making friends here is pretty hard, but I'm not a very social person and find it hard to start conversations with ppl idk, and most taiwanese people don't talk to you if you don't talk to them, so this might be hard. But I feel like everyone is very friendly for the most part its just kinda finding the chances to make friends is rare if you aren't working or going to classes or know someone here already.

But overall yea no taiwan is a great place to live, there's a lot of things I'm gonna miss abt taiwan when i go home but somethings in my home country are hard to find here. Some of the traditional taiwanese food isn't bad, but not like my cup of tea, but you can find a lot here. It's just that most like foreign cuisine is more expensive or geared towards the locals so its not very authentic. I def miss hispanic food and some foods are hard to recreate here bc of lack of ingredients but taiwanese food is also very nice. Some dishes may look boring but are actually very good. I hope you like living in taiwan if you end up living here!

#this got rlly long so imma do a tldr of the things abt taiwan i'm gonna miss when i get home #1. the nature. the riverside parks... dude.... riding a bike by the river is like a hundred percent must do pasttime... i'm gonna miss it #so bad. #2. the beverages... are so good and so cheap... to get a decent fruit tea in the US is like 5 dollars. here it is 2 dollars and tastes #better.... like... omg... gonnamiss the beverages #3. convenience stores... esp the onigiri. and the hot tea... you cant get decent hot tea anywhere in the us!! you can't #its always iced and sugary or if it is hot its overseeped and disgusting #4. food stands. the convenience of it all. also like. no one sells diguaqiu near me in the us... imma miss those. and the #scallion pancake stall near my house. and oa tsian/hezi jian #5. the transportation... i hate car dominated communites... everything needs to be walkable... #asks #anon