This post is actually in defense of us. Many many Taiwanese people are kind, friendly, and welcoming. There are those who resent expat teachers. I have my own experience, and I have seen sentiments posted on other blogs. The people who I would like to see this probably never will, but I feel like putting it out there anyway.
I work for a public elementary school, and there are lots of little marks of disrespect and distrust from our employers. It’s subtle, but real. We are denied use of facilities (not for private Weigouren-only orgies, but for teaching our Taiwanese students). We are almost always in the dark about schedule changes until the last minute. I am personally given very little support for classroom management issues.
When we try to get a situation fixed (like getting more than one usable printer/computer combo in an office designed to support 20 teachers) we get no results, yet are later told in a meeting that we need to communicate our needs. There are a lot of disheartening and discouraging cultural misunderstandings. Here in Yunlin County, the onus is more or less entirely on us to bridge the cultural gap. To some extent that’s fair, we’re guests in someone else’s home.
But the guest in someone else’s home analogy only goes so far, because we are not just lounging around being entertained; we work. We pay taxes. We spend money locally. I was looking at some comments on a post about a Canadian who got busted for dealing pot. The westerners who commented had a less serious attitude about the infraction– the man wasn’t Pablo Escobar. One of the Asian posters in particular went on a rant about dirty, scumbag westerners cashing in on Taiwan merely for doing something they could easily do– speak their native language.
Well, there is that. Models get paid for being really beautiful; they had the good luck of having hit the genetic lottery. We get paid for having hit the born-in-an-Anglophone-country lottery. They also get paid for not eating and standing in freezing weather wearing bathing suits. We get paid in part for leaving everyone we know and giving up the comforts of home. In both examples, one could say “well if you don’t like it, no one forced you, don’t do it.” Well, sure, but like models, we’re supplying a service that someone wants to pay for, and if people didn’t pay other people to teach English in Taiwan, there wouldn’t be enough people willing to do it. The “if you don’t like it, no one forced you to do it” argument can be applied to every person ever in the history of mankind who had any complaint about his or her job ever.
Additionally, we do actually work. It’s not like we just show up and shoot the breeze with our students. Is finding lots of songs about the days of the week the world’s most difficult or taxing problem to solve? No. Do I have to do whether I feel like it or not? Yes. Would I do it for free? No. So it’s work. I also had to earn at least one college degree to get this job, and in point of fact, have two and many years’ teaching experience. So no, I’m not here draining Taiwan of its resources doing work that a Taiwanese person could do just as well. I have never met a Taiwanese person who can speak English better than me, and I’d bet the ranch that they are rare on the ground if they do exist, assuming they would want to teach ESL to children.
Now I’m not going to lie, we do have it easier than our Taiwanese counterparts in a lot of ways. Most of us don’t really speak Mandarin well or at all, and living in Yunlin County, very few people speak English, so it’s harder to drag us into weird work place politics and it’s harder to use the subtle shaming and hinting that is used a social discipline when everyone is from the same culture. I think we make more, but we also aren’t on track for a pension, so I’m not sure how the finances fall out.
Here’s where our Taiwanese counterparts (especially in rural places like Yunlin County) have a distinct advantage– they know how to get shit done. This goes beyond just knowing the language. I was talking to one of my Taiwanese co-teachers, who is very sophisticated and earned her master’s degree at a UK university, and asking her where I could find someone to move all the boxes out of my kitchen (my land lady never got around to clearing them out). She thought for a minute and said “I don’t know, I guess I’d just ask my friends for help.” I have some friends. I have three friends. They aren’t going to help me move boxes. I wanted to find a paint store in Beigang. There’s no Yelp; most businesses aren’t online. To get anything, you have to find someone in the know and hope that they are willing to fill you in. Do they withhold information to be evil? No, they just forget to find out; it’s not their problem, so it easily slips their mind. We all understand that, but if you’re the person in need, it gets frustrating. The language barrier issue doesn’t even kick in until several steps into the problem solving process.
Westerners in my demographic are not used to relying on networks of friends and family past a certain age, and even if we were, how long does it take to generate those? I belong to the nomadic middle class, where we move for the job and have to start from scratch in a new place periodically. Obviously I’m not alone, because America is quite well set-up to cater to our needs. Rural Taiwan (and probably rural many places) is simply not oriented the same way. I’m not really attacking my Taiwanese acquaintances for being unhelpful; they have their own lives to run. But in a place like Yunlin, where very few people spend any amount of time overseas, virtually no one recognizes how problematic and stressful that is for us.
So if there were one thing I would want my bosses and coworkers to really understand, it’s what it’s like to be stymied for weeks over the problem of how to get a bunch of boxes out of your kitchen, or how to figure out how to get a flat pack futon up three flights of stairs. I’ve been asking around for a general handy man for three weeks now and I’m no closer to finding one than when I started. Unlike Midwestern America, there aren’t Taiwanese teens around looking for pocket money doing odd jobs. I will continue to work on this problem, and so far, the times when I have solved a problem it has been through word of mouth and asking around. If you are shy or have a hang-up about asking for help (that would be me), you will have some moments of discomfort here. That’s why so many expats cluster around cities; they form networks of their own, which are useful for day-to-day living.
Yet another expat's blog about Taiwan 