Hey, so I don’t know if you intended to use He Zi’s first name throughout the piece, but her surname is He, not Zi. That’s how Chinese names are ordered. (As far as I know the surname ‘Zi’ does not exist in the limited repertoire of Chinese surnames, but I could be wrong).

Also her fiance’s name is Qin Kai (surname…

Well, something we can’t prove he did. It’s not clear that he didn’t do it, only that we don’t know if he did.

Did he do it? I dunno. Should he have gone to jail on the basis of that trial? No.

Except I’ve read the Bible (back when I was Christian, I’m not now), and Jesus doesn’t say anything about gender roles or who should do what in the home. Leave Christ out of your sexism.

Okay but the Property Brothers are hot. So.

The cost of real estate has skyrocketed in Taipei and a few other areas (Zhubei especially), otherwise, no, if you don’t go for fancy Western imported goods it’s about 1/3 to 2/3 as expensive as the USA. That said, pay is accordingly lower.

It is not a great place to go for a career, because working conditions in…

BTW, I teach English here at the professional level (some corporate training, some examining, no cram schools). I have permanent residency so I can basically do what I like, but I don’t want to change careers.

I don’t know exactly what brought me. I had spent a year in China and knew I wanted to continue learning…

The 2014 movements were a convergence of several factors:

1.) an increasing feeling that the KMT and the Ma administration were getting too close to China for comfort, trusting a regime that ought not to be trusted and does NOT care about Taiwan’s best interests - the opposite actually - with the Ma administration…

Utility bills are not higher than the US - if anything they are far lower, lower than they should be (government officials have lots of friends in the state run utilities companies though I have to say the state does a pretty good job - all this American fearmongering about governments doing a worse job than private…

Things are really changing! Kaohsiung now has a real Western food scene, and Tainan is where all the cool kids are moving because of the better weather, slower pace of life, cheaper rents and local culture that is a bit more friendly to bohemian types. So a lot of aspiring cafe owners, artists and ‘digital nomad’…

A useless language?? 講三小！！

It is not widely spoken in the world but it carries the weight of an entire nation’s history. There is a reason the KMT tried to stamp it (and Hakka, and the aboriginal languages) out - because their brand of “you are all Chinese and you must accept that you are Chinese and an inalienable…

We are working to fix things (I’m a member of this group but not really as involved as I should be):

Yeah no, students ask questions that require advanced knowledge all the time, and I suppose sometimes you can put them off with “that’s really not something you need to worry about right now” but after a not-terribly-long time they will start to rightly suspect your incompetence and lose respect for you

As an English teacher (a professional one - I have a degree in it, not a backpacker though it’s funny and speaks ill of my field that I have to clarify that) I would say yes...but. You need BOTH a detailed knowledge of the subject matter *and* know how to teach it. You really need both. If anything it’s harder to do…

A better choice would have been someone with either a degree in Education with a concentration in Math or someone who majored in Math in college and then got a teaching license/MEd. Knowing how to teach is half the battle (of course you also have to know the subject matter, but...)

There is a very real problem of native speakerism in the language teaching world, unfortunately. A lot of people assume that the only good language teachers are native speakers of that language, which is simply not the case.

This headline does not mean what it sounds like it means.

Which is kind of nuts, not everyone *can* get a job at their level of training. Sometimes they’re just mediocre or bad at what they do, sometimes the employment opportunities are simply not there. It’s not fair to ask a doctor to make doctor-level money when the hospital is not hiring and there are no other jobs in…

As a long time resident of Asia, I can confirm that this is 100% correct. Flying in Asia (and the Middle East) is awesome. Free booze, good airports with free wifi, the food isn’t terrible and the crews are nice.

Flying in the US sucks skanky AIDS balls. Sometimes you land from an international flight and there isn’t…

Lottery tickets seem like a dumb bet until you are in such a position that you’ll take any odds for a chance of getting out of where you’re stuck.

If you’re buying staples at a convenience store you may not have a car to get to the grocery store (or you have to choose between gas and food and you’re all out of both),…

“Japan, Korea, China and beyond” - so basically you list every country in East Asia *except* Taiwan? Or does Taiwan get subsumed into “beyond” because it doesn’t rate?

It clearly can’t be subsumed into China because it’s not a part of China.

So what gives?

Kinda sick of being ignored over here even though, like, half…