Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) handed me a Bullshit Gazette today

I was sitting at a picnic table in central Da'an trying to enjoy the balmy weather and a mediocre latte earlier today when I was approached by Legislator Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) -- not someone working for him, but Lo himself. He was handing out "newsletters" that, when folded, looked like a newspaper.

Beyond the top third, however, the rest was just generic campaign pap to make Lo look good. I mean, it's mostly nonsense, but it's also nothing we haven't seen before. It's the least interesting thing about Lo's weird fake newspaper and I don't have much to say about it. This Threads post critiques it if you're curious. Some of it is typical district stuff (budgets, social housing, helping the elderly), and some of it is playing up his worst acts as legislator as though they're praiseworthy achievements.

I almost threw the thing in the trash where it belongs, but the fake newspaper caught my eye. Why this design choice? It came with a real article, although the print was so small that it was almost impossible to read. I doubt any of the older people he was handing it to bothered to try. 

But first, a bit about the recalls.

Lo isn't running for re-election yet, but he is facing a recall campaign that has real momentum. Of course, the Bullshit Gazette failed to directly address this. The fact that he walked around in person to hand these things out in solidly KMT-voting Da'an, in a neighborhood where he should be very popular, indicates that he's worried that against all odds, the recall might actually succeed. 

While not particularly likely, it's also not impossible. Activists running the recall campaigns have achieved surprisingly strong results even in the deepest blue KMT strongholds -- including the public housing complex where I was enjoying my coffee.

Even KMT-affiliated pollsters find that the right to recall is popular, and Lo is frequently attacked for unprofessionalism, a lack of substance and prioritizing influencer-like drama over real policy chops. Here's an example: during a questioning session with the chairman of the National Communications Commission (NCC), he screams "do you know what question I want to ask?" and when the chairman responds that he doesn't, he screams "get off the stage!" repeatedly, like a bratty toddler who needs a nap. Apparently, he shouted for 19 full seconds. The Bullshit Gazette mentions his participation in questioning sessions, but not the temper tantrums.

One of his biggest platforms is something he calls "media freedom" (my words, not his), but is entirely limited to fighting for the resumption of CTiTV (中天), a pro-China news network that lost its license over repeated violations, including taking editorial direction from the CCP via pro-China businessperson Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明). CTiTV still has a Youtube presence.

This person in a T-rex costume holding a "recall Lo Chih-chiang" sign looks more professional than that. I'm also a fan of this diss track, though it doesn't have many views.

And that's not even getting into accusations that he's in deep with the CCP, like all of the KMT legislators targeted for recall. He served under Ma Ying-jeou, resigning over the judicial interference kerfuffle with Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘). He tried to run for the presidency, and two city mayorships but the KMT, seeing him as a weak candidate, pushed him aside. He spent awhile in the Taipei city council before running in a district where it would be difficult to lose.

Now, between screaming at the NCC chair and fighting to keep the death penalty, he spends quite a bit of time defending the trips to China of convicted criminal, CCP collaborator and accused sex pest Fu Kun-chi.

In the last election, Luo faced stiff competition from Social Democratic Party candidate Miao Po-ya (苗博雅), who garnered the best result a non-KMT candidate has ever seen in this staunchly blue district, proving that Da'an doesn't have to be a KMT stronghold, per se. Lo should have been able to crush her, but he won by a narrow margin by Da'an election standards.  The DPP isn't doing terribly; they seem to be holding onto popularity better than the KMT.

Where did the article come from, though? Is The Commons Daily (民眾日報) still in print? I'd thought not. Hadn't it at one point taken editorial stances challenging the KMT's Martial Law? Why does it report on statistics with so much circumlocution? (We know the answer to that last one, of course). 

Technically it still exists, but the story is wild. Once a local stalwart, it was bought out by the deeply corrupt Pingtung politician Tsai Hau (蔡豪) who, in 2010, invaded the paper's office claiming ownership rights (it's unclear if he actually had such rights). It was then bought by a Hong Kong company called Yitong (一通科技股份有限公司), which apparently went defunct in 2022. Yitong apparently still owns it (how?) but control was transferred to someone named Tsai Yun-yin (蔡雲夤) under a company with no public profile to speak of. I don't know if Tsai Hau and Tsai Yun-yin are related. 

There are two websites with something similar to that name, neither of which try to hide their pro-unification stances and neither of which appear to have the workings of a whole newspaper behind them. 

They do, however, seem to make political donations and various government tender bids. Huh. 

It's not a lot of money by political influence standards, but I wonder where the money is coming from, and who it's going to.

The article comes from the first of these "The Commons Daily" links, but the logo comes from the second. Tsai apparently runs the first, but writes occasional local news articles for the second. I don't think there's any meaningful difference between them. There's also a barely readable third site with a similar name and content to the first, and probably more.

He seems to spend most of his time advocating for unification. It's just another example of Taiwan's media being intentionally hollowed out by unificationist forces creating pro-China "news" outlets. 

An article from this extremely sketchy source formed the top third of Lo's "newsletter" isn't proof of any direct connection, but it does perhaps imply one. Why choose this article from a shell newspaper controlled by a company that only seems to have one employee -- Tsai Yun-yin -- whose parent company appears to be defunct (so who's funding it?), and whose main activities seem to be running pro-China news sites using the 民眾日報 name and making various political donations? Where is the donation money coming from?

it does imply a level of "newsiness" to an otherwise nonsense article. Rather like the TPP deliberately choosing the name 「民眾黨」as a callback to Taiwanese history, this paper with a similar name and a long history in Taiwan makes a very deliberate implication. The name, the paper's history and the once-local focus give it an air of Taiwaneseness that it no longer has. This is intentional.

The header and article are both from March 2024 (note the year). It name-checks data from the KMT-affiliated Taiwan Public Opinion Center (TPOC or 台灣議題研究中心) which are AI-generated and based on online data -- it's a type of data, but not a poll or survey in the traditional sense. The "top ten" in terms of "voice" that the article references are not ranked in terms of popularity but some algorithm of online impressions and interaction. 

The March 2024 data is here, but what's more interesting is the 2025 version, and Lo doesn't rate. 2025 data also show the DPP has a lot more mobilization.

I found a similar poll from 2024, but from a different source, but Lo's favorability is shown as quite a bit lower than the article's claims (0.41 rather than 0.6). Not that data from 2024 means anything today -- a lot has happened since then.

That's not even getting into the odd presentation of the statistics. If Lo were popular, he wouldn't have to claim (questionably) that he had the highest favorability among this set of politicians in 2024. He could just say he's got high favorability now.  

There don't seem to be any statistics on his current favorability: at least, I couldn't find any after both searching and asking around. This poll from January says 60% of his constituents oppose recalling him, but the recall movement has gained momentum since then, and that's not a favorability ranking. What's more, it's from Lo's own think tank, so there's a conflict of interest there.

I did find this from the TPOC and it doesn't look good, but I doubt it means much: 

Let's talk a little about these think tank names. In a similar vein to using "people's" (民眾, not 人民 which has a bit of a "China" flavor) as a callback to a 1920s political party that advocated democratic reform and home rule, I can't help but notice that Lo's organization, the New Congress Think Tank (新國會智庫), sounds seemingly intentionally like the Taiwan Braintrust in Mandarin (新國會國智策庫). There are no results for Lo's think tank that I can find, but a search implies that the two think tanks are the same. They most certainly are not. 

The TPOC (KMT-affiliated, mostly uses AI-generated data of online influence reported widely by pan-blue media) and TPOF (an actual pollster reported widely by everyone else) have similar naming issues in English, but are more easily differentiated in Mandarin.

Lo's choice of article is also telling: nobody reads the newspaper he copped the article from anymore. It doesn't prove that Lo is in cahoots with the unificationists who hollowed out The Commons Daily to turn it into a pro-China mouthpiece, per se. It doesn't really matter, though; he has about as much substance as the website his "newsletter" quotes, and he's got similarly pro-China rhetoric. It doesn't matter if they're in the same circle of traitors and sellouts; their end goal is essentially the same. 

I'm not the only one to have noticed all this, but I am the only person writing in English who decided to go down this rabbit hole. 

It's quite a bit of effort to try to convince one's constituents that you're popular and influential and fighting for their rights rather than collaborating with Taiwan's biggest enemy. 

But if Lo needs to take an article from an extremely dodgy pro-China source from 2024 to help make his case, he hasn't got a case to make at all. 

On 'free markets' (and other things), the Taipei city government is worse than useless

Here are some cops harassing Free Market participants for absolutely no good reason. I don't want to focus too much on the cops themselves, but I'm annoyed at a city government that things free markets are a bad thing. 

Most months, I try to participate in the free market in Da'an Park. It's often cancelled due to bad weather or wet ground, but when it happens, it's one of the great things about living in Taipei. Taiwan generally, too, as I'm sure they take place in other cities.

It builds community: the attendees are friendly and look out for each other -- among other things, letting newbies know about smart rules to put in place so re-sellers don't swarm your set-up and clean out everything before anyone else can have a look. It's good for students and those on a budget, as handy, gently-used household goods are frequently set out. It's good for the environment, as items not quite good enough to sell or give away online still have a chance at a second life rather than going straight into the trash. 

As far as I'm aware, it's also completely legal (if I'm wrong about this, please let me know). It's not commercial, which is prohibited in public parks for obvious reasons. It's a three-hour giveaway, a community activity focused on eco-friendliness and reducing consumerism. Similar activities take place at 228 Park, up in northern Taipei, and occasionally at the weekend farmer's market in Gongguan. 

At worst, I suspect there's no specific law against free markets, as laws regarding commercial activity arguably don't apply, and I've never heard of cops giving them trouble -- until today. 

I showed up at about 2:30 with a large IKEA bag full of items to give away. As I started setting up, some participants came over and gestured to the cops in another section of the market area. Everyone who'd laid down blankets for their items was told to pack up, and those who didn't comply were being ticketed. 

The fellow market-goers told me to just set my bag down and take out items one by one -- people would come over to claim them. So that's what I did, and as promised, a small group of people formed around me as I pulled out everything from a bag of unwanted Christmas decorations to various storage bins and baskets to a pot lid that doesn't fit anything to a shoulder bag Brendan no longer uses. 

I got the distinct impression the cops were avoiding me specifically, which I suppose is a kind of white privilege -- it's sometimes a curse, but I look like someone who doesn't speak Mandarin, and I didn't really want law enforcement to find out otherwise. And I'm not even particularly scared of Taiwanese police! I just thought it'd be a bit silly to be chastised for doing absolutely nothing wrong. 

So why were the cops there? Gossip among market regulars was that Mayor Chiang Wan-an, the useless marionette who "governs" Taipei, visited Da'an Park today, and the police didn't want the appearance of buying and selling in the park. It did not seem to matter that this wasn't buying or selling, and would have been a fantastic event for Mayor Chiang to not only see, but endorse as good for Taipei and its residents. 

Obviously, that's not what happened. I daresay it's because Chiang and his people don't actually care to consider what's good for the city. 

Chiang himself most likely didn't give the order, but someone who worked for him did, and it was the wrong one. Let's break up a free market because it 'looks like' commerce? Is the mayor too stupid or arrogant to listen to an explanation of what the free market actually is? What does it say about his leadership that his underlings thought this was the right move?

I don't know where the free market goes from here. Most likely, it just keeps meeting and tries to stay under the radar. Maybe if Mayor Marionette Chiang isn't visiting the park that day, the cops will leave it alone.

I suspect official complaints would only cause more problems. If there's no specific law against free markets, but they may technically be broken up under laws regulating commercial activity, there are really only three possible outcomes: the Taipei city government and their nepo-baby "I love my fascist maybe-granddaddy" mayor might decide to tell the cops to leave them alone. But Chiang doesn't actually care about the vibrancy of Taipei civic life, so they're more likely to respond with a "yeah...nah". Then the issue can either be litigated, or free markets stop. 

If you organize a free market just because you think it's a good idea, you probably don't have the money to hire a lawyer and take it to the courts, so I doubt the organizers will indeed complain. 

Now it's time for me to just rant semi-incoherently about how much Chiang Wan-an sucks.

While we're on that subject, I want to first put out a question: has he done anything at all for Taipei since assuming the mayorship? In what way has Taipei tangibly improved? If you can name even a single tangible thing that his administration specifically has spearheaded, please leave it in the comments. 

I've asked local friends the same question, and nobody's given me a single affirmative response. We're talking about die-hard Ko Wen-je haters who would nonetheless point out that Ko's first term was not that bad, by Taipei mayoral standards (that's not hard when the timeliest comparison is Hau Lung-bin, who also did nothing). So, these are people willing to see good works in a politician they otherwise dislike.

I do try to regularly read local news, and can also say I see...well, nothing about tangible efforts by the Chiang administration to improve Taipei. Just to double-check my assumptions, I glossed the city government's own announcements through 2023, which is where I got bored (they're not very interesting). There just doesn't seem to be much at all -- most of them read like this one, which is about Chiang visiting a trendy EasyCard machine in the Department of Youth. Yay. 

So either Chiang doesn't do anything, or the Taipei City government is terrible at hyping their guy. 

Just to double-check if I'd missed anything, I asked ChatGPT what policy accomplishments Chiang has had since assuming office. It gave me a bunch of boilerplate about international engagement, especially "cross-strait" dialogue. I asked it again about specific or tangible policies that have helped improve the lives of Taipei residents. ChatGPT will give you a list of its sources, so I figured at the very least I could check those. 

Here's what it said: 



I don't take ChatGPT very seriously, but...LOL. Even AI doesn't have much to say about the mayor.

I'm no fan of Ko, but under Chiang, I think Taipei has actually gotten a little worse. The only notable exception I can think of is air pollution, but that's improved a bit nationwide in the last few years. 

It's hard to find definitive traffic information, but anecdotally I've noticed that both traffic congestion and the number of accidents seem to be on the rise. There are elevated numbers for both the number of registered vehicles and overall accidents as of 2023 in these PDFs, but the rise was not large and might be explained by a return to some pre-pandemic behavior. Chiang would have recently assumed the mayorship in 2023, so there's not much insight to be gleaned from how he's handling this issue now.

However, if you asked me if he has done anything to improve, say, traffic, road safety and pollution, my answer would be no. 

This leads me to my final two complaints.

First, I don't know how much power the Taipei City government has over this, but I've found both the AI-rendered English translations of bus stops and the underground taxi ranks at transit hubs have become noticeably worse. 

The weird AI-voice English for bus stops doesn't affect me much as I understand the Mandarin, but it murders my poor ears to hear, very much against my will, that we are at "Chung-huh-seeaow Fuck-Sing", "Min-kwan West Road Station" or "Nanjing" (with a flat A) and "Jango" Road Intersection. 

That's probably a bus company problem, but could the city government not step in and ask them to fix this Saw-level assault on the eardrums? They don't even have to stop using AI, even though it's stupid and the stops as they were read by a real human voice were just fine as they were. They just need to fix it. It's so wrong that it's not even helpful for people who don't speak Mandarin!

Finally, have you tried in the past few years to get a taxi from the underground taxi stands at Taipei Main, the Taoyuan Airport MRT or Songshan Station? Do taxis even use them anymore? At Taipei Main, I learned my lesson after spending longer in line for a taxi than I did on the HSR back from Hsinchu -- twice. That one's not the biggest issue, as there's a well-serviced above-ground rank off the east exit, and the MRT is a reasonably easy transfer if you know where to go. 

Songshan, too, has easy access to the green line, and taxis are plentiful above-ground. 

Just don't follow any of the signs that actually say "taxi". You will be disappointed. There are no taxis.

But the airport MRT? The walk to the red and blue lines is far too long, and the green line is only a little bit closer. It's not fun to do if you have luggage, and impossible if you arrive at an odd hour when the MRT is closed. It's not even fun to do if you've been, say, on your feet for a few hours working in Linkou and just want to get home.

The B1-level taxi rank gets so hot in the summer that the 45-minute wait (as per the last time I tried to use it) is a literal health hazard. It takes longer to get a taxi than it does to take the train from the airport! 

And of course, there's no convenient place outside to grab one. 

It's annoying for me, and makes Taiwan look really bad for incoming tourists who thought airport train to taxi rank to hotel would be easy. Nah, instead you get heat exhaustion in a line that never moves, or you can walk 10-20 minutes to the nearest MRT.

In comparison, I was telling a student about my short trip to Japan in late 2023. We stayed in Osaka, but were able to catch a train to Koyasan, which isn't all that close by. You could even by a Koyasan Tourist Pack that came with a local bus pass and discount admissions to various sites. The train goes to a funicular, which waits for the train (and will even wait for you to use the bathroom). The funicular goes to waiting buses which will take you into town. Everything is timed beautifully, and everything works. I speak approximately six words of Japanese, but everything was clear. 

I don't expect Taipei to be like Osaka. It's always going to be smaller, a little funkier, a little more eccentric, a little more chaotic, a little more Taiwanese. That's fine. 

But I expect the free markets to be encouraged rather than raided by cops, the city government to actually care about things like traffic congestion and accidents, the buses to not murder the names of stops in their own language (it's not like "Min-kwan", "Fuck-Sing" and "Jango" are English), and taxi ranks to have taxis in them.

In other words, Mayor Nepobaby sucks. Maybe he should fix some actual problems and leave Da'an Park and its monthly free market alone.

Starting a bleak year with a little joy in Taiwan

I am grateful that I had the time to attend an exhibition of Sanyu (常玉) works in December

It doesn't matter how you spin it or even if you try to make it cute -- a snake is a snake. And when your government has been overtaken by snakes, there's no way to frame that positively without coming across as disingenuous, brainwashed, bootlicking or just garden-variety stupid. 

I'm talking about the US here, but something similar could be said of the KMT-created constitutional crisis in Taiwan. If you don't see the similarities in tactics between them and President Rapist's crew, you're not paying attention. DPP legislators seem to be putting up more of a fight than US Democrats, but I do with President Lai would speak out more. 

Because of how the world is, Lao Ren Cha is probably going to get pretty dark. Uplifting words require hope, and we're currently veering down a slope on which my hope finds no purchase. We're not only sliding into fascism, we're doing it electorally. People actually chose this. I have nothing to offer them but contempt. 

It may seem as though I've hopped straight to the rending of the garments without much in between, but I've actually been attempting to keep a gratitude journal. The world is in a bad way, but I can't point to many problems in my personal life -- call it privilege, luck, perhaps a few good choices, but if the US weren't in some freaky simulation of 1930s Germany and China acting kind of like the old Japanese Empire, I might even be something approaching happy? Who knows. 

What I can do, though, is practice a little self-fortification and talk about some of the little things I'm grateful for. They're random and pretty inconsequential, but it calms the mind to do this. 

That, and I can't follow the news as closely as I'd like without my stomach curdling, and I've gotten at least two migraines from it, so I can't be the Taiwan politics blogger I want to be right now.

Although it has its flaws, and I have my criticisms, I'm grateful that I moved to Taiwan back in 2006. I half-joked at the time that I was doing it to get away from "King George II", which seems adorable now. In 2025, as I see more and more Americans talking about 'getting out' and trying to start lives abroad, I started one almost two decades ago. I have permanent residency, a comfortable home built up over a decade, a freelance career that's solid even when it feels a little unstimulating, and strong social ties in Taipei. 

I do worry that China will start a war here -- President Rapist isn't smart enough to understand Taiwan's strategic importance, and he isn't empathetic enough to understand the human rights implications of this issue. China must know it has a lot less standing in its way now. 

And yet, being here has given me a greater understanding of this part of the world. If I'd stayed in the US, it would have been easy to read about conflicts like the threats China is inflicting on Taiwan, and despite feeling empathy, see it all as 'foreign' or 'far away' -- even though such a war would affect not just Taiwanese people but the world. Every issue that's far off to us is local to someone else. Not that I didn't already know that, but knowing something and feeling it in one's bones because the death count might include you or people you care about -- I'm not grateful for the threat or the fear, what kind of monster would be? But it sure does induce clarity. 

There's a small part of me that regrets that I can't do more to fight for the future of the US. Perhaps the US doesn't deserve a future -- again, the electorate chose this -- but lots of people in it do. It has brought further clarity, though, that the US might be the country of my citizenship, and it's had a major impact on my cultural norms, but it's not really 'home' anymore and probably never will be again. 

Taiwan is my home, and it's worth fighting for. I've heard people here talking about running, trying to get away from a potential war. I'm a lot less sure. I don't know what help I could be, nor how I'd be able to stay just in terms of supporting myself, but if I'm not willing to stand up for my values and beliefs in my home, then I'm not willing to stand up for them anywhere. I don't know how I could live with myself if I ran. 

That sucks, but I suppose there's a sliver of gratitude in being able to put it so plainly. Knowing it is...something?

Here's how much the US is not my home: I'm reasonably committed to not visiting again while President Rapist and his sex pest goon squad are in power, and I don't know how long that will be. Four years? Two or less, if we can get all 1789 up in the White House? Undetermined? I don't feel any sadness about not going to that country, just at what it will mean for visiting loved ones there. How feasible is my stance with a wedding in September, a father who doesn't take long trips abroad, and wanting to spend Christmas with my in-laws next year? 

                       

My face while judging supporters of President Rapist

A friend asked me what precisely I was afraid of in terms of not visiting. I'm not sure. As a cisgender, heterosexual white woman who's probably past childbearing age, I'm not very high on their list of people to actively persecute. They're content with passive persecution of women like me who are still there by eroding all of their hard-earned human rights. Yet my guts rebel at the thought of setting foot on American soil: the leadership of a country do influence the culture, and right now the Rapey D and the Roofie Crew are ushering in a culture of misogyny that gives me the willies. Which random Manosphere Bro is gonna decide it's suddenly acceptable to threaten or assault me, because his Dear Leader did it without consequences? 

I also just don't want to be around people who think it's acceptable to attack, say, immigrants or trans women. I have friends in both groups and would rather live near them than their detractors.

Besides, I don't really know what to do to support my trans and nonbinary friends especially. It feels like performative allyship, but they're mostly American, and if they can't go back for safety reasons, perhaps I shouldn't either. 

In fact, I'm curious: if you're an American living abroad, are you intending to visit the US during this "administration"? No judgement either way, we all come to our own decisions for our own reasons. I just want to know. 

What were we talking about again? Oh yes, gratitude. I am indeed grateful to have a supporting husband and loving family (biological and in-laws) who are supportive and understand how much this has bothered me, because it bothers them, too. I'm at the point of cutting off anyone who supports the literal fascism we're facing now, and I am grateful that nobody in my closest circles is, well, a fascist. 

Here are some little things I'm grateful for:

I recently started up a writing project I'd abandoned a couple of years ago. It's going better this time and takes me out of time and place a little. That matters. It also means I'll likely be blogging less. 

I have a lovely side hustle going writing for various Taiwan travel magazines. You can see some of them republished by CommonWealth's online platform (not all of the results here are mine). Writing is a way to look at some other thing critically for awhile, rather than freaking out at the news all the time. 

In fact, all I think I can read these days is Sweets Weekly. 


                  

Sweets Weekly, your trusted source for news from Taiwan to Hamburg, Germany, which was originally a kind of fried steak. 

Here's one of their better pieces: 

Typified plus thick warm and cheerful grandmother, Tainan alleys hidden in a delicious good material. this is the most memorable I've eaten grilled sandwiches, plus skillful technologies raging fire fried egg. still retain moisture egg, like iron palm flip grilled toast Ruannen delicious, simple but most charming. 

Flip to the other side to read an insightful editorial about how sandwiches is placed in the middle of the bread. 

I am grateful for Sweets Weekly. 

In April, I'll leave Taiwan for a little over a month. Starting in London where I'll work remotely from my sister's place for a few weeks, I'll then head to Rome where I'll meet Brendan and my brother and sister-in-law for the weekend. Then we'll meet my parents-in-law for a Mediterranean and Adriatic cruise. I don't know if I am a cruise person; my typical travel is public transit, mid-range hotels, lots of faffing about drinking things in cafes and exploring old bookstores, maybe seeing a castle or church and joking about how this or that bishop put rubies on his hat instead of helping the poor. 

But family bonding matters, and I don't hate large boats (only small ones), and I get to go to Malta and Montenegro. At the end, we'll spend several days in Slovenia and I'll work remotely a bit from Ljubljana.

That's a privilege, and I'm grateful...well, not for the privilege exactly, but for the privilege of being able to go plus the understanding that it is indeed privilege.

Someday I might switch to a full-time job that will make it harder to do things like this, so I'm grateful that I get to do it now. Besides, who knows whether we'll be in the throes of World War III before I get my next chance? 

For this trip, I designed an 'ideal' travel day bag. Made with sturdy Japanese fabric and a water-resistant middle layer, it boasts a thick cloth crossbody, a zipper top and magnet-sealing flap for two layers of protection. It slides onto a rolling bag handle and has outer compartments for airport necessities and a water bottle. Inside, there are inner zip pockets and a keyring that can attach to anything you may want to secure. It has a dedicated laptop compartment and Kindle pocket. I daresay it is perfect, and it came entirely from my own head. 

                    

                    
I'm grateful for that spurt of creativity in a time when I feel creatively dead, and grateful to have a tailor in Taiwan who made it for me at a reasonable price. 

My cat -- the one who had the heart attack -- is still with us. He costs about NT$15,000/month between vet visits and medication, but his prognosis was 6-9 months. It's been 9 months now, so every day we have with him is a gift. I know there most likely won't be many more. I'm grateful for that at any price. 

Lastly, I recently asked my Taiwanese teacher to help me understand the full lyrics to Hometown at Dusk (黃昏故鄉). The most famous version is by Wen Hsia (文夏), but this version is the meditative one that calms me down. I'm grateful to have a teacher willing to help make the lyrics accessible, and grateful to have learned it. 

In a life where, thanks to a decision I made two decades ago, when I travel, the place of golden-hour nostalgia that I think of when I'm homesick isn't my actual hometown, nor where I spent most of my adult life in the US. It's Taiwan. 

I'm grateful for this perspective shift, and how permanent it seems to be.  

Oh, I almost forgot.

Remember that earthquake not long ago that caused a Dictator Chiang statue to fall into a lake? 

That was awesome. I'm grateful for that. 

Antique and secondhand shopping in Taiwan isn't always easy

I'm actually excited to tell you about this lamp

I've had a lot going on these past few months, from my cat's heart attack to a voracious return of my lifelong insomnia (it's ebbed and flowed since childhood). One way I find relief from this is physical activity, preferably paired with some sort of mental problem-solving. When we lived in Jingmei I'd take long bike rides along the riverside. I started blogging as an outlet. More recently, I've taken an interest in interior design, making my home look as good as it possibly can, while spending as little as possible. This usually means scouring everywhere I can go or Lalamove will pick up for secondhand finds. 

The problem: while secondhand shopping in Taiwan can occasionally yield some real treasures that it'd be difficult to find elsewhere, and is especially good for Shōwa-era vintage Japanese items, it is usually riddled with issues. 

First, however, I'd like to share a success story. I came across this old Japanese pendant light at April's Goodies a few weeks ago. NT$700 was an acceptable price, so I nabbed it. I removed the old light as it didn't look safe. I could have re-wired it as a ceiling pendant with a fairly straightforward lighting kit, calling an electrician for installation only. Instead, I saw its potential as a table lamp and ordered a wooden light bulb stand online (a 燈座, not 燈台, as I learned after an educated guess and a fruitless search). 

                    

I don't have much restoration experience, so while I theoretically know how to make old things beautiful again, I lack the practical application skills. This I could handle, though. I removed the acrylic panels, washed them and coated the yellowed ones in a baking soda and peroxide mixture to dry overnight. I cleaned the wooden base and applied butcher block oil to give it some new life. The acrylic was slighly warped with age, so they no longer snapped in place -- I added a small amount of plastic adhesive to each panel in turn, weighing it down from the inside to dry in place before replacing the next one. Plop the whole thing over the lightbulb stand and boom -- a gorgeous "new" lamp! It will be extremely easy to turn it back into a pendant light if I ever so desire. 


                      


A happy ending like this, however, feels pretty rare. Frankly, I find secondhand shopping in Taiwan a little difficult. I don't mean the language barrier; I regularly communicate with sellers on Facebook Marketplace. Rather, the overall secondhand scene is often not ideal. 

I'm a little wary of the markets under the bridges, which are probably the best places to hunt. I've heard on multiple occasions that some (though likely not all) of the best finds are actually stolen. In fact, our building had a shoe thief for some time, which prompted a security upgrade. I asked a neighbor once why anyone would continually scout apartment buildings for used shoes to steal and she said that's the origin of most of the shoes at, say, the secondhand market under Fuhe Bridge. 

The secondhand furniture and kitchenware markets on Xiamen Street and Chongqing South Road are more trustworthy, but also a bit more specific (and I've yet to find a piece of furniture I actually want on Xiamen Street, despite checking it out multiple times). 

Thrift stores seem to come in two varieties: clean and organized but small, like Kuang-ren Green Fashion (光仁綠時尚) or the small shops in some MRT stations, or big but -- how can I put this -- often a bit grimy, as with many branches of Flea Market (跳蚤本舖). There are some bigger secondhand furniture markets outside the major cities, but there's nothing quite like the thrift stores where I furnished most of my college and early-twentysomething apartments. I do understand that Taiwan isn't the US and I can't expect something like thrift store culture to be exactly the same, but an option that's even vaguely parallel would be welcome. Kuang-ren is the best I've found so far. 

The antique stores are a little better in terms of quality, and I usually have good luck at Shōwa Old Home Store, Qinjing Warehouse and April's Goodies, but every vintage fiend I know is still reeling from the end of in-store browsing at Treasure Hunters. Their Line group is a bit overwhelming and I'm not always free when the bidding starts. What's more, if you're not already in the group, it's now very difficult to join. I have to wonder -- do they really want our business or not? 

It's a real shame, as one of my favorite secondhand lacquerware items came from Treasure Hunters, as did the matcha bowl I use as a catch-all and my beloved live-edge coffee table.


                     


There's an exceptional antique market on the outskirts of Tainan City, with friendly owners and reasonable prices but, well...although I try to go every time I'm in Tainan, it's still far. There are also places that restore furniture, or make custom pieces out of reclaimed materials, but they can be hard to find and get to.

I've found all sorts of great things at these shops, from gorgeous lacquerware to the aforementioned pendant-turned-table-light. One has to be careful, though: mixed in with some real finds are random bits from IKEA and Zara Home. That would be fine at a thrift store, but I'm not thrilled to see these things at antique store prices. 

My best luck has always been with Facebook Marketplace. After months of bookmarking and training the algorithm, I managed to score this teak dresser/sideboard for approximately 70% less than it would have cost at Scanteak (and it is Scanteak). I scored a real marble bowl for NT$80 which is unreal. Negotiating with sellers in Mandarin has been good language practice, as well. I'm not even all that mad that some of the items are grossly overpriced. That happens in the US, too, although sometimes in the US the price reflects some effort put into refurbishing or restoring something.

In fact, most (though not all) of the items on this sideboard are secondhand. 

What bothers me is how difficult it is to find items with prices clearly stated. If I see a real price I can choose to pay it, try to bargain it down or pass. If I see something listed for NT$1 or $66 or whatever, I have to message the seller to get the price. If it's so high that I don't even think it's worth bargaining -- and it usually is, that's why they don't state it outright -- I've wasted my time and theirs. It's now to the point that I don't even try, even with items I want, if no price is given.

This happens in secondhand Facebook groups too. Often, leaving off price is the norm, so even frequent sellers who used to list prices no longer do. There are some bright spots, like Buy Nothing Taipei and various groups where people who see free curbside finds post photos and addresses (though this has never really worked for me in Taiwan), but overall the caginess around pricing really harms the usefulness of online secondhand shopping.

This isn't to say that secondhand shopping in other countries is easy. Its newfound popularity in the US has caused higher prices, and as someone who doesn't have to buy secondhand but rather chooses to, I am at least theoretically part of the problem. That said, I also don't want to buy new things that it took resources to produce when there is so much waste in the world. 

At least when we travel, I can hit up thrift stores in the US, charity shops in the UK, op shops in Australia. Even in Taiwan, I can't complain too much. It takes awhile, but I have found some real treasures. I just wish there were more or better options here. 

Humble Pie, and Ko's Hypocrisy

Some people have fantastic housing!

This is a bit of a frankenpost, but we've had a frankenweek in Taiwanese politics.

First, yes, I was wrong about the KMT/TPP dalliance. There's no way Ko was promised the top spot on the ticket if negotiations could fall apart that quickly. Before it turned into a massive clownshow, my  Taiwanese teacher's pet theory was that the CCP gave Ma dirt on Ko: there's a reasonably popular notion that Ko was involved in organ harvesting in China. I thought this was unlikely because it has the ring of disinformation, but thought, it doesn't have to be that to still be dirt. 

Anyway, I was wrong, and the blackmail theory is probably wrong too. If one of us had been correct, Ko wouldn't have reneged like this.

Frozen Garlic has a fantastic post discussing how it all went down. He's absolutely right, of course. I'm still hung up, however, on why it went down. I don't have good answers, but it might be helpful to explore that thought for a bit. 

I didn't necessarily expect the KMT and TPP to form a formidable alliance; at best, I thought they'd dominate the polls for a time, but eventually it would all turn into a clownshow. How could it not, between the guy who does whatever he wants, the guy who expects everyone to do as he says, and Hou You-yih?

So really, the clownshow just happened earlier than I'd predicted! Yet something still feels...off.  For the initial agreement to happen, I expected either a carrot or a stick -- to either entice or threaten Ko into agreeing to this obviously bad deal. And yet, there appears to have been none.

Neither Ma Ying-jeou nor Ko Wen-je strike me as particularly smart in the way statesmen should be. Eric Chu is smarter than he lets on, but hardly brain trust material. I've already explored this in some detail, so I won't repeat myself. Yet, how could three men who are maybe not the brightest but also not acutely wanting in the brains department, plus Hou You-yih, all be so incredibly, astoundingly, clownishly dumb?

I have trouble buying the idea that the lot of 'em simply blundered into this clown show. Certainly, I tend not to be impressed by men who have power, and men who want power. But this? This is on another level. Perhaps Ma really was done in by his own 'thou shalt obey' arrogance, and Ko was done in by his own 'I do what I want!" version of the same. Also, Hou You-yih was there.

Maybe the CCP threw a lot of resources into forcing this alliance, and it blew up in their faces, too. In which case, ha ha!  Or maybe I'm overthinking it. 

I'd say that at least I'm not one of the chumps who thought Ko and Hou would make a formidable, hard-to-beat alliance, treating them as de facto the presumed future leaders of Taiwan. I always assumed they'd fall apart, I was just surprised that it took a few days, not a month. And yet, I was wrong too. I'm also kind of a chump. It's okay. 


But why does Ko have support at all?

As Ko might well cease to be relevant given the way he's just embarrassed himself, I wanted to take a brief and admittedly tad superficial look at why exactly he has (had?) a strong youth support base. I had trouble finding anything; a general sense of the KMT and DPP have both failed us, why not try this new guy who isn't afraid to say what he thinks? was about as deep as it seemed to get. 

Because I don't want this to turn into a 10,000 word rant, I'm going to end up talking about just one thing -- housing.

Ko is big on housing as a policy area, so there's a lot to analyze there. In fact, the housing issue might be all we need to discuss: the measure of him as a candidate can be taken from the way he talks about it. He's not better in any other area. His other big platforms on education and industry contain similar levels of flim-flam.

It can be hard to find real positions held by Ko. The media certainly doesn't have a lot to say. There's a lot of what in this article, for example, but no real why beyond, again, a dissatisfaction with 8 years of DPP administration, as well as an antipathy to the KMT's views on China. 

"All the DPP has to offer is resist China and protect Taiwan", it says, but then what does Ko have to offer that's any better? They decline to elaborate.

To be clear, I don't actually agree that the DPP has nothing else to offer. They're hardly perfect, but they've raised the minimum wage more than their opponents, passed a (likely ineffective) housing subsidy and a rental subsidy which many renters are unable to access, as their landlords often terminate rental agreements when they try -- the reasons why are a bit complex to get into here. They tend not to clarify these policies well, and it often comes down to the government making something available, but a person in power -- your boss or landlord -- blocking access. For that, they haven't offered a reasonable solution. Lai Ching-te was even critically quoted as saying renters should "talk to their landlords" in order to access the subsidy. Ha. Fat chance. 

And yet, again, it's not nothing, and this will be important in a moment.

Another piece from deep-green media SETN (三立) breaks down three reasons for Ko's support, but none of them are any more substantive than this. They offer three reasons, but two of them boil down to not liking the establishment parties, thinking Ko 'resists the system'  and a lack of ability to evaluate political discourse, which they also point out as an issue among voters working in tech. Only the middle one offers something new -- "appealingly packaged" ideas -- but what are these ideas?

Ko does talk a lot about housing prices. He's not wrong when he agrees with young voters regarding their "four nos": they can't find a good job, can't afford a home, which means they can't get married and can't have children. These lead to the final "no" -- no hope. He points to his record in Taipei of "promoting social housing" and his support of rental subsidies to help solve this issue. 

Rent subsidies? Isn't that exactly the policy that the DPP has been trying to expand and promote, however poorly they package it?

Social housing is affordable housing units built or otherwise made available so that young and economically disadvantaged people can meet their housing needs. Over on Bluesky, there was a discussion about his purported 'success' with social housing in Taipei. I'm not sure I see that success, as the rental market in Taipei is absolutely in the crapper, but that's not the most important point. 

Rather, while housing is indeed the purview of mayors, social housing receives a great deal of assistance and funding from the central government. Here's an old MOI press release about it, and here's a discussion of how little social housing Ko and Hou have actually built during their respective tenures as Taipei and New Taipei mayors, respectively. It clarifies that cities do receive subsidies for social housing, and that it's an initiative at the national level as well. 

That second article points out that Ko wasn't always a big supporter of social housing, considering social welfare projects a 'bottomless pit' and insisting that housing should be paid for entirely by residents (that is, at one point he had an anti-rent subsidy position). He certainly hasn't built as much social housing as he implies.

Because he's a flip-flopper, however, let's assume he's actually changed his views on this.

I can understand that housing is a key pain point for young voters. Buying a home anywhere you'd want to actually live in Taiwan, especially in Greater Taipei, is an anxiety-inducing, eye-watering joke. Taipei is famed for its excellent transportation network, but good luck affording a mortgage anywhere near that network. People are complaining that suburb (exurb?) Linkou is too expensive. And Linkou sucks! 

Even renting in Taipei is torturous. I'm terrified of what will happen when the inevitable day comes that we have to move. I check the Taipei rental market every few months just to see what it's like, and there's nothing in my initial searches that clears the threshold of acceptability. 

So, I can understand thinking that the guy who sounds innovative and talks up social housing in a way the major parties don't might be a good bet. He'll even tell you how much effort he put into social housing and rent subsidies as mayor of Taipei! 

But, again, who funded those subsidies? Who assisted with social housing projects? Where did the social housing and rent subsidy policies of the last 8 years even come from? Where did assistance in acquiring land to build social housing come from? The national government, which has been run by the DPP for the past 8 years. 

I can't say the DPP has done an amazing job at this. "Talk to your landlord about getting rent subsidies" is a terrible thing to say on the campaign trail. Housing costs continue to skyrocket, and every year even the once-reasonable Taipei rental market constricts a little more, leaving mostly overpriced garbage on offer. 

So, I suppose it's understandable that some young voters would decide that housing is their key issue, and of the three (oh wait, four) candidates, Ko appears to talk the most sense. He is able to package it in a more appealing, "straight-talking" way that makes "discuss it with your landlord" Lai Ching-te look like a fumbling old git. 

Underneath that, however, he's concealing quite a bit -- from his early anti-welfare stances to his use of central government funds that he then took credit for obtaining. He got all of that money and help because the DPP helped him, and how he's acting like they don't care about housing issues, but he does. 

Why stay in Taiwan?

It's the little things...or is it?

You probably don’t care about my life, but here’s the deal. I’ve had a somewhat tumultuous week professionally, although nothing that ended up being terribly deleterious. I don’t want to say too much about it, but I’ve been feeling frustrated about the limitations of teacher training opportunities in Taiwan for residents like me, despite how much we can help in the face of Taiwan’s push for internationalization. 

I have no desire to discuss the details behind this; it’s insider beef that you really don’t need, and might be wrong of me (or at least harmful to me) to divulge. 

I've also been feeling more frustrated than usual about Taiwan's naturalization laws. Nothing has changed since the 2007 reforms, opening up a pathway for magical stardusted special and senior foreign professionals, basically saying most foreigners who call Taiwan home -- whether they're white collar like me or blue collar like most immigrants here -- are garbage. Not worth caring about. 

Yes, the road to dual nationality may be narrow now, but there's room for it to expand. But I fear it will happen when I'm too old for it to matter. I'm not sure exactly how I will grow old in Taiwan as planned, because I can't get a mortgage and don't have local family, but landlords don't like to rent to the elderly. What am I supposed to do when I'm 80? If the law changes when I'm 60, that's a little too late to fix the problem. 

There's something to be said for fighting for something so that the next generation can enjoy fairer access. And yet, recently I've been wondering if this is enough. Wondering why I bother. 

With all this in the background, I’ve been trying to blog about politics to get my mind off it. Nothing comes out right, though. I have a few half-finished posts that I might wrap up and publish anyway, or perhaps not. We’ll see. Maybe I just need to not with the politics right now. 

Instead, I thought I'd examine something else. I know perfectly well that I'm not actually going to leave Taiwan (which, to be honest, is part of the problem. Maybe I should be more open to doing so). So rather than stewing in my own angry juices over this, perhaps I should talk a bit about why I stay. 

People love to ask why I moved to Taiwan. That story isn't very interesting. Studying in India made me want to learn more about Asia in general. I spent a year in China and didn't love it. And yet, I still felt there was a lot for me to learn, and I like the general feel and pace of life in large Asian cities. So, I came to Taipei mostly out of curiosity. I certainly didn't know much about it. 

Why I stay, though? Maybe that's worth discussing. I've been here for 18 years now. The pay isn't that good. Career opportunities are middling at best. I do have a fantastic local network, but most of my close family live on the other side of the world. Nobody loves Taipei's weather. My apartment is nice, but apartments in Taiwan generally aren't. There's the ever-looming China threat (though I imitate local residents in living my life as though that's not a thing). 

And yet here I am. Still. I've been thinking about this for awhile -- it's easy to rattle off reasons to leave. Any article about the "ghost island" can do that. The more fruitful area to examine is why I stay.

I've identified five very generalized reasons why, despite its faults, Taiwan is the country I chose to call home. These are five things that I think are important for any country I might live in long-term, and Taiwan happens to excel at them.

For my own reflection as much as yours, here they are: 

1.) Generally good infrastructure, including (most especially) public transit

Not all of Taiwan has good public transportation, but Taipei does, and it's fairly easy to get to any other town you might want to visit. Getting around that town might be a challenge, but you can always get there. I live in Taipei, though, and this city has some of the best public transit in the world. In general, I appreciate infrastructure that works. That includes buses that run on time, a clean metro system, convenient trains.

Compare that to the US, where the only city that has public transit that comes close to meeting my standards is New York. That also happens to be a city where I couldn't possibly afford to live. I tried living in Washington DC for seven years without a car. People say transit there is good. I say it's a nightmare. 

Still, assuming I'd never move back to the US, I could enjoy good public transit in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore. If we're talking inter-city, even Vietnam. Europe, too, but there aren't really good jobs for me there. China, generally, has reasonable public transit. What could knock some of those countries off the list?

2.) An open and democratic government

Well, there goes Singapore, Vietnam and Hong Kong. China is an obvious no-go. I once considered moving to IstanbuI, but I can't get past the importance of a reasonable system of government. I might not have the right to vote, but it's important to me that my local friends do; I would find it very hard to exist as an admittedly privileged American in a country where I could send my ballot back every few years, but locals I knew wouldn't have access to human rights that I consider fundamental. 

For myself, well, I like to opinionate. It's important to me to live in a country where I can do so without fear of government retribution.

Beyond that, there's just something depressing about living in an unfree society. You may or may not have access to good journalism. Random bullshit things may be banned. Your friends can't say what they really think; you may not even know what they really think, depending on how severe the repression is. 

Being in Taiwan for two -- soon to be three -- presidential handovers, countless protests, a legislative occupation, and all manner of public debates? That may seem unimportant or ineffable to some, but it matters to me. Taiwan's democratic society is a big draw. 

South Korea and Japan are democracies too, though. Why not move to one of those?

3.) An acceptable level of gender equality

I'm not saying Taiwan doesn't have sexism and misogyny. Of course it does. The gender pay gap is still above 15%. But, compared to the rest of Asia, I daresay it's doing fairly well. 

Brendan has told me stories about Korea, where he would see job ads that openly offered men and women disparate pay for the same work. 

I know someone in Japan who once detailed many little ways in which women face discrimination; she once saw a pregnant woman stand up on the train for a salaryman! Discussing why that would happen, locals told her that the pregnant woman has an easier, more restful life while the salaryman is tired from hard work, so of course he should get the seat. I don't know that this happens frequently in Japan, but that it happened at all tells me that it may be a fine country to visit, but it's not a place where I think I'd be very happy living. 

Everything from work culture to beauty standards feels so much harsher in those countries. The fact that women make up such a small percentage of the workforce in Japan and are deeply underrepresented in politics are other strikes against it. I'll take the country that elected a woman twice, thanks. 

Korea is similar; the gender wage gap there is astounding (Japan is almost as bad). I've enjoyed visiting both countries. As a woman, I want to live somewhere with more equality. 

That brings me to my next point. 

4.) A high level of public safety

It's not just pay, work, politics and beauty standards. All three countries have very high levels of public safety, including for women. As an American, this matters to me. It wasn't fun growing up in a country where it wasn't safe to be outside alone at night. But Taiwan manages the high public safety with a whole lot less of the ridiculous discrimination.

This matters not just for me, but for my LGBTQ+ friends. South Korea, for instance, is not a very safe place for many people dear to me. Public safety isn't just about whether or not you're likely to get mugged or pick-pocketed. It is also deeply related to who you are. I wouldn't want to live in a country where I might be targeted because I'm a woman, or where my friends might be targeted for being gay, nonbinary or trans. 

This, of course, knocks many countries off the list -- including the United States. 

I considered adding "a high level of overall development" to this list, because so many of my points are oriented around that. Advanced economies are more likely to have good public transit and safety, higher levels of gender equality and functional democratic governments. 

But not always -- the United States fails on most of these counts. Plenty of countries that aren't rich do have democratic governments. Besides, I don't think anyone wants a middle class white lady to prattle on about how she wants to live in an advanced economy. In fact, it's not actually one of the key criteria.

Instead, my fifth point is more specific but is still related to overall development markers. 

5.) National! Health! Insurance!

As an American, I cannot express how much this matters to me. I spent the first half of my twenties kinda miserable because I needed to see some doctors, but couldn't afford any of them. My lack of access to affordable health care in the US is directly responsible for the back surgery I needed during my first year in Taiwan. 

This really matters! Health insurance alone is enough to make me forsake the US forever. 

That said, this point has been bugging me recently, because I'm in the middle of a tooth implant that isn't covered by Taiwan's NHI. All told, it will cost me about NT$87,000. The dentist has been clear that for me, it's a necessity (another one of my crowns is in danger if I don't get a tooth put in next to it). And yet, it's entirely out of pocket. 

I think NHI should cover it. After all, it's an absolute necessity for me unless I want to literally be toothless in a few years. 

But, all of that aside, I'm grateful that the many times I've needed to see a doctor in this country, that I could actually afford to do so. 

I'm still not feeling entirely all right about the state of my life in Taiwan these days. It hurts to want to commit to a place, without seeing a clear future there, especially in old age.

There is another reason I stay, but it's intensely personal: I truly believe in what Taiwan stands for. To me, Taiwan means standing up to a dictatorship that landed on your soil and tried to force you to submit, turning the country instead into a functioning and peaceful democracy. It means refusing to shatter under the constant threats from yet another dictatorship that wants to annex you by any means necessary. It means building one of the more advanced and liberal societies in Asia -- if not the most liberal -- on the back of a tragic and bitter history of colonialism and oppression.

That, to me, is worth fighting for. It's worth staying for. It's not on the list because it's not a specific thing Taiwan has, it's more of a narrative that Taiwan embodies.

It does help, however, to think through the reasons why I've stayed, and run through the possibilities of other countries where I might relocate. None quite hit the five criteria -- gender equality, health insurance, democracy, public transit and public safety -- that Taiwan does. Most countries can be exciting, interesting, historically noteworthy, or absolutely lovely. 

But I can't think of another one that actually meets these five benchmarks, all of which are crucial to me. Can you?

The online teaching cloister

I moved to Taipei to enjoy the city, not to be stuck in my apartment all day

A few weeks ago, I began my first face-to-face foundational TESOL training course since COVID hit Taiwan. We'd gone online at some point and were struggling to resume in-person learning. 

It had truly been so long that in the fog of the late pandemic I no longer remember when it happened, only that trying to teach that course online presented a host of problems. I couldn't really demonstrate various in-person interaction patterns, for instance. Nor could we discuss classroom management components such as boardwork and layout in an impactful way. A practicum (demo) is a vital component of this course, but it's harder for inexperienced teachers to lead interactive demos online. Everything takes longer online, too, and it was a challenge to cover the course requirements. 

When we finally opened a face-to-face course, on day three someone tested positive for COVID. Within a week, about half the class was infected, and I was teaching face-to-face with four students and a computer running an online meeting with the other three. I then tested positive, and it was back online for all of us.

My heart sank when I realized how it would go: back to my home office, back behind a screen. Yes, it's an incredible privilege to have a spare room for a home office at all, but it is draining to be stuck in there for days on end, without many chances to go out while Brendan left everyday for in-person work.

Gently put, it's a cloister. More critically, it's a prison.

While I've transitioned back somewhat to in-person teaching and teacher training, enough of it remains online that my latest stint at home prompted me to reflect anew on teaching and teacher training as a profession now that someone like me is just as likely to be working at a screen as in a room with their students or trainees.

To be blunt, I don't like teaching or teacher training online. At all. I've become accustomed to it, and of course I can do it. And yet, while some say online teaching brings people together -- it's possible to take classes you never dreamed possible if teachers and students can meet remotely -- I feel as though the screen divides me from the learners. It causes a rupture, a block. 

Everything takes longer, everything requires more planning. It's more difficult to develop rapport, especially when I have to put my foot down about cameras being left on if at all possible. Some never do, and there are situations where I can't (or shouldn't) force the issue. Imagine having students whose faces you've never seen, whom you'd never recognize on the street. I didn't become a teacher to interact with black squares all day, and I find it very hard to develop rapport this way.

Even with cameras on, I find it difficult to build the same connections with learners and trainees. To "make eye contact" I have to look at the camera, not the face on the screen. It's the same for the learner. I can toggle between these and create a simulacrum of actual, in-person, we-see-each-other eye contact, but it's not actually the same. The effect is ineffable, but definitely there, and entirely negative. 

One-on-one classes aren't so bad, as you only have to do this back-and-forth with one face. The effect is deeply felt in groups, however, especially if one of us is presenting.

I had an office job in the US all those years ago; lots of screen time, very little face-to-face contact. I hated it, and became a teacher because this is exactly what I don't want. It's kind of like attending meetings all day (something which can be tiring if you're working remotely), and you are the coordinator and host of every single meeting. I'm good at this in person. Online? Honestly, not so much -- because I don't want to be at a computer, period.

Pre-pandemic, my various jobs required me to jet all over Taipei and beyond for work. I explored parts of the city I'd rarely or never set foot in otherwise. 

Again, I realize this is a privilege. I understand that most people take the same route to the same office every day if they’re not working remotely, so “going in” isn’t particularly desirable. I get bored easily with routine, which is why I chose a career path through which I’d frequently find myself in different places. It got me out of the house, and I was able to see different parts of the city. My schedule changed often enough that there was always something at least a little new in this; it never got monotonous and I didn’t resent the extra time it took. I like to be on the move. 

You know what I don’t like? Being stuck at home most of the day, unable to leave my neighborhood or even my apartment, sometimes for entire days. If I have a training course in the morning, then an afternoon and evening class, the furthest I’m likely to go that day is the nearby 7-11. If I’m really lucky I might get to go to the ‘everything store’ down the street! 

I hate this. Plenty of people like working from home as it frees them from tiring commutes and allows them to be comfortable in their work setup. That’s great for them. It’s not for me. Mental health walks are uninspiring; I’m not good at walking with no destination. I’ve found myself making up reasons to go outside, which usually involve coffee or shopping, but they rarely take me anywhere new. No new cafes, little local restaurants or novel bus routes. No “hey there’s an Indian restaurant near Sanmin Road!” 

There is nothing worse for an extrovert than being at home all day, usually alone as Brendan still teaches face-to-face, and not feeling the rapport bump from work, either.

I have had more in-person opportunities recently, having started a new part-time gig that I'm enjoying quite a bit and pays very well. It's partly face-to-face, and that helps -- but they also underscore that being mostly online is a problem.

In fact, let's talk a bit about boredom and big career questions.

It’s easy to say I’m transitioning from teaching to more teacher training because it pays much better (to be clear, it does), but I’m also motivated by the level of challenge. It seems as though it should be easy to coast at the sort of work I’ve been doing forever, but I tend to get distracted and stuck if I do the same thing for too long. I know stagnation affects my performance, so it’s time to reach. This means more work overall, but that's the fundamental truth of what it means to seek challenge.

If all of this sounds vague, it’s because I don’t want to give too many specifics about work for all the obvious reasons. Besides, I genuinely like the people I work with. Most of them run their businesses well, or at least well enough that I don’t walk. I don’t want to hop on my blog to gossip about good people. 

Yet internally, I’ve been fighting…something. Distractedness? Demotivation? The delicate balance of work with my sub-optimal health? It could be any or all of these, and 

one of the leading causes is the pivot to online teaching.

Of course it's not the only reason. Working in Taiwan can be tough in certain ways: raises are rare, there’s no such thing as a paid holiday, it’s a battle just to get employers to do basic things like contribute to labor insurance and pension. In general I do not feel that teaching in Taiwan pays enough at the higher levels of ability and experience; I stay in Taiwan because I love Taiwan, but the honest truth is I could make more money in just about any other Asian country. 

Teacher training is a lot fairer in terms of compensation, and I won't lie: that's another reason why I gravitate towards it.

Every day I fight the notion that I’m good at my job simply because I’m a white native speaker. I think I am indeed good at my job, but that’s not the reason! 

None of those are the core of it, though. I’m used to the lack of benefits, and beyond wanting to be comfortable I’m not particularly motivated by money. (I'm only somewhat money-driven.) I didn't start to feel this distractedness until work mostly went online. Period, end of story, that's it: everything else is manageable but remote teaching is not what I want, and never will be. 

What's worse, because I don't actually want to be teaching online, I'm not as good at it. I'm less careful; teacher talking time shoots up; interactions don't vary as much as would be optimal; I'm less innovative. I'm less motivated online, full stop.

Online teacher training is even harder to pull off, but at least the level of challenge keeps it interesting.

Just to clarify, I’ve been forthright about this at work. Nobody reading this who knows me in real life would be surprised to hear it. It doesn’t really change the current situation, though — how could it? 

There are benefits to being online, however, that almost negate this (almost). Collaborative documents, chat boxes, interactive whiteboards: all things made possible by an online interface. It would be harder to schedule my own Taiwanese lessons if we met face-to-face, and I will probably start Armenian lessons online in the near future -- something that would have been impossible not that long ago. Trainees who can't attend my sessions in person are able to log in for the online ones; they get a benefit they wouldn't have been able to access in the Before Times.

That said, all this new technology never runs quite as smoothly as it should to be considered a true advantage. There’s always that one learner who can’t figure out how to access the materials on Google Docs (or can’t access it at all if they’re in China or have some sort of work-related block to that function). Zoom’s interactive whiteboard is clumsy and annoying. My noise-canceling computer is fantastic when my cleaner is vacuuming, but not great when we need to use audio recordings, as they don’t tend to play clearly. Getting everyone to mute themselves to listen on their own takes — you guessed it! — more time. 

Teaching online doesn’t even come with the only real benefit of remote work, which is freedom to travel and do your work elsewhere for awhile. I can’t go to a cafe — it’s a class! I suppose I could head south or east, but I can’t, say, fly to Europe or the US and work from there unless I want to keep some very weird hours. I’ve tried (ask me about 6am classes at my sister's old apartment in Hoboken someday) and it never really works out. 

It's caused me to ask some Big Career Questions. I love teacher training and don't want to give that up, but if I took on less teaching work and picked up, say, an editing or materials development job, at least I could go to a cafe for a change of scenery instead of spending the entire day in my little office cloister. I won't turn down online teacher training because I enjoy it too much, but I have considered refusing online language teaching to do this. I haven't pulled the plug on that yet, but we'll see. 

There’s no clear solution here; this is just my life now. If I had a different sort of job where I was desperate to escape the fluorescent horror and greige cubicle walls of an office, I’d probably welcome remote work. I became a teacher in part to avoid that! One of the reasons I’ve sought out more work is for those face-to-face hours; it will make the online portions of my job more bearable. At least I’ll have more chances to go somewhere!