Living in Taiwan: A death sentence for a laowai’s Chinese?

This topic may already have been done to death. If so, please excuse my ignorance and point me in the right direction; I am new here.

I’m having an interesting discussion with Mark of Doubting to Shuo, and we’ve both agreed it is better to bring it to a forum like this one. If you’d like to read the whole thing, please go here. If not, it basically boils down to the following: he suggests that it is difficult for foreigners to use Chinese in Taiwan. He argues that Taiwanese get ‘irritated’ when we use Chinese with them, and that people often insist on speaking English with us, even when we know Chinese quite well. He contrasts that with his recent experience in Beijing, where he felt free to speak Chinese to his heart’s content, and people there were happy to deal with him solely on his own linguistic terms.

Having lived in both China and Taiwan, I agree that Beijing is better for the Chinese-speaking foreigner than Taipei. People there actually expect you to speak Chinese, which is quite refreshing compared with Taiwan. Furthermore, I think it is a far more interesting place to live, on practically every conceivable level.

Where I part company with Mark, is his assertion that it is hard to use Chinese in Taiwan with Taiwanese. In my own experience, I’ve been able to interact with people here using Chinese, in practically every situation. But I’d like to read more opinions. For those of you with both PRC and Taiwan backgrounds, what has been your experience in Taiwan?

It is not my intention to turn this into a PRC vs. Taiwan pissing contest. I thoroughly enjoy both places. Rather, for those who agree with Mark, please discuss your own examples: What do you think went wrong? Why won’t Taiwanese speak Chinese with you? And for those of you who disagree, please share with us your strategies: How did you make your Taiwan encounters work for you? In my own example, when I was a language student here years ago, I had many, many Chinese friends and we rarely spoke English. I audited courses in Chinese history, philosophy and literature at Tunghai University and National Taiwan University, and I guess my classmates just weren’t obsessed with English. I also made great friends at the Tunghai campus gym-these guys were your typical Taiwanese engineering and computer science geeks, and again, we seldom, if ever, used English.

Whichever side you come down on this issue, please share your thoughts…

There have been some threads about this topic, you might try search for them.

I've lived in Beijing and in Taipei. In both places there are people who come up to you and want to talk to you solely for practising their English (I've never met people who pretended not to understand my Chinese though), and thinking about it I think those people were equally fanatic in both BJ and TP. In Beijing I sometimes obliged, depending on my mood and whether I had time, and had some interesting and some uninteresting conversations.

When I got to Taipei, I had read some rants of foreigners who got angry at the Taiwanese who tried to practise their English with foreigners. I felt sorry for those Taiwanese: how were they going to learn English if not by practising, and they did not have bad intentions. So whenever someone came up to me wanting to practise his/her English, I was nice to them and talked with them. Usually they would switch to Chinese pretty soon when they found out my Chinese was quite fluent.

So, in my experience, no, living in Taiwan is not going to kill off someone's Chinese. But I know there are many people who disagree with me about this.

I'm not sure what to make of this whole concept; I'm stuck with two opposing but strong opinions :-)

Firstly - it's very rude to walk up to someone, with the hope of practicing your English, only to then go off in a huff when they reply in decent Chinese. So, you weren't after making friends, just wasting the time of some poor ex-pat (who should be using all their spare time getting pissed, of course) as a free English lesson.

Secondly - an English teacher is likely to tell his students to practice, maybe by chatting with foreigners. To then meet other students (no doubt from a different language school) and refuse to speak English with them is hypocritical.

Luckily (in this instance), I don't speak much Mandarin and have no intention of teaching English when I go to Beijing, so am not likely to get stuck in my own quandry

Edit : I should proof-read before hitting "submit".

How come you can't pretend to not speak english? For example when they say things like "Hello", why don't you just say "我不会说英文，我从德国来的." Even if it's a lie.

I think as soon as you get out of downtown Taipei most people don't speak English.

I just returned from a short trip to TaiChung where the only people who tried to speak English with me were an American and his Taiwanese wife.

Three things I quite like about Taiwan for learning mandarin:

1) You don't feel like everyone is out to cheat you and basic things aren't a struggle

2) Taiwanese are generally fairly laid back outside of Taipei

3) Broad array of topics - Personally I like to watch the spicy variety shows and discuss them

Things I don't like

1) Wade Giles and BOPOMOFO

popomofo is ok for reading - it stays out of the way a bit better than pinyin but it is a hassle to learn so many different methods of romanization.

2) Taiwanese is getting quite popular

In a surge of nationalism lots of people aren't speaking mandarin at all - but switching to Taiwanese and Hakka.

3) Bit of a backwater

4) Not as many books or as good an infrastructure for learning traditional characters

anthony, did most people in Taichung speak Mandarin when you visited? I would suspect so since Taichung has traditionally been a Mandarin-speaking city in central Taiwan where usage of Taiwanese and Mandarin starts to widely diverge from each other.

I actually have had more problems with Mandarin on the mainland than on Taiwan. That is, of course, if I'm in Hong Kong or somewhere else where non-Mandarin dialects are dominant. My immediate ancestry is 100% Chinese so I don't have the problem of anyone trying to practice English on me either though. Elsewhere on the mainland, there's no problems except the people in the north think I'm from the south and the people in the south think I'm from the north. [probably due to the nature of my mangled Mandarin]

In France, people think I'm Japanese or Korean and start talking to me in French, except for one cute little 8 year old French girl who was learning Mandarin in school (very cool) and began practicing her Mandarin with me.

In the US, Koreans often think I'm Korean and try talking to me in Korean. I've learned to say "I'm not Korean. I'm Chinese." all in Korean which confuses them even more.

My wife's immediate ancestry is 100% German. She's only tried to use Mandarin in Taiwan so far and has encountered no problems.

Yes as I said pretty much everyone spoke Mandarin to me except for the odd "Hello" from kids on the street.

Normally they were pretty relieved to hear that I speak Mandarin because they don't want to embarrass themselves.

In Taiwan, I've found that there are very few people who insist on speaking English.

But there is one thing that bugs me. People who I have known for a while will ask me, can we speak English from now on, because I want to learn more English? But they don't want to be the one to start the conversation in English. They want me to force them to speak English. But I'd rather speak Chinese, unless their English is really good, so I feel guilty for not making them speak English, and they probably hold some kind of a grudge.

Same topic is also running on Forumosa.com if anyone wants to check it out.

Never been to Taiwan, but my own personal view is that although your environment can make a difference, it's your motivation and language acquisition skills that are most important. You might need to make more effort in Taiwan than you do in Beijing, but by the same principle you need to make more effort in New York than you do in Taiwan, in Beijing than in Harbin, and so on.

Roddy, I completely agree on what you're saying. If learning a language is your goal, your own discipline is the most important factor. However, when I wrote the post on my blog that inspired this blog, I wasn't thinking about language learning; I was thinking about hassle and quality of life. I can learn Chinese in Taiwan. For that matter I have learned more Chinese there than anybody else I've ever met who's been here for the same amount of time and been teaching English the whole time. When I visited mainland China, I met people who had been living there for years, but who couldn't speak that much Chinese.

What I was arguing is that living in Beijing makes for a more enjoyable social life for someone who doesn't want to use English all the time. Despite being in the most touristy part of the city, people generally used Chinese with me pretty willingly, once it became clear to them that I could understand them. I liked it.

I live in Taipei County. I never feel this problem. Indeed I find that most of the time I go into a shop people speak Mandarin to me and expect me to understand. For the most part people are quite nonchalant about the fact I can speak and understand Mandarin. I like it that way.

I live in the busiest and most populous city of Taipei County, too. There are quite a few foreigners around and it is hardly a backwater.

I think the problem is very much a Taipei thing. And I think it is quite restricted to a few areas of Taipei City. I often notice the different attitude when I go into Taipei. The staff at some shops and restaurants will insist on speaking English. Some will even continue to speak to you in English when it is clear that you can communicate in Mandarin.

I have lived in both China and Taiwan. The only difference I found was that when I was in China very few people could speak any English at all and you could never rely on it to be understood. I think both places are good for learning Mandarin.

I was not in Taipei or Beijing for very long periods of time, but I did not meet anyone who tried to use English with me all the time. On the few occasions that I tried to speak English and not Chinese, the people in both Beijing and Taiwan usually did not understand me

In my own experience: one nice thing in Taiwan in general: lots of people would be curious about you and start to talk to you, and it wouldn't necessarily just follow the same pattern which I heard all the time on Mainland China "Ni shi shenme guojia de", "Ni duo da", "Ni zheng duoshao qian" etc.

Did anyone else find this?

I agree with Roddy's point that you have to make more of an effort in Taiwan. But i think that, having made that effort, it is easier to make friends in Taiwan.

Here I mean the sort of friends that you would go out for a drink with, and who would still be your friends in your own country. Friends of the same sex with whom who you can talk about love, life, the universe and everything.

I love the mainland, but in all my time there, I can count on one hand the number of local friends I made who I can honestly say fall into this category of really good mates. It is possible to make real, close friends there, but I found it difficult.

It might be because Taiwan has been open for longer, and is more westernised. Whatever the reasons, for the me the result is that I found the Taiwanese easier to get along with once I'd got to know them.

I also had the same experience as KuifjeenBobbie, that people are interested in you in Taiwan, but more for who you are than where you're from or whether you like Chinese food.

Of course, I think we can all list the possible economic, social and historical reasons for this, and I'm not just trying to belittle the mainland.

This could me made into a problem for other language combinations as well. In 1967, getting close to finalizing my M.Chem.Eng., I worked in an Amsterdam lab during the summer. Where I worked, with ONE exception, people wanted to practice their English, but I wanted to learn Dutch.

When shopping etc., most people would be patient and not ask me to use English, and where I stayed, the family didn't speak English - an exception in that country, but there was this older (than me, at least) lady and her sister who hadn't had English at school, and two children too young to have acquired anything approaching fluency. So I had lots of possibilites to practice, and it worked out quite well.

How come you can't pretend to not speak english? For example when they say things like "Hello", why don't you just say "我不会说英文，我从德国来的." Even if it's a lie.

Most long journeys from Sweden go via Frankfurt, so it wouldn't even be a lie for me.

I have found that it is easier to make good friends here in Taiwan, and easier to find people to converse in Chinese with. I haven't lived in Beijing, but it is certainly a lot easier for me to be understood and for me to understand others in Taipei speaking Mandarin compared to Kunming.

Lugubert, I can understand. I speak some Dutch though my first language is English. Annoyingly, many people in the Netherlands will just launch into English even if you say something perfectly understandable in Dutch, although it gets less of a problem with each subesequent visit. I find that a polite "Waarom reageert U niet in het Nederlands?!" is usually enough to make them switch back to Dutch

If they ask where I come from I say Duitsland or Rusland which will make them less likely to start speaking English.

I thik it's very good that the standard of English and other languages in the Netherlands is very high, but there is a downside to everything, here, the more people who know a language, the larger the minority which will use their knowledge inappropriately.

In my experience, Dutch and Germans are not pleased themselves when they say something in the local language and get a reply in English just because they are foreigners!

I think the difference between Holland and Taiwan in this respect is that the Taiwanese want to practice their English, and the Dutch want to accomodate the foreigner (and show off their English skills).

I would tend to agree with that in general. I think it is rather misguided and inappropriate for Dutch people to suddenly switch to English without asking in order to "accommodate" the foreigner. By speaking English they build up a barrier between themselves and the foreigner, treating them as if they are unable to converse in Dutch due to their "foreignness" and far from "accommodating" them, accentuate the feeling of "You are a foreigner", making them feel LESS at home!

Also, automatically assuming that the foreigner wants to speak English and not the local language is very often a false asumption! (I am not talking about foreigners who have difficulty constructing a sentence, but those who can converse without difficulty and to whom it is quite unneccessary to speak English)

In several threads in this forum, I noticed that people complained about the "silly" behaviour of certain Chinese people, such as not being able to accept that foreigners are capable of speaking Chinese just because they are foreigners, even after the foreigner had addressed them in Chinese, i.e. believing stereotypes about foreigners being unable to speak Chinese more than their own ears! This is not a purely Chinese problem, but is found in Europe too.

I want to stress that the "silly" people are in a small minority in European Countries (and I assume also in China). Nearly all people in Europe will reply in the local language when addressed intelligibly in it.

Back to the original question of using Chinese in China v. Taiwan:

I've never been to Taiwan, but in various high tech companies I've worked for here around the Seattle area, I'll end up with co-workers from both the R.O.C. and P.R.C., and I've found the same thing: In private conversations, those from the mainland are far more willing for a conversation in Chinese (and sometimes grateful if they're more recently arrived). Those from Taiwan are, at the very least, reluctant and sometimes almost physically unable.

Best example, though purely anecdotal:

I was talking with a colleague from Beijing in a company lunch room once, no one else there, in Chinese. In walks our colleague and friend from Taiwan. He joins us. We continue the conversation. He speaks to the Beijinger in Chinese, but he will only speak to me in English, even though I'm still speaking Chinese to him. The other two of us start to chuckle at this, but he holds his ground through the conversation, even though we can tell he's becoming self-conscious about it.

Finally I stop and ask him, in English, why he won't speak to me in Chinese, even though I'm using Chinese to speak to him.

His reply was something to the effect of: "I'm not sure, but when I see your foreign face, it just doesn't seem right; I can't do it."

If that's just his personal tic, no big deal, but if there's something taught either culturally or formally in schools in Taiwan that would inspire that kind nearly involuntary resistance, it would make for a fascinating study.