Are you a foreigner living in southern Taiwan? then I’m guessing you have a difficult time finding information in English about what’s going on. Foreigners in Taipei have a relatively easy life with established communities and Taiwan portals such as Forumosa and Tealit, but as far as I can tell after a month of living in Tainan - all other foreigners in Taiwan have a much bigger challenge.
But, through means of word-to-mouth and accidental browsing and blogging, I slowly realized that there is some information scattered out there, and there are even small communities, only those aren’t that obvious. Following is a list of resources I was able to find.
I’ll start with what I consider a troubling trend for southern Taiwan expats - the growing usage of Yahoo Groups to collaborate on a certain topic. Posting an ad for my apartment search a while back I was overwhelmed with the responses I got - not for offering me an apartment, but for trying to convince me that as an Israeli I can make really good money by teaching English in buxibans. The Yahoo Groups are uncategorized, unsorted and are difficult to browse through, not to mention being full of ads for various kinds of strange services. Why are those Yahoo groups so popular here, and how come nobody was able to form a normal Forumosa/Tealit alternative for southern Taiwan?
Following are the Yahoo groups for southern Taiwan that I’m aware of:
Tainan_bulletin · The Online Community Bulletin in Tainan
We’re here to share or just see what everyone else is talking about. Need a job or pass on job info? Looking for housing? Getting set up? Run for members by members, anyone is welcome.
TBKO · Tainan Buxiban/Kindergarten/Others
This group focuses only on places to teach.
KaohsiungLiving_com · Kaohsiung Living, Connect Kaohsiung
If you are living in Kaohsiung, then this is your place to connect to anyone and everyone. Buy stuff, sell stuff, help for English teachers and employers, jobs, events, and all kinds of other fun stuff.
There are also other groups that are grouped around specific topics, also using online tools, like FaceBook, Flickr, and yet again - Yahoo Groups (arrr…):
Tainan ppl gather here - Tainan facebook group
Tainan is a distint city that reserves the oldest Taiwanese culture, tradition, and custom. Tainan is also named "Fu-Chen, meaning "the capital" in Chinese. This group welcomes anyone who is interesting to explore another look of Taiwan through knowing the city "Tainan", or who has ever been to Tainan, or simply was born in tainan
Institute of International Management Batch 2006
National Cheng Kung University
The Tainan Images flickr group
Anything about Tainan,please feel free to post here…=)
If you’re looking for other sources of information, I’d give the following a try:
The Real Taiwan - the Tainan directory
John’s a friendly Tainan based blogger (with an incredibly cute daughter) who’s running a very helpful and interesting Tainan blog that has some great information with a Tainan directory and links supporting local Tainan expat places.
The Expat Magazine Tainan directory
FYI SOUTH and the Taiwan Fun Tainan portal
FYI South brings alive Tainan [...] with local listings of hotspots, articles, full-sized pull-out maps and much more.
Did I miss anything?
David on Formosa
| September 7th, 2007 at 6:39 pm #
I see you’ve started a Tainan section at Taiwanderful. It’s a great idea. I know the information I have put in there is very Taipei-centric and I always hoped people could contribute information about other parts of Taiwan.
fiLi
| September 9th, 2007 at 7:38 am #
Yep, I’ll start updating that a bit more as I get things going. I think that with time it will slowly become one of the bigger sections over there…