New City

We moved again. By we, I mean Lily, Kevin and me. We were in the Yau Ma Tei apartment for six years. It was a good apartment, definitely better than anything any of us ever had in Hong Kong, but it was time for a change. For several reasons.

Kevin's company relocated out of China. They were talking about it for a long time. Long enough that some of us were starting to think it would never happen. But it eventually did. That left Kevin with the option of moving with his company or staying put and trying to find a new job. That was a big decision that required a few conversations. He probably could have found a comparable job in Hong Kong, but he wanted to keep climbing his ladder rather than start at the bottom somewhere else. As a Canadian in China, he does not have as many options in the corporate world as he would if he were Chinese. He speaks the language, understands the culture and has the legal right to live and work in Hong Kong, but he will never be Chinese.

Lily wanted to stay in China, but she also wanted to support Kevin. Once upon a time, she had a pretty good job in Hong Kong. But then she went back to Canada when her father died. That cost her the job and her work visa. In the eyes of the government, that meant her first day in Hong Kong was when she got her new visa, even though she had already lived there for several years. She kind of got screwed on that deal.

I voted to leave China. Not because of anything Hong Kong ever did or said. She has always been nice to me. I was ready to move because Kevin's company went to Taiwan.

One of life's greatest adventures is moving to another country. I recommend it wholeheartedly. But it is definitely not for everyone. You have to be an open minded person. You have to be curious about other cultures and the crazy shit they do. You have to be ready for change. The single biggest mistake any expat can make is to want the new country to be just like the old country. That's not the way it works. You have to adapt to your new home. It is not going to adapt to you. If you are ready, willing and able, living in a completely different country can be a highly educational and rewarding experience. If you are set in your ways and hate change, moving to a different country will kill you.

Having said that, Taiwan is a similar culture to China, and I already speak the language. So it's not really that much of a change. It is absolutely a different country, but almost like moving from Toronto to Milwaukee.

The biggest difference between moving to China and moving to Taiwan was what I knew about each place ahead of time. I knew pretty much nothing about Hong Kong before I moved there. I knew the basic Chinese to British to Chinese history. I knew they had strange food and their people were different from my people. I knew what most Americans know about China, which is pretty much nothing.

I'm far from an expert on Taiwan, but at least I visited a few times before moving. I understand the culture. Living in China helped a great deal. I can't necessarily explain why the people do things the way they do them, but their ways are familiar to me, and I took some of them as my own years ago. An easy example is that no one around here wears shoes in the house. Where I come from, we wore the same shoes everywhere, even the bedroom and bathroom. When I tell my Chinese friends that, they wonder what is wrong with my backwards culture. I can understand their disgust. No matter where I live in the world from now on, I will never wear shoes indoors again.

The biggest pain in the butt to moving to a different country, other than dragging all your crap from one place to another, is all the paperwork. In Hong Kong, Kevin and I are as close to being citizens as you can get. Legally, no one is actually a citizen of Hong Kong. You are a citizen of whichever country you hold citizenship and you are either a permanent resident or a temporary resident of Hong Kong. Kevin and I are permanent residents, while Lily was a temporary resident. The main difference is what they call the right of abode. Kevin and I can legally live, work and vote in Hong Kong without any visas or threat of deportation. It is also easier to buy property. As a temporary resident, Lily needed a visa to work in Hong Kong and could not vote in elections. The government could also kick her out of the country for any or no reason at any time, though that is rare, unless you blow things up or go on a murder spree. When anyone with the right of abode leaves Hong Kong for three years, their status is automatically changed to the right to land. That means that after three years, Kevin and I will still be able to live and work in Hong Kong without visas, but we will not be able to vote and will not be as eligible for all those free government handouts. We will also lose the option of becoming Chinese citizens, which neither of us were ever going to do since we would have to renounce our Canadian and American citizenship. My country has a lot of problems, systemic and temporary, but a US passport is far more useful than a Chinese passport in most of the world.

To move to Taiwan, we all had to start from scratch. Kevin moved for work, so his company got him a work visa and alien resident card, which is pretty much the same as the Hong Kong Identity Card. He had to sign a piece of paper and other people did everything for him.

I have gotten a few job offers from Taiwan over the years. I always turned them down because I lived in China. That would have been a long commute. But I spent the last year mostly unemployed. As soon as Kevin's company formally announced that Taiwan was happening, I looked at my options. The job I got in Taiwan just might turn out to be a lot better than the unemployment I had in China. With a job, I also got a work visa and alien resident card. The biggest difference with Kevin is that I had to do all the paperwork myself, which was really not all that complicated. I went to the government office, gave them a lot of paperwork and a little bit of money, then went back later to pick up the card. I don't know if it was easy because Taiwan made it easy or if it was easy because I have experience getting work visas in several other countries.

Technically, I taught ballet to little girls for the past two years. But that was always a part time job and not something I would ever put on my resume. I had to say goodbye to my students, but they are young and will get over it far faster than I will. They have probably already forgotten me.

Lily's situation is a little different. She spent the last four years teaching English in China. That makes it sound like she was a teacher, but she worked in a cram school, which is more like babysitting than teaching. Actually learning English was not a priority for the school or parents. The school was there to make as much money as possible. The parents used the school to keep their children occupied until they got home from work. If the children's test scores improved a little, all the better. Lily considered herself a babysitter/tutor.

But she enjoyed working with the children. Taiwan has a similar cram school system, and as a young woman from an English speaking country, she could probably get one of those low paying, part time cram school jobs. She had other ideas.

Lily is now working on a master's degree in early childhood education. As it turns out, Taiwan has two schools where she could do this without really being able to speak much Chinese. One of those schools is 350km from our new apartment. The other is about a kilometer and a half. It was an easy choice.

With a student visa, she cannot legally work in the country. That means Kevin and I will be paying her bills for the next two to three years. Or, more likely, she will eventually find a job and get a work visa so she can work and go to school at the same time. Fortunately, tuition will not be one of those bills. Taiwan invests heavily in education and they love people who want to study education in order to educate future generations. With scholarships from both the university and the government, Lily should not have to pay a dime on classes or books.

Since we are all starting over, we are all foreigners once again. We were always foreigners in China, but at least Kevin and I were de facto citizens. In daily life, that never really made much difference, but when going through the airport, it was terribly convenient. Hong Kong International Airport is known for their long lines, though they move quickly. As “citizens”, we could avoid them completely. At Taoyuan International Airport, we are foreigners in every sense of the word. I have no idea if we will be here long enough to get any perks, which usually takes about seven years. In the meantime, we have to fill out forms, wait in lines and keep our visas up to date. None of us can vote or live here unrestricted. For now.