April, 2022
Meet Matthew
“I’d say that's the hardest part about being a foreigner is when you run into a confrontation. You have to walk away, you don't have any rights, if you do anything, you're out of the country. So, I think what's really tough is sometimes you don't feel like you can speak your mind, like you would like.”
We’d been discussing Matt’s best and worst moments since he’d moved to Taiwan from Colorado. I’d asked him for a favorite memory, and he described a weekend in Hualien with friends. “The [trip] where you got chased out of that bar?” I asked.
“Yeah, but before that it was really good, and you know it's just like what we talked about, when you have that group of people that clicks, and it's just so good.“
I’d also asked about the bad times, wanting to know what his hardest moment was.
“That girl going off at us at the bar.”
I laughed. “So, the same trip”, I clarified.
He nodded. “I think when you run into a confrontation, you are the one that has to be the bigger person every time.”
We were sitting in our living room on a balmy Taipei night, disrupting an evening routine that usually consisted of me devouring food while he watched TV, both of us complaining about work. Instead, we talked about Matt’s move to Taiwan three years prior, and all the amazing things this country had to offer.
“I think it's the ease of life for the most part, and then the people,” he says, trying to articulate what he loved about living here. “Everything's simpler – not dealing with the government or anything like that – but I think it's just overall a simpler lifestyle. Like not having a car. It's just normal here and I love the fact that not a lot of money goes so far and we're all comfortable and we're able to travel if we want to…I think it's awesome. Back home it's not possible.”
Speaking of home, I ask if there was anything he misses about the States.
“Food.” he answers simply. “Driving. Not like being stuck in traffic, but like that private space, where you're in your own bubble and it's kind of like you’re left to your thoughts, you know? You have a 30-minute drive to work, and you just have your own thoughts, I do miss that. I miss the convenience of it, I guess, little interactions and everything…I don't miss so much. When I went back, I wasn’t happy.”
“I think when you run into a confrontation, you are the one that has to be the bigger person every time.”
He explains he has no detailed plan for his future but is instead guided by his needs in the moment. “My plan is to find somewhere where I'm happy and maybe settle down.” Probably in Asia, he says. “Because I think it's just – money-wise and everything. But you can take me anywhere, I'm not a closed book. And if I end up in South America, I will live in South America. I'll move where I feel I need to, right?”
For the last few years, he’s been content here, but like most foreigners living abroad, inevitably his feelings have changed several times.
“The first 6 months, I thought that I was doing such a great job. But then something happens, right? You have to deal with immigration, or you have to go to the hospital and fill out medical paperwork and you realize real quick that you don't have jack shit, like it just takes a little reminder that you don't know what you're doing.”
This was my experience as well – an S-curve of cultural adjustment that includes a honeymoon phase and excitement followed by culture shock and frustration, ad nauseam.
“There was a time where I was fighting every little thing in my head like ‘why do you guys do it this way, why?’ I used to do it a lot more. Now I know when you go to the bank, you go there and you plan for two fucking hours. Go along with it, right? Thank God for technology, I mean, that helped me get through it a lot, could you imagine moving here 20 years ago? Without a phone in your fucking pocket to tell you where something was. I don't know if I would have been successful 20 years ago without that.”
“I think it’s the ease of life for the most part, and then the people...it’s just overall a simpler lifestyle.”
We both say words of gratitude to our respective phones. Just now, my phone is telling me it’s 24 degrees, something I could in fact guess on my own. The sliding glass doors to our fifth-floor balcony were open to let in the night air, and the gentle sounds of traffic on the busy street next to us wafted in with it. It was one of those nights that blended into the next, much like back home. That was something not often explained by travel blogs and Instagram posts – how the assimilation cycle naturally includes boredom.
“My second year, I think is when I started to feel like it was monotonous,” Matt says. “You know, like it turned into a grind. I think it took a while for me to realize that it wasn't just like a staycation, it was like ‘Ohh shit.’ It's actually just turning into a grind, you know. Like when work stuff starts peeking into all aspects of life, all the time. You start falling asleep thinking about work instead of living here. You're thinking about work, and that's when you realize.”
I admit to him that I’ve thought a lot about that lately – what happens when your new country becomes home, and you’re back to whoever you were before you left. He nods in agreement but asserts he’s still happier here, even after nearly 3 years.
“It’s actually just turning into a grind, you know. Like when work stuff starts peeking into all aspects of life, all the time. You start falling asleep thinking about work instead of living here. You’re thinking about work, and that’s when you realize.”
“How did you choose Taiwan in the first place?” I ask him.
“Me and my sister were running down the choices and Taiwan popped up as one of the best places for expats to live and the pay is really good for the area. It's kind of the center of Asia, like you can get anywhere from here.” His sister had played a huge role in supporting his decision. “With big decisions like that, I usually talk to my sister about it because she has a really level head so she'll kind of like, leave behind the emotions and look at it realistically.”
Must be nice, I joke bitterly, and he laughs. “I mean she's always been very stable with every decision she makes,” he tells me. “She always did good in school, you know. I think she's a really good choice to talk to about it. My dad's too biased…he never wanted me to do it.”
Matt tells me about the months and weeks leading up to his move abroad. “My dad would ask me, ‘Well, what are you going to do? You can't be an event planner forever.’ He would have those conversations with me in passing or while we're having dinner, and in the back of my head I was like, ‘Well, I'm going to move, I want to live out of the country. I can live somewhere else. To me that's more important than anything else. I don't care what I am doing, I just want to live somewhere where I'm happy and I enjoy living there and I don't enjoy living here.’ But I couldn't tell him that,” he says, emphasizing with his hands, “I couldn't articulate that because he would just have too many questions for answers, I wouldn't have enough answers for those questions, right? He would want this well-thought-out process that I wouldn't be able to articulate at the time, and then finally when I made the decision, I talked to my sister and she said ‘Do it, I think you should do it. You need something different.’ And she totally supported me.”
Since those early conversations with his sister, he’s quit his job, moved to two different cities in northern Taiwan, made friends, found an incredible roommate (ahem), and moved through the phases of culture shock to land on adaptation. Clearly, I tell him, this experience has changed him.
“I’m going to move, I want to live out of the country. I can live somewhere else. To me that’s more important than anything else. I don’t care what I am doing, I just want to live somewhere where I’m happy and I enjoy living there and I don’t enjoy living here.”
“Yeah, definitely. I always knew it would. I think my big thing was living back home, it's like, you really do think your country and all of that is so amazing, and it has such a huge impact on the world. Especially being an American, I think that you really are grown up and taught that America is the center of the world, right? And then you live somewhere else, and you realize, it really has such little impact on my daily life. I think it makes you a better person in the sense that you start to respect other people from other cultures, and you understand that they have their own rights and reasons.”
“Isolationism,” he goes on, “I think is such a horrible decision because we're all in it together no matter where you are. We're in Asia, and yeah, we're fighting the same fight that you're fighting. So, trying to isolate yourself from the rest of the world, that's not good for anyone…Back home, you're stuck in your own pain, right? “
Our conversation is punctuated by the sound of the garbage truck down the street, a jingle that I initially confused for an ice cream truck during my first week in Taipei. I’d heard it nearly every night, and assumed Taiwanese people just really, really loved their ice cream. One uncomfortable thing about moving here was needing other people – to help you, to translate, to explain simple things like garbage trucks. I hated feeling dependent on others here, but Matt had a different experience entirely.
“I think, for me, I'm generally happier and I feel more independent here. Back home I was very dependent on my family and I always thought that I was on the cusp of something happening, where I’d have to call my dad up and he’d have to help me out. Like some stupid thing would happen, but I think here I feel very independent. I always felt like I needed someone to do everything, and here [only] for certain things I do, right? Like I needed my job to call to find the closest place to register my health card,” he says with a cheeky smile. “Which I did, by the way.”
“Congratulations,” I tell him with an eye roll, since I’d been bugging him to do it. Independent, my ass.
“See, I think financially and everything I’m more independent,” he says. “What makes me feel happy is that I can tell my family I didn't ask for any help. My dad now, he'll call me every time, every time I talk to him, he'll be like, ‘Do you need anything from me? Do you need me to send you money? Are you doing OK?’ I'm like ‘No Dad, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine’ and that's the first time in my life where I safely can say ‘no actually, Dad I don't need anything from you, I'm just calling to ask how are you.’ Like he's just so worried that I need something. But I think it's very cool to finally stand on my own feet. And you know, yeah, asking them for help is different from asking the locals for help. I think that’s totally different. Asking your family for help, it’s like going back home with your tail between your legs. Asking someone for help here doesn't feel like that, it's not the same thing.”
After some thought I concede that he’s right. No one can be an island, especially living in a new place.
“But I think it’s very cool to finally stand on my own feet. And you know, yeah, asking them for help is different from asking the locals for help. I think that’s totally different. Asking your family for help, it’s like going back home with your tail between your legs.”
Do you have any regrets? Moving here, your decision?
No, no. Not moving here. That's not it. I think it should have done it sooner. I think my biggest regret is I wasted like half of my twenties dicking around, dude, dicking around. I should have moved abroad sooner and I would have more of an idea of where I wanted to be than I do now, right? I think I was just like wandering back home. I had no idea what I wanted to do, and this is the closest I've ever gotten to feeling where I might know what I want to do, and I feel like if I did it five years earlier, I would really be in a better position then. Does that make sense?
I could have skipped so much bullshit and just did this and I would have known more about myself and what I wanted to do, right? And yeah, I wasted all of it. That's absolutely the biggest regret. I mean that was half of my twenties.”
“I should have moved abroad sooner and I would have more of an idea of where I wanted to be than I do now, right? I think I was just like wandering back home. I had no idea what I wanted to do, anything and this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to feeling where I might know what I want to do”
Do you think anyone can do this, live abroad? What does it take? What's the kind of person?
You have to be really open minded. I think I've seen too many people get caught up over very small things, like living situations, apartments, coworkers not speaking English. I think there's a lot of things that people have to understand. Like it's really difficult, but you have to understand that you're living in their country, right? And you chose to live their lifestyle. Absolutely not everyone can do it. I wish that people were more open to different things, but no…I would like to think that most of my friends could but most likely, realistically, no, maybe a quarter of them could probably pull it off.
“It's hard, you know. Sometimes it's really hard, but like I said, I've always told you the worst day here is still better than the best day at home.”
