Taipei

At the moment I'm living in Panchiao City in Taipei. My neighbourhood's a bit of a dump, but it's only for another six months or so. After that the plan is to find a higher-paying job somewhere else in Taipei, preferably a higher class district. Having said that, it's a damn sight better than living in China, here I'm surrounded by convenience stores and can pretty much do what I like when I like. Certainly not like in Mainland China, when I was stuck in the middle of the Gobi desert. Of course, there are a few complaints about Taiwan, notably the godforsaken climate (incredibly hot and sticky right now), and the lack of variety of Taiwanese food. While dumplings, fried rice and chow mein are nice, they do get a little dull after a while. Thankfully there are loads of sushi takeaways and other random ethnic food about, such as Japanese octopus balls and some Middle Eastern sandwich. The Chinese name is shaweima, no idea what it is in English. Comparing this place to Mainland China is a bit tough. In China, I was stuck in a remote desert town (well, a town by Chinese standards) in the second poorest province, Gansu. Here, I'm pretty close to Taipei, the biggest and richest city on the island. All in all, it's tough to know what's due to differences between rich and poor and what's really different between the two countries. There are obvious things, such as the different accents and different faces on the coins, and then there's the fact that to the Mainland Chinese I was a foreigner (waiguoren), whereas over here it's assumed I'm American.