6 Reasons Not to Study in Taiwan

You’ll need to study a new language If you want to make local friends, you’ll need to learn Chinese. If you want to get the right food when you order, you’ll need to learn Chinese. If you want to really understand the people and the culture, you’ll need to learn Chinese. Talk about a hassle. Just study in one of those English-speaking countries and give your brain a break.
Things will frustrate you The University system is different and challenging, often without much help for foreign students, and very few of their resources are available in English. The traffic is crazy and people will double park around your car, or a drunk man will move your scooter down the street just for fun. You may have a washing machine, but certainly no dryer. The air is dirty from endless cars, scooters, and fireworks. Someone will light off fireworks, at 2AM, outside your window, for no apparent reason. You will be misunderstood. Daily.

Exhaust smoked meat, anyone?

You’ll probably get a better education at home If you come from a North American or European country, you’ll notice that you get what you pay for. University in Taiwan is pennies compared to most Western universities, even free for many international students, but again, you get what you pay for. There’s a reason that only a few Taiwanese universities are accredited, and even fewer are internationally ranked. There’s a lot of reading endless power points, and students making phone calls in class, cheating is commonplace, and your teacher- this just happened to me yesterday, in fact- might not even show up to class. As far as the quality of your in-school education goes, stay home. That said, your cultural education will be beyond anything you expected, and far beyond what you will get back at home.

My morning class. This is the amount of people who are on time.
Life goes on without you The people you love at home are getting on with life while you are away. You’ll miss graduations, weddings, births, deaths, funerals, birthday parties, highs and lows. You’ll be having all kinds of experiences and learning about a new culture, but when or if you return home, chances are, no one will care that you speak Chinese, or that you can tell the authentic fried rice apart from the fake American stuff- they’re still going to eat Panda Express. You’ll have a harder time relating to people back home, and you’ll lose a lot of your old friends.
You’ll meet people with world-views other than your own All you have to so is surround yourself with people just like you, and you’ll always be right! Why bother expanding your horizons and having your opinions challenged when that only creates undue stress and introspection. When studying abroad you’re not only bound to encounter a plethora of international expats, but an entire country of people raised in a way completely different to your personal upbringing. This will be both exciting and challenging; interesting and beyond frustrating. It may cause you to question your own way of thinking and possibly even change. But change is hard… and who needs that?

Some people are just into cats...
You’ll be pushed out of your comfort zone Uprooting normal life to move to a new country, for most people, is way beyond comfortable. So, if you’re comfy cozy in your small town, or you just really like speaking English, stay put. If you’re feeling really adventurous, there’s usually an Asian supermarket around to get your fix, and that’s about enough culture for one day anyhow. Besides, I think I remember there’s a travel special tonight on the Discovery Channel! You get a way better view from your couch anyway, and you can get it in HD! Does life even come in HD?
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As you may have noticed, a lot of this is written fairly tongue-in-cheek. I’m not bashing Taiwan by any means. There is however, a lot of truth to most of the above. Studying abroad is something I would recommend to just about anyone, but it’s not going to be a walk in the park. It’s not like the movies where attractive single friends serendipitously show up on your doorstep needing your help, and you humorously work your way through the ups and downs of the university system with everything working out in the end. You might find out that the country you moved to is just as frustrating as the country you left- maybe even more so. You might get stared at, a lot. You might end up totally broke and homeless, with nothing but a couple of textbooks to your name. ( I can only speak from experience... minus the homeless part. I have thankfully not been without somewhere to live here.)

Overall though, you’ll definitely learn at least something. You’ll learn about yourself, you’ll learn how to deal with frustrating situations and people; you’ll probably get better at charades, you’ll look more cultured when you head to a job interview, you may even learn that you never want to step foot in Asia again and that home is just where you belong. Or, just maybe, you’ll find out that you love Taiwan and you want to spend the rest of your life here- I know plenty of people who have done just that. Either way, you’ll come out of it with more knowledge and experience than you went in.
So maybe, if learning and experience are your end goal, then there really is no reason Not to Study in Taiwan.