Taiwan vs. Mainland China

welcome to another video hey there guys if you've come here for politics I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place but if you're interested in the difference between mainland China and Taiwan stick around so what is the purpose of this video this video is really just being put out there to educate those of you who want to choose between living or traveling to mainland China or Taiwan just so that you know the differences between the way of life what to expect etc I suppose a brief history is in order here for those of you who are unfamiliar with the whole Taiwan and mainland China region and basically there was a big civil war the Nationalist Party fled to Taiwan and the Communist Party stayed in mainland China and so two different political systems in two different countries more or less grew up from that specific point in time so you have a situation these days where mainland China claims Taiwan is being part of Chinese territory and you have the Taiwan Island claiming to be an independent country and both of them are at loggerheads and it's just a big political mess which I'm certainly not going to get involved in and so like I said this video is not about politics but it's important that you understand this fact before I get on with the rest of the video now I am fairly qualified to talk about this topic because first of all I've been living here in mainland China for over 10 years now and I visited Taiwan on numerous occasions I've been around the entire Taiwanese Island on a motorcycle and I actually grew up with some Taiwanese friends so without any further ado let's start talking about the differences between mainland China and Taiwan now before I get into food and cost-of-living and that sort of thing I'd like to actually give you my first impressions of Taiwan now I may have mentioned in my Hong Kong versus mainland China video that Hong Kong is more or less like a mixture of England and China and that's reflected in the architecture the style of clothing the food everything like that and the same goes for Taiwan except Taiwan is a mixture of Japan and China and you will see it in the architecture you will see it in the infrastructure and you'll see it in the food and of course the styles of music and fashion and things like that so let's start by talking about food I have to say that if there was one particular quality that I could take from Taiwan and basically say that this is the reason to go there it would be the food now the reason that I say that is that Taiwan went through some sort of a food revolution and they have created these amazing mixtures of Chinese food Western food and Japanese food and you can find it everywhere the street food is out of this world the probably the best no not probably it is the best street food that you can find in the world all you need to do is go to any one of the Taiwanese night markets look around try all the different snacks on offer and you will see you'll be convinced you get things like Chinese dumplings with cheese and oh I just it's difficult to explain but there's a lot of dairy which you don't get in Chinese food so you finally have Chinese food mixed with dairy products which is incredible and of course you've got all the Japanese influence there as well so yes food in Taiwan is an absolute must also the quality control is really good there you don't have the same problems with tainted food as you do in the mainland so you can be pretty safe and you can be pretty secure that if you go to a restaurant in Taiwan that the food's going to be safe to eat of course on the flip side of that if you want authentic Chinese food there's no better place to go than mainland China it's a massive place unfortunately those if you want to try all the different kinds of foods you actually have to travel to each individual province and place to try it whereas in Taiwan it's so small it's very easy to just go around and try all the different kinds of foods there so if you're looking for an authentic Chinese food and you know what China is so diverse and so big that you have so many different choices that you cannot cantered being basically a foodies heaven but personally still I think Taiwan's a better bet because of the fusion of the foods where you can find the best of all different kinds of foods kind of put into one place anyway let's move on from food and let's get into cost-of-living now it may surprise a lot of you out there but cost of living is actually cheaper in Taiwan than it is in mainland when it comes to rent I have a friend who lives there and for the same amount that I pay for my single bedroom tiny little apartment here in mainland China he gets a full bedroom massive big lovely place and well it's frustrating but at the same time the buildings in Taiwan tend to be older because there's of course this big construction boom here in mainland China so you will be probably have a slightly older place slightly more run-down whereas here you can get yourself and mind you I am talking about the big cities here not rural villages because small rural villages and towns here in mainland China you can you can rent for nothing but in the big cities you're going to be paying a lot more rent than you do in the big cities in Taiwan when it comes to the cost of food it's very much of a muchness because once again it depends on what you're eating if I wanted to I could live on less than ten r&b a day here in mainland China it wouldn't be comfortable I'd be eating pretty bland stuff like Monto which is steamed bread rice you know some kind of cheap noodles and maybe a little bit of rubbish meat but I could survive on ten RMB a day I would say that it's probably possible to do the same in Taiwan as well but you'd need to know where to get your local stuff and your cheap foods of course nobody wants to subsistence live like that so let's talk about the average kind of price if you go out to a normal restaurant I'd say that if you're going to just a normal restaurant in mainland China you're going to pay slightly less than in Taiwan but if you want to go to a western-style restaurant or some kind of specialty gourmet food restaurant you will pay less in Taiwan than you will in mainland China now for all you travelers out there who might be interested in transport and infrastructure well once again this is much of a muchness taiwan has a very developed infrastructure buses trains and of course it's a very small island so it's fairly simple and easy to get from one side to the other there are lots of different options there's a high-speed rail that goes straight down the middle which have been on there is of course a subway system in Taipei and tae-jong all the big cities and here in mainland China you have a similar situation but because it's so big it's a lot more difficult to get around although there are big intercity buses and trains of course you just can't get everywhere that easily in the big cities like Shenzhen and Shanghai and Beijing and Guangzhou you do have subway systems but it's only in the biggest cities the smaller cities yeah you know you won't find a subway system so you'd have to rely on buses and taxis and of course there is one thing that I have to say about Taiwan that I love and that is the fact that you can ride scooters and motorbikes everywhere and it's completely legal and everybody does it whereas here in China mainland China you are not allowed to ride motorbikes in the big cities like Shenzhen and scooters things like that are completely banned because they are seen as a poor-man's form of transport and they just don't want to sully the image of the big cities so you have a lot of trouble if you're a biker like myself you will have a lot of trouble adjusting to not being able to ride in the biggest cities in mainland China working in Taiwan versus working in mainland China is very different you will be expected to work harder and longer hours in Taiwan than in mainland China and I'm talking from speaking to my friends who work and live there and even something like an English teacher which let's be fair the majority of English speaking foreigners who go to live and work in Taiwan or mainland China that's what they're doing is English teaching you have to be a lot more diligent like I said put in more hours do more lesson plans and your performance will also constantly be reviewed by your management stuff whereas here in mainland China you can get away with being fairly lazy working less hours and still earning the same sort of salary and being able to live the same sort of life the next thing I'd like to talk about is scenery now Taiwan is actually very well known for being an incredibly beautiful place and it is I've been around the entire island and I have to say that I was blown away the abundance of natural beauty that you see in Taiwan is quite hard to comprehend if you get on a scooter and ride around or a motorbike you can be up in a mountain going climbing up and reach a sort of snow-capped Mountain and go down the other side and be it a nice warm sunny beach you have just because it's a very fertile volcanic sort of Island you have a lot of lush vegetation it's just it's an incredibly beautiful place however it is very small so you can see the whole place in a couple of days of riding around which it's a bit disappointing here in mainland China you get incredible vistas landscapes beautiful scenery but it's very spread out so unfortunately here in mainland China if I wanted to go see some beautiful scenery I'd have to put a lot of planning into it would take a couple of days first of all I'd have to undergo the nightmarish travel all the way out there because taking public trains and buses etc here in mainland China is really a bit of a chore I've done a video about it talking about travel frustrations here's a link even if you drive your own car or motorbike you have to put up with hundreds of kilometres of basically bad traffic and bad roads so it's quite frustrating whereas in Taiwan if you wanted to go see some beautiful scenery you could literally hop on your scooter or hop in your car or take a bus be there in a couple of hours do what you want to do there and then come back and be home for dinner so that's also another thing to take into consideration however it would be unfair to say that either place has better scenery than the other because both places you can be guaranteed you will see some amazing beautiful stunning scenery that you've just never seen before in your life of course I can't talk about choosing a place to live without mentioning Internet and as we all know the Internet here in mainland China is censored and it's incredibly frustrating for any Westerner who's used to doing anything on the Internet really all Google services are blocked and that includes things like Google Translate in Google Maps and of course YouTube Facebook blogger Twitter you name it it's blocked everything's blocked if you go online 90% of the things we want to get to our blocked which is incredibly frustrating whereas in Taiwan of course everything's open and you can use your Android phone without any issues so that's something to take into consideration too there is one more thing that I would like to talk about and that is if you're interested in temples and Chinese tradition and culture things like that Taiwan is without a doubt a much better place for you to go to take a look at that sort of thing in fact it's every way that you walk everywhere like on the side of the street you'll see a temple you'll see dragons you'll see all these traditional things happening around you all the time now of course here in mainland China there were big reforms during the Cultural Revolution etc and wiped out most of that tradition so although it still survives and there are still temples here and of course there are some very famous ones Shaolin temples things like that it's difficult to find I can walk around this entire city that I'm in right now and I won't see any real tradition here however in Taiwan pretty much everywhere you go there's a temple there's someone doing there you know praying there's people carrying good luck charms etc so that's another thing to take into consideration that's not to say of course that you can't enjoy all the traditional festivals and things like that here in mainland China it's just a little less authentic so why did I choose mainland China over Taiwan well to be frank it's down to adventure and opportunity there's a lot more opportunity for work in mainland China especially for foreigners since in Taiwan Taiwan's been open to the west for years and years and years it's loaded with foreigners everywhere you go they're foreigners there it's very easy a lot of nations don't even need a visa to go in there so everywhere you go they're foreigners and so the opportunity is less and although Taiwan is a fascinating place because it's been open to the west for so long there's no real mystery left everything that can be seen has already been seen and you can read about it in just about any any Travel Guide you like whereas here in mainland China I've managed to go and see places and things that probably very few foreigners ever have so I leave you with this Taiwan at least for an english-speaking foreigner is definitely a much easier choice I've got friends who've lived there for years and they haven't had to speak a word of Chinese since most people there can actually speak English but if you're looking for a big adventure and a bit of the unknown mainland China is a bit of a better bet anyway guys thank you for watching and can't wait to see you in the next video until next time as always thank you

Channel: serpentza

Views: 465,904

Rating: 4.7542562 out of 5

Keywords: taiwan vs china, china vs taiwan, Mainland China, mainland, Taiwan, visa, Republic of China, People's republic of China, Travel, Work, Food, Taiwanese, Chinese, night market, language, Cost of living, Rent, Cost of food, Scenery, Exploration, Adventure, Winston Sterzel, Beer, China, patreon, serpentza, Bikes, culture, macau, china how it is, vegas, asia, taipei, taiwan number one, taiwanese drama, taiwan news, taiwanese animators, taiwan drama, taiwan street food, taiwan movie, taiwanese drama 2016

Id: DJ_KDw3y43M

Length: 15min 4sec (904 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 03 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Roygbiv0415]

This guy's basically standing put on camera, why not lock it to manual focus =3=. The wandering focus is annoying...

[u/mprey]

Stopped watching at his "You don't get tainted food in Taiwan" bit.

[u/Tapeworm_fetus]

Does Taichung have a metro? I thought it was just Taipei and Kaohsiung. I don't think the BRT counts...