Introduction

Hello everyone! It's been over a year and a half that I, and I'm sure the vast majority of you, have been dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. To say that it changed my life would be quite the understatement. In a previous life, I was involved in the music industry. OK, I am still in the same industry, but everything is upside down.

For work and life reasons, I divided my time between my native Montreal in the summer and fall seasons, and Tokyo and Taipei, in the winter and spring seasons. I also frequently traveled to the USA and Europe for work related reasons. I rarely stayed in one place for more than a few months (if even), and this is how my life had been for most of my adult life. 

However, for the first time in my life, I stayed put in one place for over a year, and not only that, in a place where I did not have a resident status! How did this start?

As I mentioned earlier, I always spent my winters in Asia, so in December of 2019, I packed my bags for Japan where I spent just under 3 months living in Tokyo. For the past few years, I had been involved with a music festival in Taipei called the Taipei Gypsy Jazz Festival. It is organized by a friend of mine, Vincent, who is doing very important work developing the arts scene in Taiwan. Well, in 2020, the dates were locked in for mid-March. I planned to arrive a bit earlier and my flight was on February 24th 2020. 

As all of you know, that's when people started to take the virus seriously, especially in Asia. The reaction to the news of Covid-19 in Japan during the time I was there was rather interesting and perhaps best told another time. I'm also thinking of creating a blog about my life in Japan.

I was very lucky to be among the last who could get a flight to Taiwan, as shortly after, flight were getting cancelled left and right. As soon as I arrived though, I received news that the festival would be cancelled. It actually still happened, but in a much more reduced capacity, and mainly for locals, although a few Japanese participants did show up. In previous editions of the festival, people came from Malaysia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Thailand, etc. It's the first pan-Asian festival of its kind and it relied a lot on tourist economy. When news hit that travel restrictions were being implemented, the organizer had to pull the plug. Remember, that this was a time when things were still new and uncertain, so a lot of things were happening very suddenly.

I was scheduled to fly back to Japan in early April where I'd spend another month and a half before flying back to Canada where I had many months of work lined up in Canada, USA, and Europe; enough work to last me until my return trip to Asia in December of 2021.

Well, in March, as you can guess, things got worse and worse. My flight back to Tokyo kept getting delayed, and finally Japan closed its borders to non-citizens. If my flight had not kept getting delayed, I could have potentially been one of the last few to be able to get in, but such was fate.

Around the same time, I got an email from the government of Canada urging all Canadians expats to return home ASAP to avoid complications. My gut instinct told me that Canada was very ill-prepared for something like this and I chose to risk things and stay in Taiwan.

I still had a flight back to Canada from Tokyo in mid-May, and I would try to see if I could change the route so I could fly home from Taipei. Before I could even attempt to do anything like this, my flight in Canada kept getting delayed, until it finally got cancelled for good. I was effectively "stuck" in Taiwan.

I was not worried at all since Taiwan was dealing with it very well. My main concern was my legal status here. With my Canadian passport, I could only live 3 months in Taiwan. Luckily, the government was adding automatic extensions every month. This was unprecedented, but it temporarily solved my legal issues. Every time they added an extension, they kept saying it would be the final extension they would make, and as far as I can remember, they said this almost every month!

So many, like myself, were in a bit of a situation trying to figure out how to avoid legal problems when the "last" extension would expire. This is when I heard of the Taiwan Employment Gold Card program. This Gold Card program is very interesting, and it is one of the reasons why I decided to create a blog. Essentially, it is a work visa that lasts up to three years. It basically grants you almost all the same privileges as an actual Taiwanese citizen minus certain obvious things like the right to vote. From what I understand, foreigner work visas are fairly strict in Taiwan but this Gold Card program allows people to freely do whatever they want from a work perspective. Basically, I didn't have to be employed already to apply, I didn't have to have an offer of employment in Taiwan, and once I got the card, I could look for jobs in any industry, create my own business, etc. Finally, I could get my dream job working minimum wage at McDonald's! (Just kidding for those who come from cultures where sarcasm does not exist).

Apparently, the requirements to get the Gold Card are fairly strict, and it's not anyone who can get it. They're targeting professionals from various industries. I applied under the Arts and Culture category. Some people hired lawyers to get theirs. It would have been significantly more expensive, and while I did have the money to afford it, I wasn't willing to spend much more money to increase my chances. At the time, I was willing to take things as they came. If I got rejected, with the money that I would have used to hire a lawyer, I could get a flight back to Canada when the automatic visa extension scheme ended. Fast forward a year and a half, the government is still issuing automatic visa extensions!

Anyway, I was successful in my application, and since October of 2020, I have been a legal resident of Taiwan!

So why does this Gold Card program exist in the first place? It's a fairly new program that was created in 2018. Taiwan has been in a very complicated political situation since the end of World War II. The complex political situation has made it so that Taiwan needs all it can get to boost its international status. Therefore, the Gold Card program is a way to attract foreign talent so as to boost its image.

Let me just be direct: Taiwan actually does not exist. It is just a name that people use, and the legal name of this island is Republic of China (ROC), not to be confused with the People's Republic of China (PROC) which is basically run by the Chinese Communist Party. Taiwan does not have a flag, the flag of Taiwan is the flag of the ROC, when Taiwanese people are feeling proud of being Taiwanese, they wave the flag of the ROC. Many have absolutely no idea what the difference is, and this difference is rather important as it has to do with the complex situation that Taiwan finds itself in.

A little bit more aboout myself, I am the son of Taiwanese parents who fled ROC because my father had been blacklisted. My father and his brother were involved in activism and apparently were fairly high on the target list of the ROC. My father's brother (my uncle)'s wife was even imprisoned. I don't have all the details, but apparently she is a well known politician in Taiwan.

From my father's side, my family is very political. However, I grew up knowing nothing about that as my family never spoke to me about anything like this. My father suddenly passed away in 2002, and the funeral was very atypical. It was a fairly big event, and there were politicians in attendance. It even made the news and newspapers. Here is an article from Taipei Times. 

I grew up very sheltered, and my parents sacrificed everything to give me and my brothers a good life. So when he suddenly passed away, I was left very confused by what I was observing at the big funeral event. 

As the youngest in my family, I did not get to know my father like my older brothers did. My father left Montreal to continue work in Asia when I was about eight years old. First in Japan, and then in Taiwan. So the only time I'd see him is on summer break when my mother would take me to Japan or Taiwan. Sometimes, my father would come back to Montreal as well.

My father's passing is very unfortunate, but I took this as a lesson to try to change my life for the better. I would consider my father's passing the second major chapter of my life after my birth, and it set the foundations for a lot of who I am today. For the first time, I was actually interested in knowing more about Taiwan's history and my family's history. My family's history is difficult to study because my family generally does not like to talk about the old days. Apparently they were heavily persecuted by the government that controlled the ROC, the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT). Those days fills my mother with very negative emotions and so despite my interest in history, I never approached this topic with her, as it would probably be too much for her.

Wow! This is a long intro! I tend to write a lot but let me cut to the chase: if my father's passing is to considered the next major chapter in my life, the Covid-19 pandemic is probably one of the next biggest chapters of my life, as everything turned upside down.

I had to reinvent myself and adapt. The pandemic should never have happened. Yet if it had never happened, I would have never met so many people that I now cherish very much. I would not have become more involved with Taiwan than I am now. I took something very negative and tried to make it as positive as possible. Actually 2020 was one of the better years of my life in terms of personal development.

I feel more committed to the development of Taiwan. Going back to the Gold Card, the government is trying to attract foreign talent because it needs as much international support as it can get.

My goal in creating this blog has multiple purposes: 

-To share with people more information about my understanding of the complex history of Taiwan. Despite my family's political background, I do try to remain as impartial as possible, which is not always easy. 

-To help promote the Gold Card program and therefore help with the development of Taiwan as a nation. It is a great program, and it is a step in the right direction, but there are many things to address. Many people are aware of it, and I feel that while the good should be promoted, we also have to address some of the negative aspects of not just the program in itself, but Taiwanese society in general. 

-To help foreigners integrate better into Taiwanese society. Even though, I have been traveling to Taiwan every year for well over 10 years, there are some things that I still cannot get used to. Foreigners may experience varying levels of culture shock. Of course, as a foreigner, a lot of times, it is for me to adapt. That goes without saying, but there are some cultural practices here that no one should ever have to tolerate, and that even many "enlightened" Taiwanese speak against. There is of course no perfect society. I am not a nationalistic person. While I am thankful to have Canadian citizenship and the privileges that come with it, I have never celebrated Canada Day because as much as I am thankful to have whatever privileges I have, there are still many societal issues to sort out. This is the same everywhere in the world, and I feel it is important to address these issues openly and rationally.

-On the topic of integration. I didn't speak Mandarin until 2014. I didn't go to school to learn but I learned on the street through friends, and I highly recommend Jenny Lin's JL Mandarin School, in my opinion one of the very best teachers of Mandarin for anyone looking to live in Taiwan. Here lessons are specifically made for people whose goal is to live in Taiwan. She is the one who helped me get started and I quickly noticed she had a talent for teaching. I encouraged her to create her own teaching business and I'm very happy that she's flourishing now. Her students are generally high profile people: celebrities, diplomats, politicians, CEOs, etc. OK enough promo! At any rate, I want to share some survival Mandarin with those of you who don't speak the language yet or are studying it. As someone heavily involved with education myself, I know what it's like not speaking a language, and I am confident I can be of help to many of you. 

There we go! That's the purpose of this blog. I find myself with a lot more free time than usual, so I figure I'd do this! I will introduce myself a little bit more in future posts but in the meantime, if you want to check out my music:

https://duvedandhistransatlanticfive.bandcamp.com/album/more-than-you-know

https://dcmusique.bandcamp.com/album/for-jimmy