You can now borrow a power bank at any 7-11 and leave it back at any other branch. The rental fee is NT$12 per hour, with a 24-hour max charge of NT$36 and a 72-hour maximum rental period. They will hold NT$300 on your card until you return it. If you want to cancel a transaction, you can also return it within 10 minutes without charge. You can check out a list of participating stores here! Wireless and wired charging are both available for Android and Apple.
First, check to see if the Ibon machine at the 7-11 you’re at has any power banks inserted at the bottom. If not, they might all have been rented, or it might not be a participating store. If you do see power banks, you can follow the steps below to rent:
Step 1: At the Ibon Machine main menu, hit 「生活服務」 (everyday services)
I recently applied to swap my UK license for a Taiwanese license, under the mutual driver license agreement signed by Taiwan and the UK.
As I’m from Belfast, I thought that I’d have some difficulty swapping my license under the UK-Taiwan license exchange program. I did have to do some extra explaining but was able to swap successfully.
The initial announcement of the scheme when the memorandum of understanding was signed specified that Northern Irish licenses were excluded, but when the scheme launched in January of this year, no such exclusion was mentioned in the description of the scheme. I messaged the British Office, and they said they had no idea and told me to ask the Taiwanese Motor Vehicle Office. They were a bit more helpful and said that the agreement specified that it was the entire UK (which, of course, includes Northern Ireland).
If you’re from any part of the UK except for Northern Ireland, you can use the gov.uk system to create a check code for your license (used by the British Office to verify your license). If you’re from Northern Ireland, your license number won’t fit, however, and you have to use the NI direct system to create a check code (you have to create an account and apply to upload info on your license, but it’s reasonably simple). I created my check code (to be used within 21 days of creation) and printed out the docs.
I set off to the Taipei Motor Vehicles Office (臺北市區監理所) in Songshan District (about 10 minutes walk from Nanjing Sanmin MRT Station), but you can go to any office. When you arrive, you will have to proceed to the 2nd floor and hit the ticket machine for driver’s licenses.
Checklist:
Passport
ARC valid for at least six months
UK driver’s license
Check code
2 x Driver License (1 inch) photographs (there is a photo booth at the office)
NIA Certificate of Entry and Exit dates (Note: I didn’t bring this and they didn’t ask, but it’s listed by the British Office – link below)
The staff didn’t know what to do with the NI Direct check code, as they’d only been instructed to use the gov.uk system. So the woman came out and discussed it with me and I told her that Northern Ireland has a different agency and a different system and she said she would check with the British Office and get back to me.
You don’t have to hand in your health check until you are contacted and your check code has been authenticated, but it’s quite convenient to do it the same day at the nearby Po Jengh Hospital (博仁綜合醫院). While you’re handing in your license info and check code, you can ask for the following form to do your health check:
Go to the main door of the hospital and tell the security guard that you want to do a driver license health check (駕照體檢/jiàzhào tǐjiǎn). He’ll stamp your hand with a blue “P” and tell you to go into an alley and go in a side entrance on the left. This is the special entrance for health checks. You take the elevator up and then take a ticket and wait for the various checks (it took me around 20-30 mins). Remember to take NT$300 in cash to pay for the health check. They check your hearing and sight and a few other basic checks. After you pay, you have to take the health check certificate back down to the main lobby of the hospital to get stamped (you don’t have to take a number, there should be a lady sitting to the left who deals with your form).
You don’t have to hand the health certificate in that day and can just wait for the office to contact you. They were pretty quick for me, I did it on the Friday before the 228 bridge weekend and got notified it was authenticated on the following Tuesday. I went back to the Motor Vehicle Office with my passport, ARC, my driver’s license, the health check and driver license photos (these have to be the same as the one you put on your health check form.
When you go back to the office, specify that it’s your second visit and they’ll go looking for your info. Then after a bit of staring at your ARC, passport and license (approx. 15 mins) they’ll hand you your Taiwanese license and take away your UK license (you can get this back if you return to the UK and return the Taiwanese license to the DVLA).
Out and about in Taipei over the new year, I spotted quite a lot of Year of the Tiger couplets, some printed, some more original. Some of them even gave an insight into the political persuasion of the inhabitants.
This couplet was distributed by Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), chair of the Taiwan People’s Party, and it was one of the main rivals to the one issued by President Tsai Ing-wen and Vice President Lai Ching-te. If you’re a Ko-fen (柯粉/a fan of Ko Wen-je) or just fancy a few political discussions in your lobby with neighbours of different political stripes, you can print it yourself at the Taipei City gateway here. The Chinese word for “tiger” (虎 hu3) is a near-homonym for 「褔」 (good fortune/fu2), especially in Taiwanese-accented Mandarin (台灣國語) in which the “h” sound is often pronounced as “f”. So this couplet is a play on this, with the first two characters having the dual meaning of “tiger pouncing” and “a jump in wealth.”
President Tsai volleyed with this snazzy design 「福運旺來」 (again, good fortune also hints at its near homonym in tiger):
The couplet on the right of the doorway below reads: 「事業興旺」 (asking for success in career), while on the right panel there is another tiger couplet.
On the left panel of the door there are some quite cool examples of compound characters (合體字):
The use of Taiwanese in this Ministry of Foreign Affairs post struck me as interesting. As the term 「換帖」 exists in Mandarin too, they used romanized script to ensure that it is read in Taiwanese. I guess this makes it harder for people in a certain country to work out what it’s supposed to mean, but I also wonder how many Taiwanese people would catch on:
「可以說是台灣的uānn-thiap–ê 的柯寧參議員」
You could say Senator Cornyn is bosom buddies with Taiwan.
“uānn-thiap–ê” describes a close friendship formed by a blood-brothers style pact, wherein two friends exchange cards with information on each other (name, age, place of origin, family history), to forge a kinship. Now it’s used to describe good friends.
Another, more common term to describe a close friend is 「麻吉」. The term is pretty common and was even used for the title of the film Ted in Taiwan 《熊麻吉》:
There are several folk morphologies for this term, from the stickiness of mochi cakes (pronounced similarly in Taiwanese/ muâ-tsî) to a corruption of the word 「默契」 (though no clear reason for the corruption is given). The most convincing theory is that it’s a corruption of the English word “match” in Taiwanese. Whatever its origin, it’s a pretty handy word to use and will let everyone know that you’re in touch with the popular culture references of 10 years ago.
I came across these spray-painted messages on the road on the way to my local 7-11 last night. Messages sprayed on to the street are common in Taiwan, and they can be written by car/motorbike tow trucks telling people what number to call to get their vehicle back or construction companies or the city government telling people not to park in the street as construction is about to take place.
I could see that it said 「路面xx勿停車」 (“road surface XX, don’t park), but I was a little puzzled by the third and fourth characters, as they both looked like they had 「金」 as radicals. I assumed that as they were repaving the road, it’s likely that the second one was 「鋪」 (to pave), but I’d never seen the character 「銑」 before. So I wandered down the street a bit further to see another of the messages:
The 「鋪」 was a bit clearer in this pic, so I tried to look up the characters 「銑鋪」 (xiǎnpū), and came across this old video from the China Times, suggesting that I wasn’t the only one to be puzzled:
According to this video, the original meaning of 「銑」, milling, has been extended here, to mean “to roll flat/steamroll.” It seems to be a more technical way of referring to resurfacing roads, but a more common and colloquial way to say this is 「路面翻修」 (lùmiàn fānxiū).
If your online banking is crashing today, it’s likely because the Executive Yuan has released NT$5,000 stimulus vouchers starting today and banks are making a ream of offers to early birds.
If you’ve got an APRC or are a Taiwanese citizen with household registration and a bit of patience, you can get them by navigating to the dedicated website here or the English version here.
There are four options:
You can wait until to book the paper version in advance: First round advance booking: September 25 – October 1 First round withdrawal: October 8 – October 21 Second round advance booking: October 25 – November 1 Second round withdrawal: November 8 – November 21
You can register to tie the vouchers to your credit card.
You tie them to Easycard style cards (like Ipass etc)
You can tie them to a digital wallet, like Taiwan Pay, etc
Currently, the website is patchy as it’s getting a lot of hits, so it’s best to go through your bank or payment method of choice, which all feature prominent links.
I chose to tie mine to Taiwan Pay through the Megabank app. Most banks have a simple enough interface to navigate but don’t give up if they throw up an error message, as everyone is rushing on the first day.
If you’ve panicked and want to check exactly what you’ve registered for, you can use this function to check your status.
The advantage of using digital versions, is that there are often additional offers. The downside, as I’ve mentioned before, is that you don’t get to brag on Instagram.
There are additional bonuses you can accrue, depending on which bank or payment app you tie your vouchers to:
Taiwan Pay is offering additional funds to a certain number of registrants. ESun is offering NT$50 for single registrants, but you can increase this by registering as a group.
Note: the spending period for the vouchers starts October 8!
For Taiwan Pay, the first period of payment runs from October 8-22, which is when they’ll calculate what bonuses you get back. This will be deposited in your account November 1. Then the second spending period runs from October 23-29 and the kickbacks will be deposited into your account on November 8. The third spending period runs from October 30 – November 5, and the kickbacks are deposited on November 15.
Saw this new piece of graffiti on the border of the Zhongzheng and Wanlong Districts of Taipei. It reads 「民不聊生」 (“The people have no way of making a living”) and across the top in a slightly different shade (possibly added by another person?) is 「發現金」 (“Issue Cash”), suggesting the government give out cash for stimulus.
Taiwan is back in heightened Level 2 restrictions, meaning that while restaurants and other venues are gradually opening up, bars and clubs and many entertainment venues are still closed. Not going to jinx it, but cases have been down for several days now, so hopefully life can return to normal soon and business owners will be able to start making some money again.
I was quite surprised to get this leaflet through the mail earlier today. At first thought it was an advert for a vegetarian restaurants, but looks like it’s just aimed at promoting vegetarianism/veganism in Taiwan:
“After animals die, their flesh contains germs which are the leading cause of tumors and cancer in the human body. So eating a vegetarian diet and exercising to expel these toxins is really of the utmost importance.”
Interesting to find out who is behind this propaganda effort, as there are no clues on the leaflet itself.
This post is not an endorsement of the message of the leaflet or the pseudo-scientific claims therein, purely posted for curiosity (which killed the cat and subsequently led to toxins infecting said cat’s flesh…).
Postcodes in Taiwan changed in Match of this year from a 3 + 2 format (eg. 10058) to a 3 + 3 format (eg. 100013). If you want to make sure to get your parcel, make sure you find out your new postcode on this site:
The site has pretty simple pull down options (in Chinese) to select your city/county and district/township. You’ll have to find your street in the pull down menu, or if you use the second box, just type in your street and select the section.
The results will look something like this:
「雙」 refers to even numbers, 「單」to odd numbers and 「全」 is all numbers (both even and odd), 「以上」 is above and inclusive of, while 「以下」 is below and inclusive of. So for example, the first entry is “even numbers 96 and below on Yanping South Road”. If you’re road has sections, this will be listed under 「段號」 (section no.), while the third is “odd numbers from 87 to (至) 117.
KMT supporters protesting Chen Chu’s (陳菊) appointment to the presidency of the Control Yuan, with the slogans 「拒絕酬庸撤換陳菊」 (Reject cronyism, withdraw Chen Chu), 「民主已死，暴政必亡」 (Democracy is dead, tyranny must fall) and 「民心已死，還我民主」(The hopes of the people are dead, give us back our democracy). There was a middling crowd outside the Legislative Yuan in the morning, where KMT legislators occupied the floor. These were taken after work.
