The expat lifestyle’s greatest pleasure for me is meeting and interacting with people of diverse backgrounds. The Salty Egg normally discusses this in terms of interactions with the dominant culture. However, Taiwanese is not the only culture here that is alien to me. Expats themselves are drawn from all over the world. Taiwan-based expats are a heterogeneous soup of races, cultures, and creeds. It gives expat friendships some of their zest. Cultural misunderstandings among expats are almost as likely as Taiwanese-foreigner mix-ups.

I used to work in a school that had a nice mix of Americans, Canadians, Australians, Kiwis, South Africans, and a Brit. Every Monday morning, as colleagues will do, someone would ask me what I’d done over the weekend. I’d usually breeze by, and say something like, “Not much, you know, I just fucked the dog”.  Apparently my standard answer was causing vexation and concern among coworkers. Who knew fucking the dog isn’t a universal English idiom? My colleagues apparently imagined I (might) have had a canine sex slave chained, spread-eagle, to the bed.

I didn’t.

I still can’t believe I have to explain this, but fucking the dog means laying about. I suppose it started as doing the dog, meaning to lounge around, like a dog. Inevitably doing became fucking, and thus this eloquent phrase was born. (Dog Fucker is the noun form—use it well). I now know that despite it being extremely commonplace where I’m from, many other English speakers don’t know the colloquialism. All it took was a single visit from Taiwan’s SPCA to banish that piece of Canadiana from my lexicon. The potential for inter-expat misapprehensions is high, not surprising when you consider the expat diaspora.

By volume, the largest expat groups come from South-East Asia. They do all the work; build Taiwan’s buildings, catch the fish, work as maids, care for the sick and infirm, and become wives.  They’re a common sight on the streets, but other expats don’t generally rub elbows with them. Their concerns and lifestyle are different from the average Western or Japanese expat. You’re unlikely to meet them at the normal foreigner hangouts. They usually have less time, less expendable income, and in terms of where they socialize, there’s a tendency towards ghettoization. The potential for intercultural gaffs between these expats and others abound, but lack of proximity makes it unlikely.

It used to be, if you saw a white face in the crowd, it was an English teacher. The primacy of English teaching among Western expats is a thing of the past, but we’re still a very large component of the Western expat community. There’s often misunderstandings between English teachers (the lumpenproletariat) and English speaking businessmen, technical specialists, diplomats, engineers, etc. The groups exist in Taiwan and are drawn from the same countries, but experience Taiwan and expat life differently. I spend most of my time with English teachers, but of these exogenous groups I personally spend time with diplomats and corporate managers. Their experiences of expat life are so remote from mine as to be almost useless as a common reference point. We share the same watering holes and interests, but there’s plenty of room for internecine culture shock.

Opportunities for mutual misunderstanding among expats grows as the home cultures become more divergent. There are a lot of Japanese expats here, mostly Japanese businessmen and the wives of Japanese businessmen. The former work and drink (normally in establishments catering to the Japanese), the latter shop. There aren’t many points of commonality between us. Usually expats of such dissimilar backgrounds only have one common denominator—Chinese class.

Taiwan also has lots of non-English speaking crackers [along with whitie, I’m trying to bring back this racial epithet]. By a series of circumstances I have quite a few francophone friends and acquaintances. They’re generally not here to teach English, or French for that matter, a lot are businessmen, and there’s a surprising number of artists, writers, and other creative folk. I enjoy hanging out with them—they’re totally different than my normal expat crowd.

When the Russian economy tanked approximately fifteen years ago, there were lots of Russians in Taipei. That was a particular treat. They may not have sent their best, but they did send their models. Taipei was lousy with leggy, lithe, angular Russian women, each sporting a Melania Trump moue. Good times. Good times.

The kaleidoscope of foreigners in Taiwan gives life and friendship here its piquancy. I truly love it, but I must admit that my very best friends are usually Canadian (and Aries). I suppose it is more familiar, comfortable—with a lower chance of misunderstanding. Even there, though, Canada is a large variegated country with lots of room for regionalism. Cultural misunderstandings are common even among Canadian expats. Misconception and misinterpretation are a big part of expat life; whether from the host culture or other expats, you just have to deal with it. I choose to find it charming.