I’ve spent the past few weeks in Taiwan, my wife’s country. She needs to stay awhile for family reasons. So, I rattle to and fro.
Life isn’t bad, though sometimes confusing. In Tainan we sit on roadside stools to eat stir-fried eel and noodles, pig’s kidney in ginger and lightly boiled squid. The squid is solid flesh, not the thickly-battered rubber bands mis-sold as calamari in England. The tally comes to NT$800 (£20). Plus NT$50 for a can of beer from Family Mart, a convenience store across the street. Family Mart itself has a downstairs room where you can eat whatever you bought upstairs: eggs boiled in tea for example, which are good for breakfast. They don’t mind if, in the evening, you import delicacies from the night market – pork-filled buns, green onion pancakes and fish-balls on skewers, all from different stalls. Just so long as you buy a can of drink, it’s fine to take a table.
There are downsides. The weather alternates between hot and wet, mostly wet. I miss English skies, English footpaths and English pubs. There are mountains to climb. Big ones. But climbing is complicated by weather, permits, and the way that typhoons and earthquakes remodel routes, turning easy into hazardous. Back in town the pavements are obstructed with motor-scooters (the Vespa sort) and colonised by restaurants’ extra tables. Walking anywhere quickly is a sweaty pain. In Tainan warplanes rumble overhead, interrupting teleconferences and hinting at borrowed time.
Which brings me to risk. To a foreign devil (鬼佬) local attitudes are confusing. You can ride your motor scooter with a windmill-clutching child on the footplate, or with Fido. You’ll be fined for omitting the helmet in Taipei but forgiven in the Tainan. Two-thirds of road deaths involve motor scooters, and the test is famously simple.
Earthquakes are viewed with similar aplomb. Taiwan straddles the Ring of Fire and little shakes are two a penny. My wife recalls an expat boss who dived under his desk when the block shuddered mildly, providing entertainment and losing face. Last spring we had a bigger one – five point something in Taipei and 7.8 at the epicentre. Afterwards we found hairline cracks in plaster and bathroom tiles. I gloomily surveyed one snaking down a structural pillar. Returning this autumn, I was relieved to find it hadn’t expanded or extended. “Everywhere older than 10 years has them,” shrugs Shu-Hsien. The lift’s marble lintel split into three portions and a notice advised that inspection was pending. We routinely walked up two flights to the flat anyway, but folks on higher floors continued to use it, blithely unconcerned.
Yet these same Taiwanese cannot accommodate equilibrium with respiratory viruses. On public transport more than half remain masked. As are 90% of the staff at food outlets, from posh hotels to humble market eateries. I suggest this masking has become a sort of politeness, especially when handling food. Shu-Hsien thinks that most were scared witless by Government propaganda and remain so. The Government said that, once you caught Covid, your lungs would never fully recover. I have to admit that her view better explains other bizarre phenomena that I daily encounter. For example: counting couples, one masked and one not; folks who walk down the street wearing a mask then remove it inside a restaurant; parents who mask precious sprogs but not themselves. On-the-chin and off-the-nose remain frequent. Sometimes it’s all quite nostalgic. At least we’ve shed this nonsense.
One aspect not drawing comment is excess deaths. Not even in the doom and disaster TV news channel that my mother-in-law favours. Stabbings and robberies feature prominently, along with food poisoning outbreaks, but not the fact that 20% more people are dying monthly than before the pandemic. This is far greater than in Europe or the U.S., but is typical of South East Asian countries lauded for having had a ‘good pandemic’. In Singapore the monthly excess sometimes touches 40%. Increasingly, I think that the pandemic exerted a blood price, whatever a country did. All that varies is whether the bill came soon or late, how much self harm you did on the way, and how much long-term harm has been accrued if repeated mRNA vaccination increases cancer risk.
Lastly, prices. To quote from Fascinating Aida’s song: “Someone’s being done and it’s us.”
Average income in Taiwan is c. £1600/month, with 12.5% lost to tax and another 5.17% as a national health insurance premium, versus £2,800 in the U.K., with 24% lost to tax, including the NHS. With wages lower, it’s not surprising that services are cheaper in Taiwan. Nor is there much point comparing specific foods: Chinese delicacies are cheaper in Taiwan and British ones in Britain. Family Mart rooked me £7.00 for a tube of Colgate toothpaste. More fool me for not buying a local brand.
What I do want to compare are items where tax is a big factor: fags, booze and plane tickets, also electricity, where we pay hidden taxes.
Just before leaving England, I’m startled when the man ahead in the Co-op queue buys a packet of cigarettes. “Seventeen pounds fifty,” the assistant demands. Bloody hell! Sixty years ago, my father used to send me to buy 20 Senior Service for four shillings and sixpence (£0.225) – 80 times less – “And get yourself some sweets with the change.” Nowadays its cheaper to be a serious alcoholic than a 20-a-day man.
In Taiwan the same cigarettes cost NT$160, or about £4.00. And a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label is NT$390 (£10.00) versus £20 here. My premium economy plane ticket set me back £1,500. I’m tall, I need the legroom. But, pricing the next trip, I’m shocked to be quoted £2,050. Delving deeper, I discover this includes £224 tax for having the temerity to book anything other than steerage when departing Rachel Reeves’s U.K. If, next trip, I buy a one-way to Taipei, then start buying returns to London, the cost per ticket reverts to £1,450…
Electricity is a politicised mess, with huge amounts needed for semi-conductor manufacture, upon which the island depends. The ruling DPP first courted popularity by closing nuclear power stations after the Fukushima accident then increased the use of coal-powered ones, creating a smog belt. Now it talks of new nuclear reactors… Putting this farrago aside, the simple price per KW is £0.07 in Taiwan versus £0.30 here. That’s over four-fold: almost as big as the sin tax on the cigarettes.
I don’t know if Martin Lewis reads these pages. I hope so. And, if so, could he please take matters up with the U.K. Government, which is responsible for these costs? And if it responds, as to the farmers, “It’s for the NHS “, please point out that CEOWorld has ranked Taiwan’s healthcare as the best in the world, whilst the U.K. languishes at 27th, behind 15 other European countries and only two above India. Shu-Hsien, seeking to see a doctor, can log onto the local hospital’s website, choose among half a dozen specialists, fix an appointment and be seen in two days for a nominal charge on top of the insurance. Good luck with doing that here. It’s weeks of NHS runaround or it’s £250 for the first appointment on Harley Street, plus whatever comes next.
Dr. David Livermore is a retired Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of East Anglia.
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