life on the edge of tormorrow

China Post editorial:

Is life in Taipei really as intolerable as they say?

Taipei might be the nation's political, economic and cultural capital, and have hundreds of kilometers of riverside bicycle paths and a highly popular mass-transportation system. It might have historical sites, museums, hot springs, world-class shops, and restaurants offering cuisines from around Taiwan, as well as from every region of China and every continent on the planet. But last week it was voted the second-worst place to live in Taiwan, only beating out Keelung, long portrayed as being damp, dreary and deprived.

The same public opinion survey, carried out on the behest of a national Chinese-language newspaper, found Hualien and Yilan counties, followed by Taichung City, to be the most popular choices.

Over the next few days, despite the knowledge that opinion polls can accidentally or intentionally be worded to produce all manner of results, and the fact that this survey simply asked about desire and not intent or reason, not to mention that similar recent surveys have placed Taipei at the top, rather than the bottom, of such rankings (and international surveys have selected Taipei as one of the top places to live in Asia), other media outlets spent much of the week wheeling out academic* “expert” witnesses to speculate about Taipei's shortcomings.

Their collective wisdom focused largely on the issue of housing costs. Also at center stage was the perception that the“simple life”led on Taiwan's east coast was“like a perpetual holiday”compared to the drudgery experienced by most of Taipei's office workers who often work from dawn-to-long-after-dusk.

This is a revealing interpretation, because Hualien and Yilan, both conveniently accessible from Taipei following the construction of the Syueshan Tunnel, top the ratings, whereas Taitung, further down the same coast and equally, if not more, idyllic but less accessible, does not score so highly.

So what this survey really showed was that people are dissatisfied with their lifestyles, not with their location. Compared to certain authoritarian states, where people do not have the right to live wherever they want, Taiwan is a free society, and the government does not restrict people's right to make their home anywhere. There is no need to conduct a poll asking people where they would like to live, therefore, since this can simply be ascertained from official population statistics. Thus 2.6 million people choose to live in Taipei City. Combined with the further 3.8 million of Taipei County, this represents more than one quarter of all Taiwan's citizens expressing and acting upon the desire to live in the greater Taipei area.

In comparison, just 340,000 live in Hualien County, despite it being almost 20 times the size of Taipei City, and 460,000 in Yilan County, despite its much lower house prices and 40-minute commute to Taipei. Add on the 230,000 who live in Taitung County, and the whole of Taiwan's east coast, with its clean air and simple lifestyle, still attracts less than 5 percent of the nation's population.

And while each year some professionals who are able to do their jobs online relocate to the countryside, and a few others give up their jobs, turning their backs on urban noise and pollution, and head off to Dulan or some other east-coast Shangri-La, they are far outnumbered by the droves of ambitious youths heading in the opposite direction as soon as they receive their high-school diplomas. Even after retirement, when many elderly (or not so elderly) people are in a position to cash in on the huge increase in the values of their properties, then buy something cheaper in a pleasant location and live comfortably off the chunk of change generated, most still opt to stay in the cities where they have spent their working lives.

So was last week's newspaper survey simply an attempt to generate a sensational headline, or a well-intentioned attempt to understand present-day society that merely asked the wrong question, or does it tell us something useful about people's changing priorities and their wishes for a better life?

The last two decades have already seen a significant shift from a drive to make money above all else, to a healthier work-play balance, which has witnessed a blossoming of hobbies, increased concern for the environment, and an explosion of domestic and overseas travel.

It is perhaps against this background, therefore, that the survey's results should be viewed. Taipei's citizens would like the same clear skies and pollution-free air they experience on weekend trips to the coast, they'd like to drive freely down the road not sit idling their time at traffic lights, they'd like to go to work at nine and leave at six so they can spend time with their families or on their hobbies, and they'd love to experience those cheap property prices.

In short, Taipei's citizens do not really want to move to Hualien (otherwise they would), but they would like to move a little bit of Hualien into Taipei.

*The original text read: "... associate professor expert witnesses ...", and the first draft actually said: "... associate professor expert witnesses who supplement their earnings and attempt to garner their reputations by speculating on such issues ..." (or something like that)

-- I have nothing against associate professors, but i do have something against media organisations that over-rely on their limited (sometimes non-existent) expertise on issues, meanwhile misleading readers--their main purpose--into believing these commentators' opinions are trustworthy, presumably on the strength of the word "professor".