Turks love Taiwan / Can't tell houses from rooms – shocking ultra-small living spaces

Text & photos by Wu Feng / Excerpted from “A Foreigner’s Love for Taiwan: Wu Feng’s 28 Life Surprises”

About Wu Feng:
His Chinese name is Wu Chengfeng, a “bumpkin” (a Turk), though not so old. He speaks fluent Turkish, German, English, and Chinese, and can also write them. Originally a tour guide in Turkey, one day he had an epiphany (what?), feeling that this way of life wasn’t sustainable. So, having always had a strange fascination with Taiwan, after graduating from university he buckled down, got into Ankara University, and studied Chinese and Sinology hard. Four years later, he won a Taiwan scholarship and came to Taiwan to study at National Normal University as he’d hoped.

After arriving in Taiwan, everything here opened this “bumpkin’s” eyes wide. The various customs, completely different from Turkey and jaw-dropping, along with the warm, hospitable nature of Taiwanese people, all left a deep impression on Wu Feng.

These cultural shocks didn’t scare Wu Feng away – instead, they made him fall even more deeply in love with everything about Taiwan. Now, he’s lived in Taiwan for six years and has become a true blue “local Taiwanese foreigner” who feels like the apocalypse is coming if he doesn’t have his tofu pudding every day.



One of the biggest challenges of living abroad is adapting to a new environment. I definitely had the same problem.

Coming to Taiwan to study was my first time living abroad for such a long period. In Turkey before, although I’d been far from home for work or study, it still felt quite different. After more than two months in Taiwan, I’d mostly adapted to daily life and made some Taiwanese friends. But although my dorm in Xindian was comfy, my roommates were all foreigners – there was no way I could really experience authentic Taiwanese life and culture.

Chatting with other foreigners was great cultural exchange, but I didn’t want to learn about Mexican culture or find out where Germany is fun, nor could I practice English with Korean students – my English isn’t great to begin with, and theirs was even worse. I wanted to dive into Chinese culture ASAP, and the only way was to move out of the dorm.

But where to go? That was the big question.

After deciding to leave the dorm, I started looking for a place with a Turkish friend. Back in Turkey, I hadn’t lived in a school dorm either, so I figured finding a place in Taiwan wouldn’t be too hard. But wow – finding a decent spot in Taipei is really not easy. Taipei is small with lots of people, so space is limited, unlike Turkey where houses are everywhere.

At first, my friend and I even fantasized: we’d live in a huge place, three bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom. We could even throw parties for friends. But shortly after leaving the dorm, we realized – we were dreaming. Wanting a place that big in Taipei? Only if you’re loaded.

We asked a real estate agent for help, but the moment we saw the prices, we were stunned. A tiny two-bedroom, one-living-room place was being sold for NT$10 million. The same kind of place in a good area of Turkey would cost less than NT$3 million. Taipei’s housing prices are just insane. My friend and I were baffled – how do Taiwanese people buy homes? It’s outrageous – NT$20–30 million could buy a factory in Turkey or ten really beautiful houses. In Taipei, wanting your dream home? Only if you win the lottery or know Jay Chou.

Even though we kept trying, asking around and searching online, we couldn’t find any decent place to live. With our budget, the best we could do was rent a small studio. Studio rents weren’t cheap either – near National Normal University, at least NT$7,000–8,000. We even saw some scary places for just NT$2,000–3,000, but they were in factories, farms, or even mountain temples. If I’d lived there, I’d have become a monk within a year.

Only when I started looking for places myself did I realize that whenever Taiwanese friends renting outside said they were “going home,” that “home” wasn’t the big house I was used to back in Turkey. It was just their rented “room.” Very few people live alone in a big place.

After running around, we finally found a rooftop-extension place with lots of tiny subdivided rooms. The environment wasn’t great, but there were no better options, so we moved in. My rent was NT$6,000; my friend’s room had no AC, so his was NT$4,000.

After a while, my friend couldn’t stand the heat anymore, so he told the landlord he wanted an AC too. But the landlord refused, so he just stayed in his room sweating, and ended up losing a lot of weight. Occasionally when it got unbearable, he’d come sleep in my room. Sigh. I’d imagined living in a nice place, but what happened? I ended up sharing a bed with a foreigner (and a guy at that)!

Later I learned that Taiwanese people actually don’t really want to rent out rooms like that, but silly foreigners sometimes make weird decisions.

My landlord was a Taiwanese uncle who’d lived in the U.S. for a long time, named John. He dressed in a 1970s American style, kinda like Elvis. Since he spoke decent English, we chatted often. He kept telling me he wanted a foreign girlfriend and asked me to introduce him to one – which started making me think my first Taiwanese landlord was a bit odd. One day, I found mice in my room because my apple went missing, so I immediately told the landlord, “John, there are mice in my place, what should I do?” To my shock, he replied, “Don’t worry, I have them too, haha!”

I was startled by his answer – I thought he’d help me get rid of the mice or suggest a solution, but instead he said he had them too. Thinking about it, John was actually pretty funny. But hearing that, I immediately decided I had to leave – sooner or later. Still, I’d signed a six-month lease, so I spent those six months complaining about the landlord while also finding him entertaining. Over those months, I learned a lot, made new Taiwanese friends, finally immersed myself in a Chinese-speaking environment, and truly experienced life in Taipei.

After moving, life got a lot more fun and interesting. I checked out tons of restaurants and cafés I’d never seen before, often took buses to parks, started enjoying life, and learned how to manage time and money. So, I suggest every friend planning to live abroad try experiencing life overseas like I did. If you go abroad, definitely rent an apartment (even a room is fine!) – don’t stay in a dorm. It’s more challenging, but way more interesting. But a word of warning: if you run into someone as delightfully odd as my landlord, run away immediately.