After working in Taiwan for several years following her graduation from senior high school in Hsinchu City, northern Taiwan, 25-year-old Cheng I-ching (鄭益青) departed for Australia in April 2010 and did not return home for two years. Unlike the many Taiwanese who go to Australia to study, Cheng entered with a working holiday visa, which enabled her to take paid jobs during her lengthy stay. Cheng was able to make ends meet while gaining an experience of another country thanks to the 2004 agreement between Taiwan and Australia that permits people from 18 to 30 years old to take working holidays of up to 24 months in each other’s country.
“Many young people in Taiwan consider going abroad to study, but they know it can cost their families a lot. That prevents them from seeking the experience of living abroad,” Cheng says. “That’s why when I heard about the opportunity to take a working holiday overseas for at least a year, it sounded too good to be true.”
As of September 2012, more than 65,800 young Taiwanese had taken working holidays overseas, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). Taiwan’s first working holiday partnership came with the signing of an agreement with New Zealand in April 2004. The pact, which took effect in June that year, allows a maximum of 600 Taiwanese and New Zealanders between the ages of 18 and 30 to visit each other’s country for up to 12 months.
Since November 2004, more than 51,700 young Taiwanese have taken advantage of a similar agreement with Australia. That country has proven a popular destination because it places no upper limit on the number of working holiday makers from Taiwan and offers plentiful job opportunities with comparatively high pay.
Scott Fraser, then-executive director of the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei, looks over applications from prospective Taiwanese working holiday makers to his country in July 2010. Taiwan’s current pact with Canada allows 1,000 young people to take working holidays in each other’s country every year. (Photo by Central News Agency)
Taiwan went on to sign working holiday agreements with Japan in 2009, Canada, Germany and South Korea in 2010 and the United Kingdom in 2011. Taiwan signed its eighth and latest pact with Ireland in October 2012. That agreement took effect on January 1 this year and allows 400 young people to travel and work in each other’s country every year.
More working holiday pacts could be on the way, as MOFA has been conducting negotiations with several potential partner nations. Officials from Taiwan and France, for example, have discussed the possibility of a working holiday agreement intermittently for a number of years. Cheng, who majored in food and beverage service in high school, says she would like to take a working holiday in France, even though she recently returned from one in Australia. “I could learn a lot from France’s expertise in my occupational field,” she says.
Exploring the World
The Kang Wen Culture and Education Foundation was established in 1988 with the primary goals of organizing international cultural exchange programs and promoting youth travel. In September 2012, Kang Wen released a survey of 226 young people from Taiwan who had taken working holidays abroad for at least six months since 2009. Respondents to the survey listed exploring the world, cultivating language ability and developing independence as their top motives for taking such holidays.
On the question of which country they would choose for another working holiday, most of Kang Wen’s respondents picked Canada. According to the survey’s summary, Canada was likely the top choice “because the country is the only option in North America and allows working holidays for people up to 35 years old.” As for the countries that most survey respondents wanted Taiwan to develop new working holiday partnerships with, the top three were Italy, France and the Netherlands, in that order.
In 2009, a group of academics at the National Institute of Labour Studies at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia published Evaluation of Australia’s Working Holiday Maker (WHM) Program, a study that provided statistics on working holiday makers visiting the country. By comparing the results of the Flinders study with its own survey, Kang Wen discovered that Taiwanese working holiday makers were older on average (around 26 years old) than counterparts from other countries, had a more extensive educational background (mostly undergraduate or higher academic degrees) and earned higher incomes.
While on his working holiday in Canada, Lin Yen-chieh worked as a waiter for a Japanese-style restaurant. (Photo Courtesy of Lin Yen-chieh)
Nearly 70 percent of Taiwan’s recent working holiday makers were women, the Kang Wen survey found, a percentage similar to Japan’s but much higher than that of many Western countries. The survey’s summary attributed the low male participation rate partly to Taiwan’s compulsory military service, which prevents young men from traveling abroad before they serve in the armed forces.
During her stay in Australia, Cheng performed a number of jobs, including one six-month stint as a technician at a plant tissue culture laboratory and another as one of the members of a hotel cleaning staff. Those jobs lasted for six months because that is the maximum time Australia allows visitors with working holiday visas to work for one employer. Cheng’s shorter-term jobs included picking strawberries, mushrooms and cabbage as well as packaging chicken and serving as an assistant chef in a restaurant.
While earning money was among Cheng’s motives for visiting Australia, it was far from her only concern. “When I was between jobs or moving on to another place, I’d spend one or two weeks exploring local towns along the way,” she says. “It takes time to get a feel for what everyday life is like in another country.” Kang Wen’s survey showed that Cheng’s approach was fairly typical for Taiwanese working holiday makers abroad, who devoted around 45.2 percent of their available time to work and 38.3 percent to tourism. On average, survey respondents earned NT$360,000 (US$12,000) and spent NT$230,000 (US$7,670) per working holiday trip.
A candidate for a working holiday position in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost prefecture, has her resistance to cold tested in Taiwan. (Photo Courtesy of Rich Marketing and Communication)
“It’s not just about making money,” says Jean Chang (張李正琴), who is president of Kang Wen as well as Golden Formosa Travel Services Corp. in Taipei. “It’s much more about learning the value of being independent and cultivating young people’s perspective and worldview.”
Cheng agrees that working holidays can accelerate one’s personal development, saying that living and working in a foreign land expanded her horizons by showing her different ways of thinking and acting. “In the past, I was more likely to get stuck in a certain way of thinking,” she says. “Now I’m able to consider other possibilities.”
MOFA has pursued working holiday agreements as part of its efforts to expand Taiwan’s international presence through viable diplomacy. Wang Hsueh-mei (王雪美), executive director of Kang Wen, says signing working holiday pacts with partner nations is of great benefit to Taiwanese travelers. “Working holiday agreements and the other results of our viable diplomacy policy, including visa-free entry to numerous countries around the world, help our citizens a lot,” Wang says.
The Taiwan International Working Holiday Association was established in 2008 to provide information about opportunities available in partner nations and educate Taiwanese preparing to take working holidays abroad about life in their host country. James Chang (張慶邦), who studied law in Australia in the 1990s and now serves as the association’s president, says working holidays benefit Taiwan’s young people as well as the national interest. “Eight countries welcome our working holiday makers now,” he says. “When our young people, including many of our future leaders, go abroad, they really develop their own capabilities, which benefits Taiwan when they return home. They also act like unofficial diplomats, adding to our soft power and national strength.”
Lin Yen-chieh (林彥潔) was 28 when he left Taiwan in October 2010 for a working holiday in Canada. Prior to his departure, he had majored in film at a university in Taipei and worked as a director and producer of advertisements and other videos. He now looks back on his experience in the North American nation as one of the high points of his life so far, with vivid memories of the people he met, his experiences and the places he visited. Lin lived in Vancouver for most of his stay in Canada and worked for Japanese and Hong Kong-style restaurants as a waiter, for a television station as a videographer and for a decal maker as an assistant designer. “My English ability improved quickly and I kept absorbing new things like a sponge,” he recalls. “Unlike in Taiwan, I didn’t feel like I was ‘working.’ It felt more like I was experiencing new things, almost playing—and getting paid for it.”
A former working holiday maker shares her experience with local university students at a forum organized by Kang Wen Culture and Education Foundation. (Photo Courtesy of Kang Wen Culture and Education Foundation)
Lin is now working on a documentary film about four Taiwanese who choose to go on working holidays in Canada. He expects to complete the movie, which was filmed in that country and in Taiwan, in early 2014. Lin looked for variety when selecting the film’s four protagonists—a hospital physical therapist, film producer, would-be professional musician and theater troupe administrator—from a field of around 50 candidates. “They’re either quite young or a bit older, recent university graduates or have worked for some time, have a high-income job or can hardly make ends meet,” he says of those he selected. The common denominator among the four, he notes, is that they all have ambitious goals and are interested in exploring possibilities beyond their everyday, familiar life in Taiwan.
Of course, Taiwan’s working holiday agreements provide citizens of partner nations with an equal opportunity to live and work on the island. Woo Min-young, a 26-year-old university student from South Korea, is currently spending a one-year working holiday in Taiwan, where he plans to stay until May this year. Woo has worked as a waiter in a restaurant, but has another goal for his stay on the island. “I want to learn Mandarin,” the international business major says, adding that he considers it important to master that language along with English and Japanese.
Woo, who previously took a working holiday in Australia in 2010, has enjoyed his time in Taiwan. “I like Taiwan more than most other places I’ve visited. I’ve found Taiwan to be such a welcoming place—people here are always friendly and smiling,” he says, adding that counterparts from Australia, Canada and Japan at his youth hostel in eastern Taipei have expressed similar views.
While South Korean university student Woo Min-young has met expenses by waiting tables, studying Mandarin is the main focus of his one-year working holiday in Taiwan. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)
Uneven Exchange
While more than 330 Taiwanese visited South Korea on working holidays from January 2011 to August 2012, Woo is one of the first South Koreans to enter Taiwan on a working holiday visa since the agreement between the two countries took effect. South Korea is not Taiwan’s only working holiday partner that attracts a large number of Taiwanese, but sends relatively few of its own citizens to the island. “Now more than 10,000 Taiwanese young people go on working holidays abroad per year, yet not so many of their foreign counterparts come to Taiwan,” Jean Chang says. To attract more foreigners, the government should promote the benefits of learning Mandarin while working and traveling in Taiwan, she says.
James Chang attributes the low number of foreigners who have come to Taiwan for working holidays to the country’s relatively low pay. He calls for the government to create an agency that works with the Council of Labor Affairs, Ministry of Education, MOFA and the Tourism Bureau to address such problems.
Taiwan clearly benefits from the experiences its citizens gain on working holidays overseas, just as it profits from the positive reports of foreigners who choose to work and travel in Taiwan. With the government focused on forging more working holiday agreements with partner nations, the benefits for all involved should continue multiplying.
Write to Pat Gao at cjkao@mofa.gov.tw