台灣生活水準高，移民過得不錯，人情味也特別｜外國在臺灣｜Living in Taiwan as a foreigner

Just welcome to Taiwan. Taiwanese people, just a lot of them felt very kind. It just felt good, basically. It felt good. You don't get that feeling in the U.S. The way foreign people or immigrants are treated here is actually kind of rare. And she wasn't really interested in leaving Taiwan and coming to New York City. That moment, my life changed. It was a time in the evolution of Taiwan. I've been living in New York City for 10 years, and just coming to Taiwan, I felt the quality of life in Taipei is higher than the quality of life where I was. Welcome to Taiwan. Also, if you like the video, you have an option to hide the video. Help us hide this video so more and more people can see the video. If you find this video very informative, you may also give us a super like to help support the channel. Or you may buy me a coffee. Link in the description below. Thank you. Hello, Lamian. Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming here to do the interview. My name is Scott Prairie. I'm from the U.S., from New York City, the place I was before coming here. And what I do in Taiwan is I create music with my wife. We've created a group. The name of the group is A Moving Sound. Since I got off the plane, for 25 years, we've been doing a moving sound together. Let's go back memory lane. Why do you first choose to come to Taiwan? I am not someone who had any plan to come to Asia at all. I never thought of it. I was just minding my own business, doing creative stuff in New York City. I also do a form of dance. It's an improvised dance form called contact improvisation. It's just like a weekly open gathering in the West Village, New York City. Then Mia was there. We met and hit it off where we did creative things. I actually thought in my mind that maybe she might like to move to New York City, which I proposed this idea. She wasn't really interested in leaving Taiwan and coming to New York City. I said, okay, is it me or is it the city? She was open to me coming to visit Taiwan. My first visit was during the time of 9-1-1. I was at the time and where I lived, you could see the World Trade Center. My roommate said, don't come back for a while because there was a lot of chaos. My trip was actually extended longer and became very clear that a good choice was to move here. Mia is a very thoughtful person. One day she asked some deep questions to me. She said, what do you really want in your life? I said, well, I would like to live with you someplace and I would like to do creative work for my living. I was in New York City and I was doing things, but it wasn't clear if that was going to work long-term. I was kind of not sure. I want to be with Mia. I want to do creative work. I don't want to be scared about money. I thought it through and said, well, Taiwan actually seems like a good choice. That moment, my life changed and I decided to try living in Taiwan. That was 2001. I went back and then got my stuff and came back a couple of months later. I sensed for me personally, as an artist, that it was a fertile condition at the time. This was 25 years ago and it was a time in the evolution of Taiwan culturally and the arts. People were very curious and interested in trying new things, progressive things in the arts and culture. It seemed like it was the beginning of a wave. I felt that, like there's possibility here. On a bigger picture, I've been living in New York City for 10 years. Just coming to Taiwan, I felt the quality of life in Taipei is higher than the quality of life where I was in New York, just the general quality. It just felt good, basically. It felt good. The core of it is really that Taiwanese people, a lot of them felt very kind. Kind people, friendly people, but also curious and interested in new ideas, intelligent. That's why this feeling of fertile, it's like, this is a really good place, good condition. It's also very safe. You don't get that feeling in the U.S. It's interesting because I was 25 years younger, so my brain was 25 years different. Not just Taiwan, but every place 25 years ago. This was pre-Facebook. Just generally, things have changed where people are a little more narrow. It's almost like the culture is being defined by what people scroll through. There's a little bit less interest in diversity, a little bit. It's not just Taiwan, it's everywhere. Taiwan still continues to be a good place to be an artist because Taiwan also has pretty good support for artists, government support, grants. One project we just did is where the government supports a project to take performances into small neighborhoods. They call it the alley project or the lane project. You get money to build a stage and do a performance in these neighborhoods. That's still happening. Taiwan is still a very good place. It's just like the world. It's just got a little speedier and people are a little bit more narrow. During these 25 years, what challenges have you overcome or yet to overcome? Well, to be an artist is always very insecure. Where's the next show going to come? It felt to me like one of the main challenges of how to keep it going. It's always in everybody's mind. It's not easy to present a Taiwanese world fusion group into the market. It was a challenge, but it was a very exciting challenge. During this period, what has Taiwan taught you? Did you hear this expression called a bull in a China shop? The original meaning of it is a lot of these things like cups and bowls were at one point, they were all made in China. But they came to call these things, these dishes, bowls and cups, they call them China for some weird way. Then there's an expression, a bull in a place that sells cups and things like that, knocking them over and stuff. I guess coming from New York, I was a bit more direct. Over the years, I think being here has really been a place to soften and appreciate life more. For me, I feel like it's been very balancing for me to come here. Because I feel it and it really nourishes me. It's been a good place for me to find balance. About the performance group, when did you first form this group? We met in New York in the year of 2001. At the moment that we decided to move back to Taiwan, this group's name is A Moving Sound. At the same time that if I translate to Chinese is Sheng Voice, Dong is movement, Sheng Dong. But it's the same sound of life is vivid. I came from, both my parents were working labors and I feel like if I create any arts, I want to be able to resonate to everyone's their own life stories. So that's how that about the year of 2002 that Scott moved here. We actually didn't think about forming a group. Creativity, it just happens. We just do things. But at the time when you start to sell tickets or you do performance, you need to have a legal registration. Then we say, okay, let's go and register a company. It was just perfect timing for us because we were a new group and we were quite progressive. What A Moving Sound did then and still does is we use traditional instruments like Erhu and Zhong Ran and then percussion, both Western and Chinese percussion. We use traditional instruments, but we make new music. I'm a composer to make original music. My wife is the singer and she takes what I do and she takes it into a new place. She creates her own vocal parts and makes stories, her own theatrical stories. We like to improvise and sing. Maybe we can just give you a short taste of what we do. This is the stuff that's like the constant. No matter what, it never goes away that we can do this. We always have a few spots. As long as we can do this, I know I'm okay. Our connection is just so hard. This is amazing, yeah. Thank you. Actually, what we're doing is quite unique and creative. It was a perfect time then because just seeing people were so hungry and excited to see something new. Actually, our group is one of the most recognized now internationally groups. We were on the Discovery Channel. We were on BBC. We've been to a lot of the major festivals in the US. We've done the Kennedy Center. We've actually done pretty well for a world Taiwanese group. A Taiwanese and an American together and performing in a group, do you guys have any cultural conflict? This is a good question. We always say to live and to work together, it's like heaven and hell. I mean, it's two people. She's very smart and very clear vision, very strong. From the work, it's like she really knows how to get things done. I'm pretty strong too. In astrology, I'm the bull, Taurus, and she's the ram, Aries. We have these strong energies. But at the same time, she's a Taiwanese woman and I'm an American male. But that's been a good opportunity. This culture, I can say that in Asia and Taiwan, women are more like, I'm serving. I'm doing service. So a lot of time, we are easy to give to men as priority. And he's American. I want this. I know this. So a lot of time, actually, we learn from each other. I recognize, oh no, I need to speak up for my need. He learned that I need to give space to the other person's voice to understand more. So yes, this result came from a lot of conflict. It didn't work. So culturally, it's that. And in the artistic side, we both have very strong leadership. So in a good way, we stimulate. Sometimes fighting is not bad. It's like we challenge each other. He challenged our musician. They're all from academic, traditional music world, but he's a New Yorker. It's like, let's try this. Let's improvise. At first, they were like, what? So this kind of push, sometimes it stimulates something that you never know. And it's beautiful. It's beautiful. And one secret is we both sing sometimes. And you know something special is when we fight, we have argument. But in the next minute, we have to go on stage. So to sing improvised duet, it's so powerful. And then after singing, we don't even need to communicate. The conflict is over. It passed. The next interesting thing we're doing is on October 4th. And it's the Taipei Poetry Festival. It's a two week long festival. And we do the opening night concert on October 4th at 7.30. Yeah, even though it's Taipei Poetry Festival, they invite a lot of international poets to come. It's a lot about the world is full of chaos and darkness right now. And poetry, or we say music, is trying to give people a light that we are still having hope for the humanity, for the world. You had a chance to stay in the US, but you decided to come back to Taiwan. What could have been the reasons why you decided to come back to Taiwan? I love here. I think the very simple reason is I have family. I have all this connection here. And I feel that I'm always interested in exploring the roots where I came from. So I just feel like there are a lot of things that I haven't explored. And so in America, my staying there is only a short time. I didn't feel that I can have a grounded, earthy connection there. So when Sky is willing to come, it actually gave me a very interesting combination. Like I'm here, it's my homeland, but he's international. So that allowed us to do something different. So I'm slowly, I want this world has more singing harmony in this world more and more. All the links will be in the description below. Let's go check it out. What advice would you give to any Taiwanese that wishes to go to America, especially New York? Well, actually, New York, I think has changed in some ways to become more, more accessible to tourists. We were just there last year and touring around. And it is a nice place to go and just do some homework before going. The reason that I moved to New York, before that I was in Pittsburgh. When I went there, I just really loved the diversity of all the people there. So just walking around in New York City is really cool because of all the people from all over the world. I like East Village. You like the East Village? Yeah, because there are a lot of creative and experimental things to see. And it's very different from Taiwan. And we also like Central Park. You can always find something connected to you and sitting there watching people. It's wonderful. It is a nice place to visit. And Mia, what advice would you give to anyone that wishes to come to Taiwan? I think this is a place that people will have a different experience about human connection. It could be friendly and no fear, safe. And also Taiwan has a lot of beautiful nature. A lot of people didn't know this place has tons of mountains to explore and foods. So when you come here, please travel as much as possible because North, South, East, West Taiwan, they are totally having different special things to experience. Do you have anything else to tell Taiwanese people? Thank you. That's the main thing. I continue still after 25 years to just have experiences of kindness. As you know too, you're not Taiwanese. The way foreign people or immigrants are treated here is actually kind of rare. You see how terrible it is in the US now. It's such a painful thing for me to see. But it's the opposite here. People will just smile at you and just kind of kindness. There's a guy, an older man, who's fixing shoes. And he has a very small little thing, a buckle broke, and I got to fix. And I said, how much? He says, no charge, no charge. And I asked my friend who was with me, they say, why? And they just said, just welcome to Taiwan. That's exactly what he said, welcome to Taiwan. That's what I feel here. And so I just feel grateful. All right. Thank you very much for giving us your time and sharing this wonderful wisdom and life experience living in Taiwan and the States. And I hope you continue to enjoy your stay here in Taiwan.