North vs Central vs South TAIWAN! Who speaks the best ENGLISH? 北台vs中台vs南台！ 誰說的最好的英語？

Hello everybody, welcome back to the channel. My name is Alan. This is My Life in Taiwan and welcome to this country's wonderful capital city. We are in Taipei. Yes, in today's video we are going to be traveling south from here in Taipei through my home city of Taichung and ending the video in the beautiful southern city of Tainan. And along the way there's going to be a little bit of eating, some drinking, a little more eating. And most interestingly of all, I'm going to be putting some of the people I meet along the way to the test. Do you have an English menu? Yes. As I want to try and show you how easy it is to live, communicate and do business here in Taiwan using only English. Because everybody speaks English now. Okay. But most important stop of all is breakfast. First meal of the day. Let's get inside and see what there is to eat. Hello, good morning. Do you have an English menu? Yes, here you are. Nice, excellent. Oh my goodness, that is a big menu. Lots of English on there. What do you think is good? What do you recommend? I like this one menu. This looks very western. Do you have any Taiwanese food? The Taiwanese pancake is great. And how about drinks? The menu three has a drink. A black tea. Okay. Is that okay? Yes. Okay. Put this on the table. Oh, okay, cool. Enjoy your meal. Wow, look at that. Thank you so much. Double stack pork burger with french fries. Maybe not the most traditional of Taiwanese breakfasts, but as I said in my recent breakfast video, Taiwanese people do eat a wide variety of and shops such as this Hongya chain store are very popular, very common all over the island. And it's really good to see when I walk in on the door, there's a big sticker that they proudly speak English here. As you can see, when I ordered the food from the girl, her English was probably not fluent, but she definitely has enough English to be able to do her job here. And for me to order food, that's way more than you would get if you were to go to England and try speaking Chinese. I think I'm talking too much. Time to get my burger finished. We've now moved across the city here to Dubu House Korean restaurants. And I asked for some help introducing the foods and Angela kindly offered your services. So I'm getting an extra level of service here. Can you recommend some foods? Introduce the menu to me, maybe. So Dubu House provides all signature Korean dishes. The first page will be our menu, beverage menu, non-alcoholic and alcoholic drinks. Okay, it's a bit early for beer. So as you can probably see, my waitress, Angela, was obviously fluent in introducing the menu to me. So just to check that she hadn't memorized some kind of script based solely on the menu and to truly test her English as my food was arriving, of which I had ordered everything Angela suggested to me. So there was a lot. I decided that when my final dish arrived, I would give her a question out of the blue and really see if she was able to have a natural conversation in English. I have one more question for you. Do you think it's possible Taiwan becoming a bilingual country? Yes, of course. Do you think it's a good thing for Taiwan? Definitely, because everybody speaks English now. Okay. Even little kids. Yeah, that's true. Yes. Okay, no more questions. I think it's time for me to eat. Yes, enjoy. I know this video isn't actually a food video. The main topic is the English level. But I have to share with you, just look at the chunks of prime rib in this stew. Oh my goodness. I think it's obvious to anybody that watched me ordering. English level here was absolutely fantastic. Way above what I would expect anyone working in a restaurant to speak. Hello, how's everything going? It's amazing. It's so good. It's just too much for me to eat. My team are looking at my table with their eyes like so wide. Can't wait to get stuck in. Great, let me know if there's anything else. That's perfect. Thanks so much. If you're coming here as a foreigner with a relatively limited experience or knowledge of Asian food such as this, then having somebody that understands the culture and the food, but also can explain that to you in English and the best way to eat it, not only do I get to order exactly what I want, but also I get the best way to eat it explained to me in English. Really happy with this restaurant. Way too much food for one person. So I'm going to finish this off with my team. And then we're going to be heading south down to my home city of Taichung City, where I've actually stopped a little bit outside of the city centre here in Dajia, where I'm going to be trying the Luwei style dish here at Kaibang Luwei. And I've ordered some quite adventurous food. Some things I've tried before, some things I've not tried before. And to quickly touch upon the English level, there's definitely less of a spoken English at this restaurant. Excuse me, what is this one? But their listening was excellent. When I asked them the various ingredients that I didn't know, they were able to guide me to the English menu, which was perfect. I could understand. And then on the English menu, I could find things that I wanted to try and he can guide them to me in the fridge. It worked out. I got my food. And it's kind of a common situation that you find here in Taiwan. People are always willing to try their best to communicate with you if you don't speak Chinese. And the food has come in this rather beautiful sealed hygienic packet. Look at that. Super traditional Luwei. Incredibly adventurous foods. Some of the foods I've gone for. Some standard vegetables. Some more adventurous chickens foot. And one of my favorites, these little cheeky quail's eggs. But let's not beat around the bush. Everybody's here to see the foreigner enjoying the local Taiwanese delicacy, the chicken's foot. Just look at that. Very alien looking to what we would usually eat back in the West. But if you can get over the appearance of it, then it's basically just like a chicken wing, depending on how it's cooked. Here it's done Luwei style. A little bit more softer, tender, boiled or braised. Still very delicious. I'm going to finish this up, share it with my team. And then time to head into Taichung city center. Today, believe it or not, is actually my birthday. So I've come to Zujian Hot Pot here in Taichung for a birthday lunch. And as usual, they have an English menu. So in fact, there's no need for me to communicate with the staff too much. But I really want to push this video as far as I can. So I'm going to find a waitress, place my order, and try and give her a little more challenging question. Hello, I see you have an English menu. I think it would be best if you can recommend something for me. I will recommend you to try our special seafood hot pot. Okay, I have one more question for you. Do you think it's possible that Taiwan can become bilingual? Yes, I think if our government would push this policy to us, it will be a chance to be bilingual. Okay, that's great. Sorry to give you such difficult questions. Another waitress with a level of English way above what would be expected in her job. But once again, I was struggling to keep the focus of the video on the English level. Whoa, holy guacamole. Look at that. As the food she had recommended to me was arriving, and every dish that arrived at my table looked more spectacular than the last. Oh my goodness. Is that my birthday cake? Okay, so this English analysis video has become a bit of a Dawei Wang eating challenge, but just take a look at this food. Yes, the food was unbelievable. Perfect for a special occasion. But to keep on topic, so far we have seen a balanced level between basic speakers and higher level speakers, and the difference between Taichung and Taipei so far had been quite negligible. Still need to go and see a couple more people here in Taichung before we head south to Tainan. But I definitely need a rest before any more food is consumed. Maybe time to go get a bubble milk tea. So we've come to Bubble Z here in North District, where I'm going to ask them if they have an English menu, and again, see if they can recommend a new drink. Let's see how they do. Do you have an English menu? Yes. Nice. What drink do you think I should drink? Do you like sour or sweet? Both is okay with me. Okay, you can try this new drink, the grape smoothie. Oh, grape smoothie! Perfect, sounds good to me. One big one. Okay, now it's on sale, so it's $6.99. Perfect. I can't work out if it's sour or sweet. It's like a mix of sour grape with a little bit of the sweetness from the cream. In Taichung, we've seen like a real range of English, from the really excellent level that we just had at the hot pot, to a couple of more, let's say, basic English speakers. But I have to say that the sticker that you see outside the shop is true. There is somebody in the shop that speaks English, can understand English. So there's absolutely no reason, if you see this sticker at the shop, to worry about trying to communicate. If you're just patient, speak slowly, and with a little bit of a smile on your face always helps. The majority of people in Taiwan are going to be able to help you. I think it's time to get on the road to Tainan. But first, I think I've got a place I want to stop and pick up a snack. And for that snack, we have come to Uncle Bing's Grilled Corn here at Fengjia Night Market. Do you have an English menu? Oh, look at that! That's a big menu. So many flavors. Okay, let you choose. What do you recommend? It says here, aromatic pepper smell. This is probably one of the most aromatic restaurants I've been to all day. The smell coming out of this place is really good. Oh, really? Tender, please. Just like my heart. Look at that black pepper tender corn. Super delicious, a little bit spicy, and incredibly tender corn. I thought today as I was going to the different shops, I noticed a pattern that the bigger the restaurant or the bigger the shop, the better the English. But just this little night market style stand at the side of the road had a girl who spoke perfect English. Really good. I'm not sure if you could hear her. Very well spoken. I really can't complain about the level of English. And I certainly can't complain about the level of the food. One stop left on this mammoth journey. I'm going to get into the car and head south and put a southerner to the test. And for the final stop on this mammoth journey from north to south, I've arrived here in Tainan City. And after eating so much in this video, I've decided to end the video with a nice drink of fresh tea at the flagship store of Natural. First, let's get inside, see what they recommend me to drink. Do you speak English? Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Now, can I ask you what drink you recommend? Okay. Yeah, this is special. Why is it special? It has two kinds of tea. Oh, really? So it's medium raw. Yes. Can take out the bad smell. Oh, okay. Not a bad recommendation. So yes, let's get this video wrapped up and make some kind of summary. Here in this, I must say, probably the most beautiful tea shop I've ever been in. Lots of beautiful decorations, including this rather beautiful lion over my shoulder, which the guy was actually trying to tell me has a really beautiful story to it. It just represents leadership and strength. It was obviously a difficult story for him to tell me, but yeah, he definitely helped me take my order and offer some suggestions. Compared to the stereotype that you hear about the further south you go, the lower the English levels, I think that's absolute hogwash. As you've seen throughout the video, every place I went to, people had different levels of English, but every single place could communicate with me and I didn't have to speak any Chinese and everybody did a good job. Some better than others, of course. So I'm going to leave it up to you guys to choose in the comment section about north, middle or south. Which restaurants do you think did the best job? Comment down below. And of course, I would love to know how you think you would do if a foreigner walked into your place of business and suddenly expected you to speak English. Could you communicate? Would you struggle? Would you be nervous? However you would feel, let me know in the comment section down below. I think that's pretty much it. Thank you so much for accompanying me on this journey. And yeah, time to say goodbye. So as for now and as always, I'll see you next time on My Life in Taiwan. Peace.