Air quality over salary
One of my students who graduated 10 years ago recently looked me up. He had studied in the foreign languages department and is now working for a management company in Tokyo.
After 10 years, we had a lot to talk about, and one of the things we talked about was salaries. He said he made ¥220,000 [US$2,024] a month, which I said sounded very good. Even though the yen has depreciated, at 28, he was making a monthly wage that would be the envy of many people his age in Taiwan.
Instead, he immediately shook his head and said that rent alone was ¥80,000 per month and that with public transport and living expenses, it was just about adequate, but that it was almost impossible to save money.
I then thought that with his language abilities, and especially his strong command of English and Japanese, he would be able to get a great job in Kaohsiung. Rather than not making enough money in Japan, why not just stay in Kaohsiung, where he could be sure of soon saving up a pretty penny?
To my surprise, he shook his head again, even more vigorously this time, and said that the air in Kaohsiung is just too dirty, that there is always a smog there and that after only a few days back home, he had problems breathing, adding that the skies in Tokyo are really blue.
When we got into the dirty air in Kaohsiung, there was nothing I could say, because it is true. The population of Kaohsiung has already dropped below Taichung, and if someone born and raised in Kaohsiung does not want to live there because the air quality never improves, then why would anyone else want to live there? No matter how good the compensation package, it is not attractive, because no one wants to be a human vacuum cleaner.
Improving the air quality in Kaohsiung is a matter of the utmost urgency lest the city continue to lose talented people. How is the city going to continue to develop if that happens? It will just keep being passed up by other cities.
Liu Hsiu-fang
Taipei
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