The big things, a visa, a lease, a school, come with forms and checklists. The small things don't, and they are what make the first month feel strange: where you pay the electricity bill, why the neighbours are standing on the street at 7pm, why the taxi driver looks blankly at your phone. Jason lived in the Hsinchu area for several years, mostly in Zhubei (竹北), and this is the list we'd hand a friend on their first day. Some of it is rules, which we've checked; some of it is just how things are done, and we say which is which.
- Emergencies 119 for an ambulance or fire, 110 for the police. The Foreigners in Taiwan hotline is 1990 from a Taiwan phone.
- Power 110 volts, 60 Hz, with flat two-pin sockets (types A and B, the North American and Japanese kind).
- Tap water Boil it, or use a filter or a water dispenser. Taiwan Water does not encourage drinking it straight from the tap.
- The year Forms often use the Minguo calendar: 2026 is 民國115年 (subtract 1911).
- Paying Cards in chains, cash at markets and small eateries. Tipping isn't expected.
Convenience stores: the centre of daily life
7-Eleven, FamilyMart, Hi-Life and OK Mart are everywhere, and in Zhubei and East District you are rarely more than a short walk from one. They sell coffee, hot food and umbrellas, but the reason newcomers end up there every few days is everything else: bills, tickets, printing and parcels. Each chain has a self-service kiosk, ibon at 7-Eleven and FamiPort at FamilyMart, that prints a slip you then pay for at the counter. The screens are mostly in Chinese, and staff are used to helping; show them what you need on your phone.
| What you need | How it works |
|---|---|
| Pay a bill | Bring the paper bill (or its barcode) to the counter. 7-Eleven takes government-issued bills such as water, electricity, gas, NHI and labour insurance premiums, roadside parking and motor vehicle fees, and national and local taxes, plus phone, cable TV and school fees. NHI premiums can be paid at 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, Hi-Life or OK, up to NT$30,000 a bill, with a small handling fee. |
| HSR tickets | All four chains sell and print THSR tickets, including ones you booked online. Pay in cash at the counter within 10 minutes of printing the slip; there's a NT$10 fee per ticket. Changes are done at an HSR station, not the store. |
| TRA tickets | FamiPort buys, collects and refunds TRA tickets; the slip it prints is not a ticket until you pay at the counter. |
| Print and scan | Both kiosks print from a USB drive or from files you upload first (ibon cloud printing, or FamilyMart's cloud printing at print.famiport.com.tw), and ibon scans documents too. Handy for lease copies and visa forms. |
| Concert and event tickets | ibon has a ticket centre, and many event sites let you collect at a store. |
| Call a taxi | ibon lists taxi calling among its services. |
| Parcels | Online shops, Shopee among them, let you collect and often pay at a store of your choice. You'll get a text when it arrives. |
| Cash | Most stores have an ATM. |
Good to know: a bill paid at a convenience store takes a few working days to reach the company. If a bill is overdue or lost, ask the company for a new one; past its deadline, the store can't take the old slip.
Money and paying
Cash still matters. Chains, supermarkets, malls and most restaurants take cards, and 7-Eleven takes contactless Visa, Mastercard and JCB, including foreign cards. But morning markets, night markets, breakfast shops and small noodle and rice places often take cash only. Keep a few hundred NT dollars on you, in small notes. Our night markets guide covers the City God Temple area and the rest.
Mobile wallets are common but not universal. FamilyMart takes LINE Pay, JKOPAY (街口支付) and EasyCard, and 7-Eleven has its own icash Pay and OPEN Wallet. Each chain has its own list, and some big names opt out: PX Mart (全聯) takes its own PX Pay rather than LINE Pay or JKOPAY, as our groceries and shopping guide explains. An EasyCard (悠遊卡) or iPASS (一卡通) works for small purchases in most chains as well as on buses and trains.
Every receipt is a lottery ticket. Taiwan's uniform invoice (統一發票) is drawn every two months by the Ministry of Finance. At the till you'll be asked whether you have a carrier (載具): that means a mobile barcode, from the Ministry's e-invoice app, which stores your receipts and checks them for you. Set up automatic bank transfer for prizes in the app and you never touch a paper receipt again.
Tipping isn't expected. Many sit-down restaurants and hotels add a 10% service charge to the bill instead; when it's there, you don't add anything.
Bring a bag. Convenience stores, supermarkets, chain drinks shops, bakeries, pharmacies and many other stores may not give out free plastic shopping bags; you pay a small charge for one.
Rubbish and recycling
There are few public bins on the street, and no wheelie bin at the kerb. Instead, a garbage truck comes to your street at a set time, playing a tune you'll soon hear in your sleep: Beethoven's "Für Elise" or Bądarzewska's "A Maiden's Prayer". In a house or walk-up, you carry your bag out when you hear it, wait with the neighbours, and throw it in yourself. A recycling truck follows, and you sort as you hand things over. In many apartment towers, the building's management collects rubbish and recycling from a room downstairs, with its own sorting rules and hours: ask on move-in day. As Jason puts it: in an apartment building, the building usually takes care of it; in a house, you're out on the street with your neighbours, waiting for the music.
| Hsinchu City | Zhubei and Hsinchu County | |
|---|---|---|
| Who collects | The city's Environmental Protection Bureau | Each township or city office's cleaning team (清潔隊); in Zhubei, the Zhubei City Office. The county bureau handles treatment. |
| Find the truck | The bureau's app, 新竹市清運網 (iOS and Android), shows collection points, routes, times and where the truck is now, with reminders | Ask your neighbours or building for the times, or call your town's cleaning team; the county bureau lists each township's routes on its site |
| Questions | 1999, or the bureau's cleaning team on 03-538-8406 ext. 9 | Hsinchu County Environmental Protection Bureau, 03-551-9345 |
| Sundays and holidays | Sunday runs as a reduced fixed-point service; holiday changes are announced before each long weekend | Varies by town; holiday changes are announced by township |
- Food waste goes in a separate bin on the truck. Drain it first. In Hsinchu County, collection restarted in February 2026 after a pause for African swine fever: leftovers, rice, vegetable scraps, fruit peel, coffee grounds, tea leaves and eggshells go in; bones, shells, fruit stones, pineapple tops, corn husks and bamboo-shoot skins go in the general rubbish. Crews can refuse badly sorted or wet food waste.
- Batteries and power banks go to the recycling truck in their own bag, never in general rubbish: they start fires in the trucks.
- Gas canisters and spray cans: empty, bag separately and hand to the recycling crew.
- Bags: unlike Taipei and New Taipei, Zhubei and Hsinchu City don't make you buy special prepaid rubbish bags: ordinary household bags are fine. Transparent or semi-transparent bags are the safe choice (Hsinchu County leaves room for townships to set their own rules, and Hsinchu City accepts black bags but may inspect them). Rubbish, recycling and food waste still go separately, and your building may have its own routine.
On foot and around scooters
Walk as if no one has seen you. Cars and scooters often behave as though they have right of way, especially when turning across a crossing on a green man, and pavements are patchy outside the newer parts of Zhubei and East District. The covered arcades (騎樓) in front of shops are meant to be walkways, but parked scooters and shop goods often fill them, so you end up stepping into the road.
The law has moved in the pedestrian's favour. After international press called Taiwan a "living hell for pedestrians" in late 2022, amendments in force from 30 June 2023 raised the fine for failing to yield to pedestrians to up to NT$6,000, with demerit points and a traffic-safety class, and required vehicles to keep about three metres from people crossing, including at unmarked crossings. Road deaths are falling slowly: the Ministry of Transportation counted 2,858 in 2025, down 3.1% on 2024, and says scooter riders and older people still make up a large share.
Safety: at every crossing, look for turning vehicles even when your light is green, keep children on the inside, and wear something light at night. If you ride a scooter yourself, our guide to buses, bikes, scooters and taxis covers licences.
Trains, metro and transit etiquette
Hsinchu has no metro, but you'll use Taipei's, and the Taoyuan Airport MRT, sooner or later. On both, eating, drinking (water included), chewing gum and betel nut are banned in stations and on trains, inside the marked no-eating area (in Taipei it starts at the yellow line before the ticket gates). Under the Mass Rapid Transit Act the fine is NT$1,500 to NT$7,500, and staff do enforce it. Jason was yelled at in his first week for chewing gum.
Long-distance trains are different. THSR sells snacks, drinks and boxed meals on board, so eating on the HSR is normal; eating and drinking are allowed on TRA trains too, and Taiwan Railway even delivers pre-ordered railway lunchboxes (台鐵便當) to your seat. The rule to remember is MRT versus train, not food versus no food. Keep it tidy, take your rubbish with you, and keep phone calls short and quiet. Our guide to TRA trains around Hsinchu covers the lines and tickets.
On escalators, many people still stand on the right and leave the left for walkers, out of habit. Taipei Metro no longer asks for that: it now tells riders they may stand on both sides and should hold the handrail, because most escalator injuries come from people walking. Do what the people around you do, and don't push past. On platforms, people queue in lines marked on the floor at each door and let passengers off first.
Language, addresses and taxis
Many people in Hsinchu, especially younger people and anyone who works in the Science Park, studied English for years and understand more than they'll say. Ask "Do you speak English?" and you may hear "No" or "A little" from someone who then follows you fine. It isn't unfriendliness; plenty of people are just uneasy speaking it on the spot. Speak slowly, keep sentences short, and a translation app fills the gaps. A few words of Mandarin go a long way.
- Taxis: most drivers don't speak English. Keep your home address, and wherever you're going, in Traditional Chinese on your phone, ready to show. Taxis wait at Hsinchu TRA Station and at HSR Hsinchu Station in Zhubei.
- Addresses run big to small: postcode, city or county, district or town, road, section (段), lane (巷), alley (弄), number (號), floor (樓). Read an English address backwards to match it to the Chinese one.
- Need your address in English? Chunghwa Post's address translation tool gives the official English version for post.
- Dates on forms: 115/11/03 means 3 November 2026 in the Minguo calendar.
Health
Seeing a doctor is quick and cheap once you're in National Health Insurance, and even without it, paying yourself (自費) at a neighbourhood clinic costs less than many newcomers expect. Some hospitals run international services with English help at self-pay rates; our guide to healthcare in Hsinchu covers NHI, clinics and the international outpatient service in Zhubei.
- Water: tap water meets Taiwan's drinking-water standards, but Taiwan Water does not encourage drinking it unboiled, because most buildings store it in rooftop tanks and basement cisterns. Boil it, or use a filter or a hot-and-cold water dispenser, and change the filters on time.
- Toilet paper: since 2017 the environment agency has asked people to flush toilet paper, and public toilets have the signs. Tissues, wet wipes and paper towels still go in the bin. In an older home, ask your landlord about the plumbing.
- Massage: foot massage, shoulder and neck, full body and cupping shops are everywhere, and some stay open very late or around the clock. Prices are usually posted at the door.
Shopping, sizes and deliveries
Sizes run small. Jason's experience: "for me a 3XL is an XL", and bigger sizes tend to get wider, not longer, so tall people struggle with sleeves and trouser length. In men's shoes he usually saw sizes up to about US 10 in ordinary shops. If you're tall or broad, bring a supply, or buy online.
Ordering from abroad. Amazon.com (US) ships selected products to Taiwan, with free shipping on qualifying orders of US$60 or more (November 2026; restrictions apply). Set your delivery address to Taiwan: eligible items show "FREE Shipping to Taiwan" by the price, and "FREE AmazonGlobal Shipping" is pre-selected at checkout if your order qualifies. Free shipping doesn't cover import taxes or fees. In Jason's experience, orders took one to a few weeks.
Install EZ WAY first. Parcels from overseas shops clear customs under real-name authentication, done through the Customs Administration's EZ WAY (易利委) app. You register with your ID and a Taiwan mobile number, which is checked against your SIM; ARC holders have been able to register (with ARC number, name, mobile number and date of birth) since March 2021. When a parcel arrives, you confirm the declaration in the app. Give overseas shops the same mobile number you registered: a mismatch can hold your parcel up. Details are on the Customs Administration's EZ WAY page.
Phones, wifi and apps
LINE is how people talk. Landlords, building managers, clinics, schools, tutors and the shop that fixes your scooter will all ask for your LINE. Set it up on day one with a Taiwan number.
Wifi is nearly everywhere, behind a password. Coffee shops, restaurants and hotels have it; the password is on the wall, the receipt or a quick question away. The government's free iTaiwan wifi runs at government offices, stations and public buildings; its site has a hotspot map.
Your phone will scream. Taiwan's Public Warning System sends alerts to every 4G phone in an area. National-level alerts, which include earthquake early warnings, can't be switched off; the Central Weather Administration sends an earthquake alert when a quake of magnitude 5.0 or more is expected to shake your county at intensity 4 or above. The alert may arrive seconds before the shaking: drop, cover and hold on. Typhoon days, when work and school close, are announced by the city and county governments; our guide to Hsinchu's weather explains how.
Apps worth installing early: LINE, Google Maps, the e-invoice app (統一發票兌獎), the NHI app (全民健保行動快易通), EZ WAY, and in Hsinchu City, 新竹市清運網 for the garbage truck.
Home life and customs
- Shoes off at the door of a home; look for the slippers or the shoe rack.
- Plugs: sockets take flat two-pin plugs; some older ones have no earth hole, so a three-pin plug won't fit without an adapter. Most laptop and phone chargers handle 110V; check anything with a heater or motor.
- The number 4 sounds like "death" (死), so some buildings skip the 4th floor or flat numbers with 4.
- Ghost Month is the seventh lunar month (13 August to 10 September in 2026, with the Ghost Festival, 中元節, on 27 August). Shops and offices lay out tables of offerings and burn paper money in metal bins. Older people avoid moving house, swimming or starting big things that month.
- Breakfast shops (早餐店) open early and close around midday: egg crepes, toast, rice balls and milk tea, made to order and cheap.
- Umbrellas are for sun as much as rain. Buildings put plastic sleeves or racks at the door for wet ones.
- Queues form for everything, from buses to a new bubble tea shop, and people stick to them.
Good to know: the month you arrive, spend half an hour in a 7-Eleven or FamilyMart with nothing to buy, poking at the kiosk. It will save you a dozen trips later.
→ Your first 30 days · Healthcare · Getting around · Living in Hsinchu
Sources: 7-ELEVEN Taiwan, bill payment services and payment methods; ibon services; FamilyMart, payment tools and FamiPort cloud printing; NHIA, premium payment methods; THSR, tickets at convenience stores and in-train shop; Mass Rapid Transit Act, Article 50; TVBS (April 2025) on Taipei Metro escalators; Hsinchu City Environmental Protection Bureau holiday notice via CNA (April 2026) and its 新竹市清運網 app listing; Hsinchu County Environmental Protection Bureau; UDN (February 2026) on Hsinchu County food waste collection; CNA (April 2024) on township waste collection in Hsinchu County; TaiwanPlus (August 2025) on garbage truck music; Ministry of Environment plastic bag rules as reported by its Resource Circulation Administration (2024); Taiwan News (June 2023) on the pedestrian right-of-way amendments; UDN (March 2026) on MOTC road death figures; Taiwan Water Corporation FAQ; CNA (April 2017) on flushing toilet paper; Chunghwa Post address translation; Customs Administration, EZ WAY for ARC holders; Amazon.com help, AmazonGlobal free shipping; iTaiwan; National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction and NCC on the Public Warning System; US Commercial Service, Taiwan business travel guide (tipping and service charges); CIA World Factbook (voltage and plugs); National Immigration Agency (1990 hotline). Hsinchu County Environmental Protection Bureau and Hsinchu City Government guidance on rubbish bags (September 2026); Taiwan Railway's seat-delivery lunchbox service (October 2026); Amazon.com, Free Shipping to Taiwan (US$60 minimum). Jason's own experience is marked as his. Checked November 2026.