Because I don’t want life to be boring, it’s also time for a little side quest: the renewal of my Taiwan Gold Card. I’m not gonna spend a lot of time here explaining what this Gold Card is and how it works, but in a nutshell: it’s a combined residence permit + working visa for Taiwan, reserved for certain categories of skilled workers (example: artists, athletes, tech industry, academia, finance). It is useful, for example, if you are planning to move to Taiwan and you haven’t signed an employment contract yet. I know of people who used it to move to Taiwan during the pandemic, enjoying a COVID-free lifestyle (at least until the point when COVID broke in in Taiwan as well, which was exactly during the period Penelope was born). In general, it makes bureaucratic life easier in Taiwan, and allows you to go through the “fast” queue at the airport instead of going through immigration.
Personally, I applied for this Gold Card out of forced circumstances rather than convenience or long-term planning: it was one of the very few ways a non-resident could enter Taiwan during the pandemic. I still had to do two weeks of quarantine hotel (and a big earthquake struck exactly during that time, it was not funny given also that I was at the 18th floor…), but this loophole allowed me to be there with Mei-Lin during the very final stage of the pregnancy. Given that my Gold Card has a 3-year course of validity, I used it every time we visited Taiwan afterwards.
But there is a catch: the Gold Card is connected to your national passport. And my Italian passport expired last year, so I had to renew it. The last time we went to Taiwan, an immigration officer spotted that my passport number was different from the one on my Gold Card. This prompted a (brief) investigation, eventually they still allowed me in, but they strongly recommended me to amend the passport data on the Gold Card for my next visit.
So, some time ago I inquired with the Gold Card Office on how to do it. In theory it’s a very simple procedure, so I was not even planning of writing a blog post about it BUT given that life is like a box of cyanide chocolate, better be proactive. Here is what I have to do:
- Log in to the Gold Card Application portal (which I haven’t done for years, but luckily my password is “123cat” so it’s easy to remember).
- Go through the annoying procedure of resetting the password every 90 days (the new one is “123dog”).
- Request an amend to the cardholder data and change the passport number (surprisingly, this does not cost anything).
This is what I did already, now the next steps are:
- When entering Taiwan next time, I will need to bring my current Gold card and BOTH my current and old passports (bonus question: what if I had thrown away my old one?).
- Then, I have to go in person to an immigration office in Taileng to pick up the updated Gold Card.
Easy peasy! I’ll update if there is any hiccups.
Are You Fucking Kidding Me 