Yeah a good mate moved to Taiwan to teach English, probably nearly 15 years back now. He wasn't earning great money at first, but built his rep and now seems to do mainly private tutoring off his own back, I think. He said working conditions were t pretty rough and employers arseholes. He's a reasonable bloke too, so trust his views. Wonder if you know him
Met his now wife so after and she's well educated and seems very decent/level headed, but he still had culture issues involving looking after her family at times, but he's a strong character and refused as think some of them were lazy drunks.
He also has strong interest in travelling, other cultures and knew from teens he wanted to move away from western culture. So wasn;t purely chasing women. Not strongly motivated by money or 'things' either so don;t think he minded living on lowish wage.
He's also been learning mandarin for years and like you say its an incredibly tough language to properly grasp. He self taught italian, well educated back in UK so not like he's dim either.