Deciphering Street Addresses and Phone Numbers in Taiwan

by John Fotheringham

As you would imagine, addresses and phone numbers work a little (in fact, quite a bit) differently in Taiwan than they do back home. Here is some essential address and phone number info you will need to get around in Taiwan.

Fortunately, the Taiwan system is pretty easy to get used to once you’ve been here for a few weeks.

Good luck!

Street Addresses

To avoid undue repetition, I will not add PīnYīn for extremely common words like road, section, lane, number, etc. that appear again and again throughout the site and companion book.  Such words are shown here for your reference:

Addresses always go from “big” to “small” in Taiwan—and in many other East Asian countries for that matter—as the following address for Adventist Hospital (TáiĀn YīYuàn 臺安醫院) demonstrates:

You will also come across addresses that include a 巷 (Xiàng “lane”) and  弄 (Lòng “alley”).  These English translations may look familiar, but they have unique and distinct meanings in Taiwan.  “Lanes” are typically roads large enough to drive on, while alleys are smaller roadways that branch off of lanes, and are sometimes for foot or scooter traffic only. If an address includes both a lane and an alley, the lane is always listed first.

Presentation of Taiwan Phone Numbers

Throughout the site and companion book, I have written Taiwan phone numbers exactly as you would dial them when calling locally.

If you are calling a Taiwanese number from abroad, however, make sure to drop the first zero of both cell phone and landline numbers and add the Taiwan’s country code: 886.