Ceylan: Famous for Being Seen, Yet Leaving Taiwan Because of It

30-Second Overview: Ceylan is a Chinese-language YouTuber. After the Shanghai lockdown in 2022, he brought his life experiences to the camera; in 2023, he lived in Taiwan for about half a year and obtained a residence permit, but announced he was considering moving to Japan due to the pressure of being recognized, asked for photos, and secretly photographed. This article does not offer a general verdict on Taiwan, but rather traces how a person who became famous by being seen rechooses their living location after being seen too much.

Caption: The street view of Bade Road presents the urban environment where roads, commercial activities, and daily movement intersect, allowing for comparison with Ceylan’s observations on traffic, pace of life, and public space in his Taiwan commentary. Photo: Xuan Shi Sheng / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

He Wasn't First Seen in Taiwan

Ceylan is a Chinese-language YouTuber and streamer of Belgian and Chinese descent. During the Shanghai lockdown in 2022, he documented his life experiences in videos, describing his experiences from the announcement of the lockdown to the distribution of supplies. A Newtalk report mentioned that he said the last ration he received consisted of only eight eggs. What these contents showed viewers was not just "a foreigner looking at China," but also how a long-time resident of Shanghai suddenly lost the ability to move and arrange their life in a familiar city. ¹

After leaving Shanghai, Ceylan turned his lens toward Taiwan. On April 24, 2023, he released the video "After Living Here for 6 Months, These Are My True Views on Taiwan." The video chapters sequentially discuss media, traffic, and city appearance, while also retaining positive observations on democracy, friendliness, and cost of living. ²³⁴ This structure is important: Ceylan does not merely list Taiwan's shortcomings, but uses "expectation gaps" as the narrative skeleton, organizing living experiences into a set of comments with comparative implications. Reports indicate that he also mentioned Taiwan's freedom of speech, democracy, warm people, and relatively low cost of living. ²³ His tone is often direct, even deliberately making people uncomfortable, because he is not filming Taiwan into a tourism promotional video, but placing the daily passageways, roads, and news feeds he encounters onto the same table of scrutiny. This creative approach also explains why he elicits two sharply different reactions: supporters believe he has articulated problems taken for granted, while opponents worry that the short-term living experiences of foreigners are edited into overly definitive conclusions. Ceylan's distinctive feature lies not only in "daring to criticize," but also in packaging personal feelings into public texts that can be widely forwarded, cited, and refuted.

The significance of this content lies in advancing Ceylan's channel from personal testimony of "escaping Shanghai" to comparative commentary on places of residence. The core of the Shanghai videos is how to obtain food, move, and leave after a lockdown. The Taiwan videos turn the lens toward more daily, yet harder-to-categorize issues in a democratic society: how media reports, how traffic risk is distributed, and how city appearance accumulates into residents' habits. The video also includes sections such as "expectations before arriving in Taiwan," "larger structures behind the problems," and "small things," showing that he intends to discuss not just street scenes, but how systems, habits, and quality of life interconnect. ⁵⁶⁴ Mirror Weekly organized three criticisms into media, traffic, and architecture/city appearance issues, but this remains the framework of the creator and media observation, not equivalent to a complete diagnosis of Taiwanese society.

📝 Curator's Note: Foreign criticism is not necessarily more correct, but it often turns what locals have become accustomed to and invisible back into a problem.

Caption: The street view of Dihua Street connects to the city appearance, old street preservation, and urban renewal issues discussed by Ceylan; the image provides a visual context for the article's discussion of Taiwan's living environment. Photo: Kiyoteru Awaji / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

Why "True Views" Sparked Controversy

Ceylan's Taiwan video sparked discussion not only because of what he criticized, but also because the identity of the critic itself became news. Taiwanese media reported on his Chinese fluency, mixed-race background, residence permit, and subscriber count together. A report from August 2023 recorded his channel having approximately 1.17 million subscribers, but that was the number at the time and cannot be directly taken as today's scale. ⁷⁸⁹

In the video, he said that Taiwanese people do not always need to seek validation from the outside, and should tell fewer lies and accept guidance. Supporters view this as sincere, while opponents might argue that someone who has lived there for only half a year should not condense a complex society into a few shortcomings. Both sides actually touch upon the same dilemma: YouTube requires clear stances, but social reality rarely has only one answer. Media ecology, traffic, and city appearance can be real problems, but they cannot be conclusively determined by the observation of a single creator.

More notably, Ceylan's videos possess both "life documentation" and "argumentation" functions simultaneously. The streets, news footage, and personal narration in the lens make viewers feel they are watching a live scene. But when he generalizes from a few examples to the whole society, viewers still need to ask whether the sample size is sufficient, whether the comparison is fair, and whether the video omits counterexamples for the sake of pacing. This is not a requirement unique to Ceylan, but a media literacy issue that all commentary creators must face.

What Left Was Not Taiwan, But the Gaze

In August 2023, Ceylan said he was "not very happy" in Taiwan. Reports from TVBS, Mirror Weekly, and CTS all pointed out that what he cared about most was freedom of movement: being recognized and asked for photos was not entirely unacceptable, but being secretly photographed and having photos posted online made him gradually reduce his outings. He also mentioned Taipei's long-term humid and hot weather, and viewed Japan as the next possible place to live. ⁷⁸¹⁰⁹

This declaration of leaving did not judge Taiwan as "bad." On the contrary, Ceylan still said he has friends in Taiwan and would return. His judgment is more like "this place is currently not suitable for me to live." For an ordinary office worker, being recognized when going out might be an occasional trouble. For someone who works by putting their face and voice on the internet, it may become a cost calculated every day. Fame brought him to more people, but also pushed him away from anonymous life.

Caption: Taipei 101 and the city skyline symbolize the urban scale of Ceylan's living experience in Taiwan, and connect to the article's discussion of foreign observation, life choices, and the decision to leave. Photo: AngMoKio / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

What His Story Leaves Behind

Source: Newtalk, Newtalk, Endpoints, Newtalk, PeoPo, Chung Cheng E-News, Xin Media, VOCUS, and Ceylan's official YouTube page-by-page data, 2022–2026.

This timeline does not compress Ceylan's life into a few years, but marks how his role in public discussion changed: first as the person recording restricted life, then as the creator commenting on places of residence, then as the object of criticism by media and reported by media, and finally having to face the controversies generated by his own comments. The dates and content of events in the timeline should be based on their respective page-by-page sources. It provides a reading order, not a verdict on all events.

Ceylan's Taiwan experience cannot offer a general verdict on Taiwan, nor can it simplify his departure into a gossip piece of "an internet celebrity doesn't like Taiwan." To understand this experience, one can view it as a trajectory of creative position-shifting: the 2022 Shanghai lockdown made him a witness recording restrictions and daily disorder. The 2023 living experience in Taiwan turned him into a commentator comparing cities, media, and systems. Subsequent media criticism, the A-Di incident, and the Pet Communicator incident made him a public figure examined, cited, and refuted by others. This timeline shows that his content has been constantly moving back and forth between "observing others" and "being observed by others." ^1111213

Pet Communicator: From Debunking to Professional Boundaries

On March 26, 2026, after Haha TV broadcast "Pet Communicator Grand Showdown," Ceylan released "Pet Communication Made Me So Angry!!! Why Do People Believe This Thing!!!" on April 18, raising questions from perspectives of scientific basis, quantum claims, lost pets, and deceased pets. He later released videos of him taking the class personally, extending the commentary into a verification path of "watch the program first, then question the method." ¹¹¹⁴¹⁵ The incident thus expanded from a single internet program into a discussion between healing needs and scientific skepticism. PeoPo interviewed pet communicators, owners who had used the services, and professionals with backgrounds in animal behavior training: some viewed the service as psychological comfort when losing a pet or facing anxiety, while others worried that incorrect specific advice would delay the handling of animal behavior and health issues. ¹¹

The focus of this incident is not to declare for Ceylan "who is definitely correct," but to separate three different claims. The first is the owner obtaining emotional comfort, belonging to personal experience; the second is whether the communicator can provide verifiable animal behavior judgments, involving methods and evidence; the third is whether medical or training advice can be provided, involving professional qualifications and actual risks. PeoPo's interviews also present an intermediate position that should not be ignored: some owners stated that the service may not have truly found the missing pet, but provided psychological comfort when helpless; animal behavior trainers believed that if incorrect specific advice is taken as the basis for handling, it may cover up the real causes such as stress, environment, or disease. ¹¹ If the three are conflated, pet communication is easily quickly categorized between "faith" and "scam," losing the examination of service content and responsibility boundaries.

Ceylan's subsequent personal attendance at the pet communication class added another layer of methodological turning point to the incident. This does not mean that personal experience equals completing scientific verification, but it moves his criticism from watching the program and offering intuitive reactions to further engaging with the service process and checking claims. For viewers, a more stable reading is to treat the video as a public query and record, rather than taking Ceylan's conclusion, the communicator's statement, or the mockery in the comment section directly as the final answer. ¹⁴¹⁵

Spiritual Courses: From Self-Growth to Power Relations

In 2025, Ceylan used a long video, "Your Spirit Does Not Need Courses," to organize his investigation into LGAT/three-stage spiritual courses. Xin Media reported that the video is about 2 hours and 20 minutes long, and Ceylan stated he spent about two months reading materials, contacting researchers and participants, focusing on how the course uses intensive activities, group pressure, and reinterpreting personal dilemmas to make participants believe they are undergoing a major transformation. Here, two levels should be distinguished: Ceylan presents the creator's investigation and criticism. The participants, researchers, and helping professionals in the report each provide different experiences and judgments, which cannot be simplified into a single conclusion. ¹⁶

Such courses are worth discussing not only because some believe or do not believe in spiritual growth, but because the courses may involve specific relationships such as fees, confidentiality, freedom to exit, group pressure, and instructor authority. Page-by-page comments from clinical psychologists remind us that if participants are required to cut off external information, cannot question the course, or attribute all pain to their own lack of effort, the informed consent and autonomy need to be re-examined. These are risk frameworks proposed by professional commentators, not equivalent to judicial determinations for every spiritual course or individual institution. ¹⁷

Communication Between Organs and the Body: Spiritual Language Meets Medical Risk

In 2026, Ceylan further filmed "I Went to Take an Organ Communication Class! Turns Out This Thing Is Worse Than I Thought..." The official video page lists sections on organ communication definitions, dialogue with the intestines of a pancreatic cancer patient, tumor surgery claims, Hita healing origins, and responses from Taiwanese spiritual teachers. Social Lab then organized the discussion volume after the video's release. This incident continues his method of "entering the scene first, then deconstructing claims," but pushes the verification responsibility into a higher-risk area: when the course discusses cancer, tumors, or surgery, the content cannot be measured solely by personal healing experiences. ¹⁸¹⁹

"Communication between organs and the body" can be treated as a symbolic language of self-awareness, such as making people pay attention to stress, pain, or lifestyle habits. But if it further claims to be able to read organ will, explain tumor causes, or imply that the course can replace diagnosis and treatment, higher-level evidence must be required. This article does not make medical judgments for Ceylan or the course instructors, but establishes clear boundaries: psychological comfort can be understood, but cancer and surgery decisions should be left to qualified medical personnel to handle according to evidence-based medicine. This also distinguishes the organ communication incident from the pet communication incident—the former directly touches upon major diseases and medical choices, and cannot use "some people find it helpful" as proof of safety. ¹⁸¹⁹

From spiritual courses to organ communication, the questions left by Ceylan's content are not "all mind-body-spirit services should be mocked," but who makes the claim, who bears the consequences of error, and whether participants have sufficient information and the freedom to exit. This way of asking is more meaningful than simply taking sides, and can avoid conflating the emotional needs of cases with medical facts.

Taiwan Media Criticism: Who Decides the Public Narrative

In September 2023, Ceylan released a video criticizing Taiwanese media for taking things out of context and using headlines to attract traffic, arguing that journalists in a democratic society cannot simply respond to errors with "freedom of speech," but should accept public scrutiny and accountability. An Endpoints report pointed out that Sanlih E-News, the media Ceylan named, admitted that the relevant journalists were indeed employed, stating they would reflect on the editorial process, and invited scholars and social figures to launch a news self-discipline committee. The report also recorded the pressure media practitioners face regarding click rates and platform recommendation mechanisms, explaining that the problem is not just a single headline, but involves a cycle shaped by media, platforms, and audiences. ¹²

This incident made Ceylan not only comment on Taiwan, but compete for "who has the right to name the event." When media cuts a long video into a few quotes, the creator may feel their original intent was rewritten. When an internet celebrity uses a longer, more intense video to counterattack, media criticism may be repackaged into another traffic event. Ceylan's official Taiwan commentary video itself lists sections such as "post-truth environment" and "unscrupulous media consumption," showing that media problems in his narrative are not incidental complaints, but one of the core arguments of the entire video. ¹²⁴ Therefore, what really needs to be checked is not "who is forever correct, the internet celebrity or the media," but whether every retelling provides complete context, whether the criticized party has an opportunity to respond, and whether there is a traceable correction mechanism after errors appear.

The A-Di Incident: Criticism Can Also Produce New Misreadings

Media criticism later extended to the public confrontation between Ceylan and A-Di. A Newtalk report pointed out that Ceylan called A-Di because he believed A-Di was affected by media taking things out of context. After talking on the phone for about 40 minutes, Ceylan apologized, and A-Di stated acceptance. This follow-up supplemented what could not be seen relying solely on live broadcast clips: Ceylan's motives, A-Di's feelings, and the correction after direct communication between the two. ¹³

The A-Di incident also forms a reflexive reminder: when creators oppose media using clips to manufacture conclusions, their own live broadcast clips can similarly be extracted from context by audiences and media. Public criticism does not automatically guarantee correct judgment, but instead requires creators to bear higher verification and correction responsibilities. And audiences cannot directly treat "the clip I saw" as the complete event.

Conclusion: From Being Seen to Learning Responsibility

Therefore, what Ceylan leaves behind is not a checklist of Taiwan scores to be copied, but three continuing questions: when creators make criticisms, where are the evidence and boundaries; when media retells internet celebrities, is the context fully explained; when audiences share and spectate, do they simplify a person's life, professionalism, and errors into consumable drama. Ceylan started by being seen, but left because of being seen; and in the Pet Communication, Taiwan Media, and A-Di incidents, he also became part of the public gaze mechanism he criticized. This is not a period about whether Taiwan is good or bad, but a conclusion about how to watch, verify, and take responsibility in the digital age.

References

Further Reading

• Ceylan Ceylan Official YouTube Channel
• Wikimedia Commons: Street View of Section 1, Bade Road, Taipei
• Wikimedia Commons: Street View of Section 1, Dihua Street

Image Sources

• File:Bade Road Section 1, Taipei City 20090725.jpg — Xuan Shi Sheng, CC BY-SA 3.0.
• File:DiHua Street Sec.1, Taipei (at YongChang Street).jpg — Kiyoteru Awaji, CC BY 4.0.
• File:Taipei 101 2009 amk.jpg — AngMoKio, CC BY-SA 3.0.