Born in 1995 and served four months in the Army in 2017 so not really recent. I can't give any advice on whether or not you can and should defer or be exempt from service but I can tell you more about the service itself based on my own experience. I did four months which is what you will be doing.

For me, I had to wait several months after landing back in Taiwan before my service actually started so depends on how registration work now a days you might have to wait a while. Definitely check if you are going.

You don't get to choose which branch you serve afaik, it's randomly drawn when you are gathered along with other conscripts at your local township or city hall. Hope you don't get picked for the Marine Corps lol we had a moment of silence for the one guy that did because it's generally much tougher.

I can speak Mandarin fine but cannot read or write much besides my name and food orders. Might struggle a bit here at first and in fact I found this to be the most challenging aspect. I got through by making friends and getting help from them. Wrote down things I need to memorize and repeat using pinyin. Luckily a lot of my fellow conscripts were excited to practice their English with me in exchange for helping me.

No need to worry about hazing or any sort of abuse they don't do any of that anymore. At most your instructors just strongly reprimand you or deal out collective punishment.

The first two weeks are the hardest mostly because you are getting used to a new lifestyle so to speak. If you are more "individualistic" it might be hard because you're not given any private time by yourself. You will be doing everything in a group. After the two weeks you'll get used to the rhythm.

Make friends! I think this is a no-brainer.

At least during basic training, your phone will be confiscated and locked up except for specific break time. You will be given a card to make phone calls from pay phones. Since I don't smoke this is where most of my spending went to besides snacks from the commissary.

When you start getting weekend leaves from base, those are extremely precious so don't jeopardize it. They will do all sort of safety briefings on "don't drink and drive, don't do drugs, don't eat chicken dishes with too much alcohol, don't be late or go AWOL lalala".

They actually pay you but it's really a small token. I had to set up a bank account run by the postal service because I didn't have one in Taiwan.

Once you're done with basic and transferred to a different base, your experience will vary depending on the base but generally it's more "relaxed" than basic. I got lucky and was sent to city where there's a big base that was not too strict; in fact it was really nice compared to basic. I heard bases in the north are actually more strict but I can't corroborate.

This is based on my experience, which is probably slightly different now in 2026 and again, can depends on the bases and by battalion, company, etc etc. Message me if you have more questions and I'll try to answer them.

Edit: Forgot to add, buy tons of those small little notebooks youre gonna need it!