You can live on a foreign card for a month. You cannot live on one for a year — not for rent, not for the phone bill, not for the transfer your employer will insist on. The first real bank account is a paperwork morning, not a product decision.
Bring the passport, the ARC, an address that matches, and photos if they ask. A chop still helps at some counters and is irrelevant at others. English depends on the branch, not the brand. Chunghwa Post is slower and less interested in selling you a fund. For a salary account, that is a feature.
The private banks will offer an app, a credit card, and a conversation about your income. Take the account. Decline the rest until you can read a Taiwanese statement. We already wrote the payslip note; the same instinct applies here.
Do it on a weekday morning. Do not do it on the day your first salary is supposed to land. The people who look calm in the queue are the ones who came back in month two, when they already knew which number was the account number.