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TaiwaneseAmerican.org

  • Home
  • Stories
    • Interviews
    • Perspectives
    • Arts & Entertainment
    • Community Orgs
    • Food & Travel
    • Social Issues & Politics
  • Events
    • National
    • East Coast
    • West Coast
    • Midwest
    • South
  • About
    • Community Organizations
    • Donate
    • Submissions
  • Contact
  • Projects
  • Creative Writing Prizes
Shop Your Community: Mid-Autumn Festival Gift Guide Shop Your Community: Mid-Autumn Festival Gift Guide
Forms of Expression: An Interview with Artist Jocelyn Tsaih Forms of Expression: An Interview with Artist Jocelyn Tsaih
How she built this: sophomore Taliyah Huang invents a Taiwanese-English translation tool to bridge language gaps How she built this: sophomore Taliyah Huang invents a Taiwanese-English translation tool to bridge language gaps
Director's Picks: Ten Taiwanese American Films to Watch Director's Picks: Ten Taiwanese American Films to Watch
New on TaiwanPlus: "Kitchen Remix" presents Taiwanese Food… With a Twist New on TaiwanPlus: "Kitchen Remix" presents Taiwanese Food… With a Twist

Featured Stories

CommunityFood & TravelPerspectives

How Dragon Boat Festival zongzi are my mom’s love language

For as long as I can remember, the scent of steaming Taiwanese zongzi (or bahtzang, in Taigi) filled my childhood home the weekend ahead of the Dragon Boat Festival day. Before the convenience of Asian grocery chains having a prepared foods section, the memory of my mom sitting on a low plastic stool…

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Arts & CultureFeaturedInterviews

A Girl Worth Rooting For: Meet Holly-Mei Jones

Synopsis: Packed with humor and heart, this debut middle grade series follows a girl finding her place in a brand-new world of private school and frenemies when her family moves to Hong Kong. Taiwanese Canadian Holly-Mei Jones couldn’t be more excited about moving to Hong Kong for her mother’s…

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Arts & CultureCommunityInterviews

Podcasts & Poetry: Cynthia Lin (TW Diaspora) Interviews Shin Yu Pai

  I’m thrilled Leona connected me with Shin Yu Pai for this written Q&A piece for TaiwaneseAmerican.org centered on her work as an artist, writer, and podcast host. As two podcasters, Shin Yu and I naturally gravitated to talking live after the initial Q&A. I found our conversation…

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Happy MADE IN TAIWAN day to all who celebrate (aka Happy MADE IN TAIWAN day to all who celebrate (aka everyone we know). We couldn't be more excited for the release of Clarissa Wei and Ivy Chen's "Made in Taiwan: Recipes and Stories from the Island Nation."⁠ ⁠ From the @eater profile earlier this week: ⁠ "Made in Taiwan joins a wave of Taiwanese cookbooks published by the diaspora in the last year, cookbooks that compile the sort of “gorgeous new recipes” Wei may well have been referring to: First Generation: Recipes from My Taiwanese-American Home, by Frankie Gaw; Bao, by London restaurateurs serving Taiwanese-inspired food; Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook, by the chefs behind the New York restaurant and bakery, written with Cathy Erway, who herself published The Food of Taiwan in 2015.⁠ ⁠ What sets Made in Taiwan apart is its journalistic sensibility and its statement from the outset that Taiwan is its own nation (it’s there, right in the title) separate from China, with its own distinct cuisine. It’s a statement that has made this cookbook political — “but it has to be,” Wei says. “You can’t divorce politics and food in Taiwan. You just cannot.” But to focus on this aspect of the book is to miss its best and most beautiful parts: the preservation of Taiwanese recipes — both the familiar and the fading — as a bulwark against an uncertain future, a feeling that comes from an island with a tenuous grasp on sovereignty."⁠ ⁠ Get yours now if you haven't already - here's our affiliate Bookshop link, which sources directly from independent bookstores and allows us to earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. But we encourage sourcing however the book is most accessible to you!⁠ ⁠ https://bookshop.org/a/6825/9781982198978
Savouring this powerful @latimes profile of @dearc Savouring this powerful @latimes profile of @dearclarissa and her forthcoming cookbook with Ivy Chen: Taiwan’s odyssey to establish its distinct identity is manifold and complex. It won’t be worldwide recognition of any single component of the culture, history, politics or food that accomplishes this but a combination of them all. Certainly, Wei and Chen are leading the charge on the food front with “Made in Taiwan.” Without preparing a single dish, readers will come away with a clearer picture of Taiwan and a better comprehension of its relationship with China and the rest of the world. And, what’s more, using the recipes can be an exercise in creating comfort — an antidote to the cross-strait tensions chronicled in the book. A simple bowl of braised minced pork belly over rice can be a soothing embrace — or a small act of defiance during volatile times. “Our identity is constantly changing. I could not have written my book 20 years ago. It wouldn’t exist. It would not make sense, because Taiwanese identity was very different back then,” Wei says. “This book is a reflection of what it is now.” Pre-order now: https://bookshop.org/a/6825/9781982198978
Kuei-Shan Little League of Taoyuan, Chinese Taipei Kuei-Shan Little League of Taoyuan, Chinese Taipei, the representative of the Asia-Pacific Region, has been named the recipient of the 2023 Jack Losch Little League Baseball® World Series Team Sportsmanship Award based on their display of sportsmanship on and off the field. “Since 2004, we have honored teams at the Little League Baseball World Series who go out of their way to showcase sportsmanship on and off the field, and we are pleased to recognize Kuei-Shan Little League from Taoyuan, Chinese Taipei, with this year’s award,” said Stephen D. Keener, Little League President and CEO @littleleague Full story: https://www.littleleague.org/world-series/2023/llbws/news/kuei-shan-little-league-earns-2023-jack-losch-little-league-baseball-world-series-team-sportsmanship-award
With Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋節 coming up next With Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋節 coming up next month, we had some fun putting together a gift guide from our community!⁠ 01 / Christina Matula's "The Shadow in the Moon," illustrated by Pearl Law, introduces us to two sisters as they listen to their grandmother tell the tale of the origins of the Mid-Autumn Festival. @christinamatula @pearlperoni⁠ 02 / Cheeky and punny Mid-Autumn Festival prints by illustrator Julia Chen @half.sugar_less.ice⁠ 03 / Everyone, including your fancy aunties and uncles, will love the delicate handmade Taiwanese moon cakes from @tecompany - "Our Taiwanese Mooncake is filled with sweetened mung bean paste that's "not too sweet" and encased in a soft flaky outer dough. Its unfussy look understates the effort required – until you take your first bite."⁠ 04 / Decorate your space with this "Mooncake Phases" and Mooncake sticker by illustrator @janeli.co (psst, the Mooncake Phases print is currently 50% off!)⁠ 05 / Young families will love this wooden mooncake playset and Mid-Autumn holiday bundle of bilingual books (available in Mandarin and Cantonese) by @bitty.bao⁠ ⁠ We also appreciate how the Mid-Autumn festival is celebrated across many Asian cultures and diasporas. Check out some of our notable lit picks from the broader Asian American community, including...⁠ 01 / Fake Dates and Mooncakes, a YA debut by @sherleeauthor - "Heartstopper meets Crazy Rich Asians in this heartfelt, joyful paperback original rom-com that follows an aspiring chef who discovers the recipe for love is more complicated than it seems when he starts fake-dating a handsome new customer."⁠ ⁠ 02 / Mooncakes and Milk Bread, an award-winning cookbook by Kristina Cho @eatchofood⁠ ⁠ 03 / From acclaimed author and illustrator Grace Lin @pacylin - "A Big Mooncake for Little Star" and "Thanking the Moon" ⁠ ⁠ 04 / "The Best Kind of Mooncake" by Pearl Auyeung @pearlwiththepearlearrings⁠ ⁠ #midautumnfestival #asianamerican #taiwaneseamerican
Today in @nytimes — What Cuisine Means to Taiwa Today in @nytimes — What Cuisine Means to Taiwan’s Identity and Its Clash With China by Li Yuan Ching-yi Chen, a food writer in Taipei, asked each attendee of an event to bring a dish that the person considered to be Taiwanese cuisine. A woman in her 20s brought mapo tofu, originally from China’s Sichuan Province, because she grew up eating it. An older pro-independence politician brought a bowl of eel noodle. That is a dish from Tainan, the stronghold of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which promotes Taiwanese nationalism. To Ms. Chen, both qualified as Taiwanese cuisines. “Anything on this land that is transformed and given a new form or life can be referred to as ‘Taiwanese cuisine,’” she said. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/08/business/taiwan-cuisine.html
There’s a good chance you’ve seen artist Jocel There’s a good chance you’ve seen artist Jocelyn Tsaih’s work already– her signature cloud-like, amorphous, faceless figurines have been seen as article illustrations for the New York Times, on the cover of slant’d Magazine, and as murals in Hollywood, SF MoMA, and NYC’s Spotify office. Or you may have noticed her subtle illustrations on their Taiwanese noodles-to-go packaging.⁠ ⁠ We're pleased to share this interview by @hochie71 with Jocelyn Tsaih, a Taiwanese American multi-media artist who "grew up between multiple cultures and worlds" and [in her art] has created her own version of the 'in-between."⁠ ⁠ Interview linked here and in bio: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2023/08/forms-of-expression-an-interview-with-artist-jocelyn-tsaih/
College sophomore Taliyah Huang was raised in a Ta College sophomore Taliyah Huang was raised in a Taiwanese and Mandarin-speaking household but lost some of her fluency after leaving home for school. Like many second-generation Taiwanese Americans, Taliyah has grandparents with limited English fluency, and she wanted to cultivate the ability to converse with them beyond a few limited phrases. Since Google Translate does not have Taiwanese as a language (though in 2022 Meta developed an artificially intelligent translation system to convert Hokkien to spoken English), Taliyah developed a web-based solution of her own. ⁠ ⁠ BobaWay allows users to input text in English or Chinese and receive an output of the Taiwanese translation as an audio clip (Taiwanese/Hokkien are not written languages). The app is even customizable, with different color schemes named after popular boba orders like Taro Milk Tea. ⁠ ⁠ Read our interview with this inspiring and passionate inventor, linked here and in bio: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2023/07/taliyah-huang-interview-bobaway/⁠ ⁠ Then try BobaWay and let us know what you think! Who will you try to connect with first?
A new study from @pewresearch examines how Asian A A new study from @pewresearch examines how Asian Americans feel about the homelands in Asia to which they trace their heritage, as well as about the U.S., China and elsewhere. ⁠ A large majority of Taiwanese Americans (95%) hold a favorable view of Taiwan, including 75% who say their opinion is very favorable.⁠ ⁠ Our biggest takeaway from this survey is that YOUR INPUT MATTERS! We are so proud of everyone who rallied with us for @write.in.taiwanese.census @taclorg to be counted as a self-identified Taiwanese. Please continue to engage in surveys and further research so that they more accurately reflect the diversity of our broader community. The data won't tell you who you are -- who you are is the data. Make it count! ⁠ ⁠ It's also important for us to note that we don't conflate views of ancestral homeland with cultural or ethnic pride. It is completely valid and fair to be proud of your roots *and* critical of your or your parents' origin country. We hope these findings spark thoughtful conversation and not shame for any of the communities examined in the survey.⁠ ⁠ Pew Research Methodology: "In this report, we have chosen to separate the Chinese and Taiwanese samples in the 2022-23 survey of Asian American adults to discuss differences in attitudes on several geopolitical issues. In the sample of Taiwanese adults, we include only those who self-identify as Taiwanese alone."⁠ ⁠ To read the full report, visit: https://www.pewresearch.org/race-ethnicity/2023/07/19/most-asian-americans-view-their-ancestral-homelands-favorably-except-chinese-americans/
We are pleased to share a few selections from the We are pleased to share a few selections from the 2023 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes, judged and honored by Charles Yu, Alvina Ling, and Shawna Yang Ryan. ⁠ ⁠ In "The First Meal (Of Many)", Ruth Lee reflects on the many migrations her family has taken - some of which have brought them closer together, and others that have separated a father from his daughters, and grandparents from their grandchildren. ⁠ "The Glass Butterfly" & other poems by Natalie Chien conjure vivid imagery, from a "neon forest of skyscraping possiblities" to the "poisoned arteries of the Great Salt Lake."⁠ ⁠ Read these selections at https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/category/project/creative-writing-prize-selections/⁠ ⁠ #taiwaneseamerican #asianamerican #creativewriting⁠
New on @taiwaneseam_org - Professor Brian Hu's tak New on @taiwaneseam_org - Professor Brian Hu's take on the Ten(+) Taiwanese American Films to watch:⁠ ⁠ "What is Taiwanese American cinema? Films directed by Taiwanese Americans? Films about the relationship between nation and diaspora? Films that explore the specific experiences of American-born Taiwanese? Films that distinguish themselves culturally or politically from the more recognizable “Asian American” or “Chinese American” film? There’s not enough of a critical mass of films to answer that question with any meaningful conviction. But perhaps this ambiguity is what has always energized an emerging Taiwanese American identity: a flexibility with any or all of those parameters. Taiwanese American cinema is whatever we need it to be to bring together community, and to rally around familiar dialects and accents, experiences of immigration and return, family and history."⁠ ⁠ Hu is an artistic director, educator, and film curator on Asian and Asian American cinema.⁠ ⁠ Linked here and in bio: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2023/06/directors-picks-taiwanese-american-films-to-watch/
@voxnativataiwan Vox Nativa, the renowned Taiwanes @voxnativataiwan Vox Nativa, the renowned Taiwanese children's choir, will hold a series of concerts in the United States. This tour is in response to the invitation of overseas compatriots and will feature multiple performances in various locations. In addition to seeing our fans and compatriots, Yuan Sheng International Academy (原聲國際學院) will also participate in the United National Indian Tribal Youth (UNITY) in the United States, promoting both Native and Taiwanese culture and actively fostering international exchanges. Please note TaiwaneseAmerican.org is not affiliated with Vox Nativa or the organizers of this tour; please reach out to the contacts listed in the flyers for more information or visit their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/voxnativausa.
Get the behind-the-scenes scoop on the newest show Get the behind-the-scenes scoop on the newest show from @taiwanplus, Kitchen Remix.⁠ ⁠ The format of “Kitchen Remix” is fairly simple: Clarissa leads the pair in preparing a traditional dish, sharing cooking tips and historical tidbits along the way, and then Brandon puts a spin on it with international ingredients.⁠ ⁠ Director Kaley Emerson commented that in some ways, Brandon and Clarissa are “complete opposites.” Clarissa is careful about measurements and proportions, while Brandon is happy to throw ingredients in the wok and figure it out along the way. When Clarissa demonstrates a complicated cooking technique, Brandon asks if he could accomplish the same result by licking the dish.⁠ ⁠ But Brandon’s style, full of humorous family anecdotes and dancing, turned out to be a natural complement to Clarissa’s meticulously tested recipes and deep knowledge of Taiwanese history and culture. Each dish they create comes with two different interpretations, but also two different sets of personal memories and reflections.⁠ ⁠ The hosts’ willingness to embrace imperfection is a harmonious backdrop to sharing stories about Taiwan’s culinary identity. As Clarissa reiterates throughout the show, waves of colonization, natural disasters and other culinary trends have caused Taiwan to develop an incredibly non-linear food history. Much like Taiwan and its politics, the nation’s cuisine is not easily simplified, and takes a certain level of curiosity and patience to understand.⁠ ⁠ Episodes 1 and 2 are out now on @taiwanplus and YouTube with weekly drops all summer long!⁠ ⁠ Read the full article, linked here and in bio:⁠ https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2023/06/taiwanplus-kitchen-remix/
In celebration of Dragon Boat Festival (端午節) In celebration of Dragon Boat Festival (端午節), Amy Chyan @amychyan shares a beautiful personal essay on how her mother's annual work of making her own zongzi is a love language from mother to daughter, and how the embedded virtues of this labor - patience, endurance - are something they find they both share.⁠ ⁠ "Years after my mom became an empty nester, she continued to make zongzi. Recently I asked her why, considering it’s easier to just buy a few at the store, and I didn’t want her hunched over on the tiny plastic stool anymore.⁠ ⁠ 'I won’t have the energy to make them much longer anyway,' my mom replied.⁠ ⁠ That’s when I realized, making zongzi isn’t about saving money or her skills in the kitchen.⁠ ⁠ It’s her love language."⁠ ⁠ Read the full essay, linked here and in bio: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2023/06/dragon-boat-festival-zongzi-love-language/⁠ ⁠ Amy Chyan is an award-winning podcast producer and filmmaker. As a journalist, her work covers food, culture and the Asian American experience.⁠ ⁠ Happy Dragon Boat Festival!⁠ ⁠ #taiwaneseamerican #taiwanese #dragonboatfestival #asianamerican #foodessays
GIVEAWAY WINNERS:⁠ @jensushi_⁠ @lianne.cosplay GIVEAWAY WINNERS:⁠ @jensushi_⁠ @lianne.cosplay⁠ @chroma.rex⁠ ⁠ These three were randomly selected to received SIGNED copies of "American Born Chinese."⁠ ⁠ We loved reading all of the wonderful ideas our community had for #TaiwaneseAmerican stories that deserve to be platformed. Read them in the comments of our original giveaway post!⁠
Holly-Mei Jones, the earnest preteen protagonist o Holly-Mei Jones, the earnest preteen protagonist of the Holly-Mei trilogy, is a girl worth rooting for. ⁠ ⁠ Holly-Mei and her younger sister Millie are uprooted from their hometown in Toronto when their mother is promoted to work in Hong Kong; within weeks, they relocate to a new cosmopolitan city and enroll in an elite, exclusive private school. Eager for new beginnings, Holly-Mei just *knows* that everything is going to be perfect... right? ⁠ ⁠ Maybe not. It feels like everywhere she turns, there are new rules to follow and expectations to meet. On top of that, the most popular girl in her grade is quickly becoming a frenemy. And without the guidance of her loving Ah-ma, who stayed behind in Toronto, Holly-Mei just can’t seem to get it right.⁠ ⁠ It will take all of Holly-Mei’s determination and sparkle (and maybe even a tiny bit of stubbornness) to get through seventh grade and turn her life in Hong Kong into the ultimate adventure!⁠ ⁠ We loved chatting with Taiwanese Hungarian author Christina Matula on the sparkling middle grade series and how she sees a bit of herself in this fabulous character.⁠ ⁠ Linked here and in bio: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2023/06/christina-matula-holly-mei-jones/⁠ ⁠ #taiwaneseamerican #asianamerican #asianamericanlit #authorinterview
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Founded in 2006, TaiwaneseAmerican.org is a web portal site highlighting many of the interesting people, events and organizations that make up Taiwanese America. It is both a volunteer-driven website and a non-profit organization that intends to connect and promote those who identify with the Taiwanese identity, heritage, or culture. By establishing our niche within the broader Asian Pacific American and mainstream communities, we hope to collectively contribute to the wonderful and diverse mosaic that America represents.

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