Sharing Spaces: Taiwanese Indigenous Art Connects Tradition with New Audiences

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Djanav Zengror’s greeting flies through the air, and then the rest of the Ayi-Yanga troupe fills the cozy lounge of the Hearst Museum of Anthropology with harmonies. Within the intimate room, the music transports us to a wide-open space and readily calls to mind the verdant mountains of Taiwan. Their song, “Home Direction” (指路), starts with the hunter’s call. When his people hear him, they run to welcome him home. Through the interpreter, UC Berkeley student Cynthia Ji, Zengror explains…

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STEP Taiwan: The Taiwanese American Experience

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     I grew up in the land of apple pie, Friday-night football games, and white picket fences. Some weekends, I would drive up to D.C. and see tourists decked out in their new Washington D.C. souvenir T-shirts, posing along the National Mall – all while munching on their great American hot dogs. Whether intentional or not, in my distinctly American neighborhood, I was fully immersed in its popular culture, traditions, and the overall lifestyle. At home, however, I was…

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Addressing Anti-Blackness Within the Taiwanese American Community

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By Tiffany Diane Tso, edited by Leona Chen | original photography by Micheile Henderson Editor’s Note: I’ve been thinking a lot about (valid) accusations that Asian Americans, frankly, suck at standing up for others. And though there is no singular Taiwanese American immigration narrative, many families in our community arrived by way of H-1B visas, prestigious education, and the logical conclusion that obedience produces success. Diasporic Taiwanese of my parents’ and grandparents’…

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The 228 Inheritance: Taiwan’s Revolution Is Here

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Seventy-two years after Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s forces massacred more than twenty thousand Taiwanese in ‘the February 28th Incident’, Taiwan is in the midst of an unacknowledged revolution. You will not find the Taiwanese Revolution named in history books or identified in newspapers. Indeed, it is assumed that this revolution has yet to occur – or rather that it never will. Yet to occur, because there is no internationally-accepted Taiwanese Republic and never to occur,…

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“When I came out to my mom, she was scared for me.”

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When I came out to my mom, she was scared for me. “I want you to have an easy life,” she said, and coming out meant that my life wasn’t going to be easy. Like any other Taiwanese mother, she wanted to protect me from the dangers I would have to face as I got older. The world she’d grown up in, Taiwan in the 1980s, was dangerous for people like me, and she didn’t want me to have to face yet another form of prejudice. But she also knew that my world as a 21st century American…

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New on Netflix: A Taiwanese Tale of Two Cities

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An Interview with “A Taiwanese Tale of Two Cities” actor Denny Huang When Denny Huang decided to move to Taipei in 2005 as a young adult, he had no idea what he was going to do. As a Taiwanese American born in Houston, he barely spoke Mandarin at the time, and when he started pursuing acting roles, he realized his American-accent would be an issue. To manage, as he was slowly building his film & TV career (with roles in TV dramas like “Bull Fighting” and “Across the Ocean to…

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Balancing the Trifecta: Growing up Taiwanese, Korean, and American

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  There are 27 picture frames on the wall next to our staircase, each chronicling flashes of the life I know. Pictures of my mom and dad on a vacation to Italy while they were dating, pictures of my brother and me in Mexico, pictures of my brother as a toddler in a pumpkin patch. Pictures of my grandpa’s 60th birthday party, of my parents playing golf with their friends, of my late grandfather with my cousins, of my brother and me sitting on a swing set in Korea. My parents immigrated…

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Memories of my Yaba Great Aunt

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by James Y. Shih When I was 3, my ahgong (grandpa) brought me to Taiwan from California to visit our old family home in the historic town of Lukang (鹿港). The home was and still is a narrow, two story, brick and wood building off the main road. There, my great aunt, whom I affectionately called “yaba,” lived with my ahma (grandma). At that age, I didn’t know calling her just yaba (啞吧), which means “deaf mute”, was rude (it is). I thought it was her name. Those early memories…

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Finding Meaning in Taiwanese America: An Open Letter

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  Editor Note: Gloria Hu is a High School Program Director at TANG (Taiwanese American Next Generation). TANG is a four-day summer conference for Taiwanese Americans and their allies. In contemplating meaningful programming and our engagement with issues of identity formation and community-building, the author expresses the importance of Taiwanese heritage to her own convictions and hopes for the community. A Letter to My TANG High Schoolers To my beloved TANG campers, I am so lucky…

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Chris Pang: Upcoming Crazy Rich Asian and Certified Haiku Hottie

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When actor Chris Pang was a kid growing up in Melbourne, Australia, he remembers he and his mother would act out wuxia stories in their backyard. His mom would be the Grandmaster, and he would be her student, but inevitably then the bad guys would poison the Grandmaster, and he'd have to fight to avenge her. "I loved that," he says. "That's probably how I learned how to tell stories, not just on the page but through action and role-play." Pang, who will soon be seen in the highly-anticipated…

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