More Taiwanese American Heritage Week Poster Award Winners

TaiwaneseAmerican.org and the Formosan Association for Public Affairs’ Young Professionals Group (FAPA-YPG) are pleased to announce additional winners of our recent “Designing Taiwan” Art Contest! Alan Tung of Jersey City, NJ was the 2nd Place finalist whose Taiwanese bubble tea theme impressed our panel of five guest judges from multiple community organizations. He will be awarded the $500 Prize. Allison Chang of Northville, MI was our Youth category winner with a creative drawing…

Taiwanese American Heritage Week 2014 Poster

TaiwaneseAmerican.org and the Formosan Association for Public Affairs' Young Professionals Group (FAPA-YPG) are pleased to announce the 1st place winner of our recent "Designing Taiwan" Art Contest: Tracy Chen of Fremont, CA. We received so many impressive and inspiring submissions, which made the judging challenging for our panel of five guest judges from multiple community organizations. Tracy's design, however, was consistently highly-rated and praised for its quality, theme, and potential…

2014 DESIGNING TAIWAN: Taiwanese American Heritage Week Contest

Calling all artists, designers, photographers and anyone creative who loves Taiwan! Family, friends, language, beef noodle soup, shaved ice, bubble tea, Taipei 101, night markets, Taroko Gorge—what does being "Taiwanese American" mean to you? For Taiwanese American Heritage Week this May 2014, FAPA [Formosan Association for Public Affairs] and TaiwaneseAmerican.org are proud to present DESIGNING TAIWAN, a competition that translates creative talent into a celebration of the rich and diverse…

Film Review: Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? is Taiwanese American writer-director Arvin Chen’s second feature film. His first feature, Au Revoir Taipei, was a whimsical romantic comedy packed with antics and an endearing spree around the city of Taipei. WYSLMT takes on a much heavier subject, with reflections on the dilemmas faced by gay communities in Asian culture. Revisit our 2010 interview with Arvin Chen The main character Weichung (Richie Jen) finds himself questioning his sexuality and his traditional…

Taiwan is My Home: Stories of the Black and Latino Diaspora

Daniel D. Zarazua has spent his life navigating the ways globalization and international migration have taken root in the daily experiences of life in Taiwan. As a mixed-race 1.5 generation Taiwanese American who has returned to Taiwan several times, he has explored the hip-hop scene, capoeira community, Latino restaurants, and made a number of friendships within Taiwan's Black and Latino communities. I’ve had the privilege of meeting Daniel a couple of times during Taiwanese American conferences…

The 2013 Taiwan CMJ Music Showcase

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to interview Eric de Fontenay, the organizer of the 2013 Taiwan CMJ Music Showcase for the Talking Taiwan podcast. During the interview, we covered topics ranging from J-pop to mp3 court cases. I learned from Eric that Taiwanese pop music dominates the Chinese music scene with Taiwanese artists accounting for about 60-70% of ticket sales in China. Listen to the interview: https://soundcloud.com/talkingtaiwan/taiwan-cmj-2013-musicfull-interview [caption…

The Mountain Brothers

The Mountain Brothers, one of the first Asian American hip hop groups, are back after a long hiatus. After performing with A Tribe Called Quest, having their music featured in Sprite and Nike commercials, and dropping 2 albums and an EP, the pioneers of Asian American hip hop recently released “Keep On” for CHOPS’ (Scott Jung) new project, Strength in NUMBERS. I catch up with CHOPS, Styles Infinite (Stephen Wei), and Peril-L (Christopher Wang) to talk about the new project. …

A Chat with Brian Yang on Acting, Producing, and Taiwanese Parents

TaiwaneseAmerican.org's Ho Chie Tsai chats with Brian Yang, an actor and producing partner at 408 Films, an independent film production company that helps to produce and finance feature film productions and new media ventures. 408 Films has produced titles such as Fog, The People I've Slept With, and SuperCapitalist. Currently, he is one of the producers behind Linsanity, the Jeremy Lin documentary, opening on October 4, 2013. On the acting side, Brian has appeared in film and television projects…

Follow Your Passion: Singer-songwriter Cynthia Lin

Some of you may have heard her smooth and heartwarming voice at Taiwanese American Professionals (TAP) and Intercollegiate Taiwanese American Students Association (ITASA) events or even watched her music lessons and songs on YouTube. Jazz, folk, and indie singer, Cynthia Lin, chatted with me about her recent tour, the release of her music video, and her future projects. For those not familiar with your work, you do a lot of jazz, folk, indie, and acoustic. You sing, but you also play the acoustic…

Life Sketch: Gene Luen Yang

I recently had the honor of sitting down with Gene Luen Yang, author of the graphic novels American Born Chinese and Avatar: The Last Airbender, among other works. In his own words, he is a high school computer science teacher by day and a Taiwanese-Chinese-American cartoonist by night. Gene is currently the Director of Information Services and a part of the Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults (MFAC) program. I first heard of Gene in my Asian Americans in…