Who Gets to be Taiwanese?

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Contrary to many of my compatriots, I find Taiwan’s noisy democracy charming. After living in China for nearly a decade, where the apparatus for silencing is robust and ever-present, I revel in the cacophony of campaign trucks blaring pleads for votes and thousand-strong rallies with hawkers selling unlicensed campaign merch. I’m not even embarrassed by the lawmakers fist-fighting in parliament (legislative yuan) anymore.  I have been watching the recall votes in Taiwan with pride. The recall…

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Rediscovering My Heart Language: A Taiwanese American Mother’s Journey to Relearn Mandarin

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Like many Taiwanese Americans, Mandarin Chinese was the primary language spoken at home in my early childhood years, before formal public schooling rendered English as the dominant language to take over our household. Growing up, I have fond memories of being woken up by my mother’s soundtrack of soulful Mandarin pop ballads as she cooked rice porridge for us on early Sunday mornings. I remember being captivated by the background sounds of sword fights and long winded monologues of Chinese…

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Change in Atmosphere: Creative Non-Fiction by Evelyn Wu

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  It was someone else dressed in this striped red uniform, someone else who slung the same red backpack everyone was required to use on her shoulder, hiding the real reason she was trembling by the weight of the backpack. It wasn’t me who smiled a watery smile with a pounding heart, social anxiety kicking in stronger than before. It was my first day of sixth grade, back to school after abruptly leaving my 5th grade class back in America. When Covid hit, I refused the masks and social…

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On Stubborn Roots: Creative Nonfiction by Charis Chu

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藕斷絲連 is a Chinese idiom. It roughly translates to The broken lotus is connected by its fibered thread. 阿婆, my grandmother, described it to me one night in the dining room of what used to be our apartment, tucked away in the hills of Taipei. I was probably tracing sheet after sheet of Chinese characters, painstakingly going over each brushstroke with an incorrect pencil grip, fostering the bump on my ring finger that still exists today. Homework took hours back then. I can see it—me,…

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A Republic of Taiwan: Breaking the Chains

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Editor's Note: A Republic of Taiwan: Breaking the Chains was submitted by high schooler Chloe Wu Shih to the 2024 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes and recommended by judge Charles Yu as noteworthy for publication. We are pleased to share this impressive, deeply researched piece representing the views of the writer; in particular, Shih notes that Taiwan's history traces back to the roots of the Republic of China though it is our editorial position that Taiwan has a 6,000-year…

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Koi Fish: A TAF Story by Brady Nichols

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Editor’s Note: The Taiwanese American Foundation’s summer conference has been running for over four decades, cultivating among 3+ generations its vision “for people of Taiwanese heritage to make a profound impact on humankind in unique and compassionate ways.” TAF is also the “ancestral home” of TaiwaneseAmerican.org; many of our board of directors, staff, and longtime volunteers (including our founder, Ho Chie Tsai, and the creator of the Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing…

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Homing: Creative Nonfiction by Lenna L. Liu

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  Homing  Dedicated to my father  Meet me   along a border, a boundary,  where earth and water meet.  Snow geese fly   tracing coastlines,   salmon leave   salty bay waters for freshwater streams,   grey whales slow  filling their bellies on long journeys to arctic seas.  What if borders are pathways,  not barriers  guideposts, banks of a stream,   fertile grounds for crossings   birthing diversity,  in estuaries,…

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Taiwanese Soy Milk & My Transnational Story of Migration

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BY ZIXUAN LIU / Feature Photo Credit: https://elizbeartravel.com/ From Yonghe District, New Taipei, to Shenyang, Manchuria, Bottled in 99 Ranch Markets During my first twelve years of growing up in the former capital of the Qing Dynasty, Mukden, now called Shenyang in PRC, I never skipped breakfast. For most of my childhood, my mother always took me to this one breakfast shop called “Yong-he Dou-jiang”, a chain in China that solely served Chinese breakfast foods for all meals. We always…

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How Taiwanese Democracy Changed the Way I See My Life

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I remember being in Taiwan with my Ama, standing in a convenience store on the verge of tears because she refused to leave with me if I bought a headband I wanted. A deeply Christian woman, I knew she wouldn’t understand but it was important for me to try to explain why I wanted it. I remember telling her about the diversity of sexuality and gender which got lost somewhere in a mind clouded by a language barrier and dementia/Alzheimer’s (my eccentric, triathlete, U.S. Navy veteran, e-bike…

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“Not in Our Name” – Understanding the Jewish Struggle for Palestine from a Taiwanese American Perspective

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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="990"] Ten thousand gather in DC with Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now to Demand Gaza Ceasefire Wednesday October 18, 2023 (Photo from Jewish Voice for Peace Twitter)[/caption] “If they hadn’t taken us, where would we have gone?” I've heard this question, once posed by my uncle in Taiwan, echoed countless times by Jewish and Israeli friends over the years. “Where would we have gone?” “Who would have taken us?” In the wake of World…

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