Two Perspectives on Late Life: The Chien-Ming Wang Story

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https://www.instagram.com/p/B0AKwjfFE1u/ Editor's Note: I'm thrilled to present two perspectives on LATE LIFE: The Chien-Ming Wang Story - both from bay area-raised college students who chose to pursue college in the Midwest. Derek is a student at the University of Michigan, and Vivienne is a student at Washington University in St. Louis. DEREK SHAO In baseball, the term “late life” is used to describe sudden and unexpected movement as a pitch crosses home plate. It is a fitting metaphor…

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Being in Taiwan During COVID-19: A Taiwanese American Student Perspective

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    Editor's Note: Joyce was already living in Taiwan when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. If you are fleeing the states and traveling to Taiwan, or have recently done so, please practice self-isolation for at least 14 days - no matter how much you want to go out! Tricky Taipei has a great guide on life in Taipei during COVID-19, as well as an archive of coronavirus home quarantine stories. As I write this on April 28, Taiwan has announced its third day in a row of no reported new…

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From Ilha Formosa to Passport to Taiwan: Comparing the 2006 and 2018 Taiwanese Tourism Bureau Campaigns

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Editor’s Note: There are so many ways to advocate for Taiwan: on the streets with Keep Taiwan Free, in DC with organizations like the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, and, like Washington University in St. Louis freshman Vivienne Chang shows, in the classroom by incorporating thoughtful research and analysis on Taiwan into open-topic schoolwork. We were so moved by her decision to, in her words, “write every optional paper I get for each class about something that is related to Taiwan.”…

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No, Double Ten Is Not “Taiwan’s Independence Day”

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No, Double Ten is not “Taiwan’s independence day”.  Just bear with me here; I know it looks very much like Independence Day on July Fourth here in the United States. When I was growing up in Taiwan in the 1980s, it certainly felt like it.  It was something I looked forward to. The oppressive summer heat in Taiwan cools down, every house on the block hangs a big flag by the door, the flags gently swaying in the autumn breeze. School would be closed, my parents would have stayed home,…

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Taiwanese American Summer Camp: Does the 3rd Gen Need It?

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At the beginning of the summer, I received a Facebook reminder that the early-bird registration discount for TAF (Taiwanese American Foundation—the largest and longest-running summer camp for children and teens of Taiwanese descent in the US and Canada), was ending in just a week. Always a sucker for a good deal, I brought up the idea with my husband about sending our daughter. We both had attended the camp as teenagers and young adults, and considered it an essential part of our formative…

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(In Memoriam) Su Beng: The Revolutionist

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On June 26, 2016, a political commentator (my uncle), a university professor (my other uncle), and a deeply insignificant 19-year-old (me) shuffled into an apartment building in Xinzhuang, Taiwan to interview Su Beng for a nascent book of poetry about Taiwanese American identity. Small details swell with grand, wistful nostalgia. The trees in front of his building, by then iconic from how often they'd been the backdrop of frenzied, polarizing reporting. The portrait of Che Guevara, to whom…

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I’m Taiwanese American. Here’s Why I Stand by Hong Kong.

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After Taiwanese American Eric Tsai offered to co-host a workplace discussion on the protests in Hong Kong, a disgruntled co-worker wrote in a separate WeChat of over 300 Chinese American employees: “Let’s just spend some money and hire thugs to go after him.”   Editor's Note: I want to be very clear that TaiwaneseAmerican.org has never been, and never will be, anti-Chinese, and certainly not anti-Chinese American. We support the Taiwanese people in their right to self-determination;…

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TaiwaneseAmerican.org Statement on Solidarity with Mauna Kea Protectors

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We urge Taiwanese Americans to stand in solidarity with those protecting Mauna Kea. Today, we reflect on our own island nation’s Austronesian ancestry; the many times she was confronted with imperial and colonial violence; the work of our own indigenous peoples resisting foreign and local rule. We admit that the Taiwan we know today — vibrant, progressive, technologically advanced as she is — exists in imperfect parallel with other colonized lands: historical and holy grounds turned…

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Why This Taiwanese American Helped Tell the Story of Chinese Railroad Workers

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Max Chang was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah and is considered one of the first, if not first, Taiwanese Americans born in Utah.  Max is a Board Member of the Spike 150 Foundation which oversaw the sesquicentennial celebration of the completion of the nation’s first transcontinental railroad. May 10, 2019 marked the 150th year anniversary of the driving of a Golden Spike into a polished laurel tie at Promontory Summit, Utah to celebrate the completion of the nation’s first transcontinental railroad. …

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From Wild Lilies to Sunflowers: Discovering Taiwan’s Democracy

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From fist fights in the parliament to protests that seem to rotate through Taipei every few months, Taiwan's democracy is oftentimes placed under intense scrutiny. “Look at how messed up Taiwan’s government is,” I’d hear often. But critics often forget this obvious precursor to democratic maturity: age. Taiwan is known as the beacon of democracy in Asia, as the only Han society to know freedom today. However, people also forget how young this fragile democracy is, or how recent…

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