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TaiwaneseAmerican.org

  • Home
    • About
      • Community Organizations
      • Donate
      • Submissions
  • Stories
    • Interviews
    • Perspectives
    • Arts & Entertainment
    • Community Orgs
    • Food & Travel
    • Social Issues & Politics
  • Projects
  • Creative Writing Prizes
  • Gift Guides
  • Bookshop
  • Parenting Resources
  • Contact

TAPpy Hour in LA

Posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2015 at 6:30 pm.

Written by Kristina

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20 years ago, @hochie71 registered the TaiwaneseAm 20 years ago, @hochie71 registered the TaiwaneseAmerican.org domain to start constructing a living archive of second-generation Taiwanese Americans. He envisioned it as a space for us to find each other and explore our heritage, identity, and values in community, and to make the gifts of connection and belonging accessible to people everywhere. A peek into our archives reveals his decades of bringing people together in a time when it was “hard to be Taiwanese.” Today, we flourish in that foundation: an abundance of storytellers across every medium, creators and small businesses (just look at our annual gift guide!), and thoughtful, principled leaders who navigate daily what it means to be proud of our identity, in service to our broader communities. This Giving Tuesday, we humbly invite you to support our work. We are fully volunteer-run with so many dreams for our community. Your contributions sustain community initiatives, such as compensating writers, funding our annual Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize, and encouraging other indie initiatives.感謝 for being our people! Find us at taiwaneseamerican.org/donate (also linked in bio).
This weekend for our NYC community! ⁠ #Taiwanese This weekend for our NYC community! ⁠ #TaiwaneseAmerican screenwriter's Golden Horse-nominated film, ROSEMEAD, opens in New York City THIS WEEKEND! Strong opening attendance will determine whether this powerful film, based on a true story, will expand to screen nationally.⁠ ⁠ Based on the award-winning Los Angeles Times article by Frank Shyong, ROSEMEAD follows an ailing woman who discovers her teenage son’s violent obsessions and must go to great lengths to protect him and the darkness he is drawn to.⁠ ⁠ Tickets are available via Fandango: https://www.fandango.com/new-york-city_ny_movietimes?date=2025-12-05
NEW on TaiwaneseAmerican.org: Professional bookwor NEW on TaiwaneseAmerican.org: Professional bookworm Esther Fung interviews Elaine Hsieh Chou about her short story collection, "Where Are You Really From."⁠ ⁠ From a world in which men can purchase mail order brides to a deceptively playful story about a dollhouse, this book demonstrates Chou’s ability to explore themes of violence and desire, representation and family bonds, and the intersection of art, sexuality, and identity. ⁠ ⁠ Linked here and in bio: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2025/11/elaine-hsieh-chou-interview/
It was such a gift to speak with co-organizers Li It was such a gift to speak with co-organizers Li and Kimberly, who are leading a delegation of Asian American farmers on the exquisitely planned Taiwan Food and Farm Tour. In collaboration with farmers in Pinglin, Yilan, and Hualien, they’re building transnational relationships grounded in fieldwork and farming: modalities that can mend the harms of migration, displacement, assimilation, and shared histories of occupation and war.⁠ ⁠ “We hope that by identifying these common challenges we will foster solidarity and discover ways to support regenerative farming on both sides of the Pacific,” shares Li Schmidt.⁠ ⁠ “We see sharing our inspirations before the trip, as well as the lessons learned afterwards, as opportunities for deeper political education,” adds Kimberly Chou Tsun An. “Harnessing this knowledge allows us to connect big-picture topics to everyday concerns, and to understand how we can shift narrative and culture even with small steps, starting with ourselves and our communities.”⁠ ⁠ Read the full Q&A at the link in bio:⁠ https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2025/10/taiwan-food-and-farm/⁠ ⁠ Follow @taiwanfoodandfarmtour for daily updates from the delegation. 🌾✨
🎁🥹 Our Annual Taiwanese American Gift Guide 🎁🥹 Our Annual Taiwanese American Gift Guide is here!! By community, for community: featuring Taiwanese American founders, creators, artisans, writers, and small businesses you love. This gift guide grows every year because YOU help lift up these makers who so thoughtfully infuse their heritage and imagination into their work. When you shop from this guide, you support: - Taiwanese American entrepreneurs and artists - Women, queer, and immigrant-owned businesses - Community-rooted creators committed to ethical sourcing and thoughtful production - Diasporic storytelling in all its forms Swipe, shop, share! The gift guide is linked here and in bio: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2025/11/2025-gift-guide/
What a privilege to speak with @taiwanplus produce What a privilege to speak with @taiwanplus producer Eric Tsai for #ZoomInZoomOut about Taiwanese American community-building! EIC Leona Chen talks about how almost 20 years ago, @hochie71 built @taiwaneseam_org as a “living archive” for the “endless possibilities for Taiwanese Americans” and how growing up in Taiwanese America + being raised by first generation elder-activists has taught her to treat Taiwan’s complexity as an opportunity for creativity. 🎥: Watch the full interview (15 minutes), linked here and in bio. https://youtu.be/v15TtVGjoSk 💛: Gratitude to Eric Tsai, Alec MacDonald, and the @taiwanplus production team; and everyone on the @taiwaneseam_org team over the years, plus all our friends who make an appearance in the full video, including our author/illustrator community, @tafnc1 @tafagram and @yunhaishop 💖Can you believe we turn 20 soon?!
We're excited to bring back our "Made by Taiwanese We're excited to bring back our "Made by Taiwanese American" Small Business Holiday Gift Guide! If you're an artisan, small retailer, or creator offering heritage-inspired or handmade items, we’d love to feature your products.⁠ To nominate a TA-owned small business you love, please tag them in the comments. ⁠ ⁠ ✨ Businesses - please fill out the form, linked here and in our bio: https://forms.gle/kcdHzNHm36FzYeYu8 ⁠ Let’s make it easy to shop small and support #TaiwaneseAmerican businesses this season! 🌟 ⁠ ⁠ If you've previously been featured in our gift guides, please feel free to participate again! We're so grateful to support you in any way we can. Please note that not all submissions are guaranteed coverage and are subject to editors' curation.⁠ ⁠ ⁠ #smallbusiness #asianamerican
🥜When @thelimestand brought Taiwan's enigmatic 🥜When @thelimestand brought Taiwan's enigmatic peanut ice cream roll to Portland this summer, we couldn't help but notice that their giant block of peanut brittle had traveled an awfully long way to meet its new match in locally-sourced Oregon Strawberry and Vanilla Bean ice creams. ⁠ ⁠ 🍨Our Food Editor Tiffany Ran got the scoop on how 80 pounds of peanut brittle made their way from "some guy's living room" in rural Taiwan to Portland, and how The Lime Stand's take on the peanut ice cream roll makes a unique tradition work in a new way.⁠ ⁠ 🔗Linked here and in bio: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2025/10/the-lime-stand-portland/
"Translation is an interpretive dance, speaking in "Translation is an interpretive dance, speaking in another person’s voice, moving through the world through their gestures. There is an intense becoming that happens, a settling into, a rooting down. And all of this action occurs in the liminal space between languages."⁠ ⁠ In "Translation is a gift," brenda Lin explores translation as a form of devotion — the thread that binds languages, generations, and the stories mothers tell their daughters.⁠ ⁠ Moving between myth, anthropology, and literary memory, Lin reflects on what it means to return to language as a home, a gift, and an inheritance.⁠ ⁠ brenda Lin is a Taipei-based writer, translator, and author of Wealth Ribbon: Taiwan Bound, America Bound. She is currently translating Indigenous Taiwanese author Apyang Imiq’s essay collection Growing Up in a Tree Hollow.⁠ ⁠ Read the full piece. linked here and in bio: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2025/10/translation-is-a-gift-creative-nonfiction-by-brenda-lin/
Hi! Editor-in-chief Leona Chen here, reporting fro Hi! Editor-in-chief Leona Chen here, reporting from Taipei!⁠ In this Perspectives piece, I write about my experience visiting the Human Rights Museum in Taiwan (specifically the Jing Mei White Terror Memorial Park), and what it means to inherit a political legacy of/from dissidents and hold American citizenship. These stories and contradictions have called me to imagine justice, care, and dignity - not just in Taiwan/for the Taiwanese or in the United States/for Americans, but everywhere, for all people.⁠ ⁠ Originally written for my personal newsletter, I hope this reflection may resonate with anyone thinking about the ways our histories shape the present - and what it could mean to be a good steward of Taiwanese American heritage.⁠ ⁠ "As a Taiwanese American, I find it unconscionable to recognize the cruelty of solitary confinement on Green Island, yet look away from the cruelty of indefinite detention in ICE facilities, or the desolation of American jails filled with those too poor to afford bail. To grieve one without interrogating the other is to make a callous indictment for who deserves freedom and who does not, to become people willing to deny to others what we believe is sacred for ourselves.⁠ ⁠ My hope is twofold: I wish for my Taiwanese American elders to see their own struggles reflected in this generation of abolitionists and activists fighting for Black American reparations and against ICE detention, police brutality, environmental destruction, and the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians; who are not “soft” or “misguided” but instead kindred spirits who too have only ever wanted for ordinary people to have dignity and safety. I wish for my Taiwanese American peers to find ourselves doubly stirred towards solidarity with the most vulnerable."⁠ ⁠ Read the full essay on TaiwaneseAmerican.org: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2025/10/taiwanese-american-jing-mei-memorial-park/
From our friends @globaltaiwan and @gwuterp — Re From our friends @globaltaiwan and @gwuterp — Representing #Taiwan in #DC: How Taiwanese Americans Can Bridge #Culture and #Policy For Taiwan, cultural promotion and political recognition are deeply interconnected, yet rarely discussed together. This event will explore how Taiwanese American cultural organizations in Washington DC can also engage in policy spaces and strengthen #US-Taiwan ties. 🗣️ Speakers: Tim Chng (@fapa_md) Adam Pier (@tapdc) David Tang (Washington DC Taiwanese School) 💬 Discussant: Richard Haddock (@gwusigurcenter @gwuterp) 🎤 Moderator: Carissa Cheng (Global Taiwan Institute) 📍 Lindner Family Commons, room 602, Elliott School of International Affairs 1957 E Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20052 🗓️ October 6 | 5:30 PM 🧋 Free boba (first come, first serve!) RSVP via the link in our bio!
In "Drive to the Airport," Caroline Chieh-Mei Pai In "Drive to the Airport," Caroline Chieh-Mei Pai (2025 Honorable Mention) captures the tender ache of parting with her grandfather, whose fragile health and dialysis treatments keep him half a world away. This exquisite piece is a meditation on the silent ways grief is shared between a father and daughter.⁠ ⁠ Swipe through to read the full piece.⁠ ⁠ 🔗: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2025/09/creative-writing-by-caroline-chieh-mei-pai/⁠ ✍️: Caroline is currently a high school junior. She loves to read and is easily immersed into books of all genres, especially those with dystopian themes. In addition to reading, she plays soccer, engages with her school’s robotics team, and writes all sorts of literary genres for fun. This is her first time participating in a writing contest and is excited to submit more in the future. She hopes to feed her passion by continuing to study English in college.⁠
It’s Ghost Month in Taiwan—when spirits are sa It’s Ghost Month in Taiwan—when spirits are said to walk among us. From not hanging laundry at night to avoiding the sea, the taboos run deep. But what do they say about how Taiwanese culture uses fear to shape our daily lives?👻 ⁠ ⁠ But as Taiwanese Mandarin teacher Cecilia Chen asks, is fear really the best way to maintain order? Or can trust in our shared humanity be enough?⁠ ⁠ Read her piece, linked here and in bio: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2025/09/ghost-month-cecilia-chen/
“As a daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, I didn’t expect to find any literature that reflected my life—until I found Anna Zhang in Jane Kuo’s novels. Reading her work reminds me why I write: to connect, to share, and—hopefully—to be seen.” —Rebecca Yang 🌿⁠ ⁠ In this exchange, poet and guest contributor Rebecca Yang and verse novelist Jane Kuo reflect on memory, immigrant childhoods, and the power of writing as witness.⁠ ⁠ Read the full conversation—linked here and in bio: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2025/09/jane-kuo-interview/
“How can I justify my strong sense of Taiwanese “How can I justify my strong sense of Taiwanese identity despite, at least at the beginning of college, never having been to Taiwan and not speaking any of its languages?” ⁠ ⁠ In a new perspectives piece, Sophia Chang (@sophiachang24) reflects on what it means to be third-generation Taiwanese American — navigating suburban U.S. childhood, finding connection through programs like TANG, TASA, and FAPA, and conducting research for her undergraduate thesis, titled "Will the Taiwanese American Vote Matter? Taiwanese American Political Attitudes and Identity in the 2024 U.S. Election."⁠ ⁠ Her story reminds us that identity is not just inherited — it’s built, nourished, and offered back to community. ⁠ ⁠ Read her full reflection here: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2025/09/third-generation-taiwanese-american-sophia-chang/
About

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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