Category Archives for Taiwan

Jeremy Lin: diplomatic pawn and diasporic subject

Source: Colorlines.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you’ve probably heard that Asian America, China, and Taiwan have gone completely Lin-sane for Jeremy Lin. Not only are Asian Americans claiming him as a hero, but China and Taiwan are also trying to latch on to his success. I don’t particularly care for basketball, but since I’m researching diasporic membership and globalized nationalism, I find this struggle to “claim” Lin to be quite fascinating.

Is he Chinese or Taiwanese?

China and Taiwan see Lin as a diasporic subject. Chineseness or Taiwaneseness is something you are born with, in contrast to Americanness which can be acquired. Even if he only has US citizenship, he is still part of the Chinese/Taiwanese nation, and so they have a right to claim him as one of their own. The New York Times’ adorable story about Lin’s grandmother in Taiwan touches on these competing claims: Continue reading →

Republic of China naval officers at Swarthmore College

Swarthmore College students and alumni – did you know that Chinese naval officers studied English there during World War II? This is something they do not reveal in your average campus tour, and something that I didn’t know about until I looked more closely at the fountain underneath the Wharton Hall staircase last spring. There I found a plaque commemorating this collaboration between Swarthmore and the Republic of China navy:

The plaque reads: “To the Chinese naval officers, whose presence and spirit as students of Swarthmore College have symbolized the bonds of friendship and democracy that unite our two countries, this fountain is affectionately dedicated.”

The aging Swarthmore history website states:

The officers came from all parts of China, and most had already seen active duty. They spent several months at Swarthmore before half departed for MIT to study shipbuilding and half left to study naval administration at the Naval Academy. The intent was for these officers to form the backbone of China’s post-war navy.

Since the Republic of China is back in US news with the re-election of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), I figured it was a good time to post this image. The rise of the People’s Republic of China on the mainland has redefined the US-Republic of China (Taiwan) relationship. How do we maintain these “bonds of friendship and democracy” while building a relationship with a regime that is not so open to the democratic process?

Ethnicity, citizenship, language, and privilege – a travel story from Taiwan

Last night I got a wonderful e-mail from a Korean American reader living in Peru who said that this blog was helping her make sense of her experience there. Thanks again for making my day! :)

Since I started a conversation on travel and privilege yesterday, I’d like to share a story I’ve been meaning to tell and ask for your stories about being Asian abroad. Whether you’re an immigrant from Asia or an Asian from the West bumming around the world, I’d love to hear what you have to say about your own experiences. If a comment is not long enough, perhaps you’d like to shoot me an e-mail with a proposal for a guest post? I am one person with one set of experiences, and can’t talk about “diaspora” all on my own!
I spent the first half of 2010 studying Mandarin at the International Chinese Language Program at National Taiwan University. I chose to study there not only because of the fabled intensity and effectiveness of ICLP’s teaching methods but also because I have long been fascinated by Taiwan’s convoluted past, ambiguous present, and uncertain future. Is it (part of) China? Is it not (part of) China? Since Taiwan became a democracy, few have dared to take a side definitively, and so it continues to live on edge.

My encounters with Taiwan’s understanding of self made me consider my own identity and relationship to the diasporic Chinese community in a whole new way. Having no family connection to Taiwan, I would never consider myself Taiwanese. Unfortunately, I look Taiwanese enough, and thus became an unwitting local in a country where I often felt very out of place.

In Argentina I was unmistakably foreign. As an East Asian, I stood out among the crowds of European-descended people, and I spoke Spanish with a painfully anglicized imitation of Buenos Aires’ unique Italianate dialect. In Taiwan, though, I blended in too well. For the first time in my life, I looked like everyone else I saw on the streets of Taipei, and as my Mandarin got better it was easier for me to pass off as a native-born Taiwanese, as long as I didn’t have to say anything too complex.

Being able to pass as native was often quite frustrating. Waiters thought I had some sort of learning disability because I would mispronounce things on menus, or point instead of trying to say the name out loud. Older people would try to speak to me in Taiwanese (a language that is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin), which I did not understand at all. If I was with a group of non-East Asians, people would speak to me even if the more obvious foreigners spoke better Chinese than I did. I couldn’t complain. I had come to Taiwan to immerse myself in a Chinese-speaking world, and that’s exactly what I got. Continue reading →