Away with stereotypes
Besides tracing the tale of immigrants farther back in time and taking a magnifying glass to their lives, the organizers of the “New Tai-ker” exhibit have also made a conscious effort to do away with commonly accepted stereotypes regarding immigrants and migrant workers. “By looking at the personal stories of immigrants and migrant workers from different countries, we want to discover their various cultures and histories.” A second exhibit area entitled “Why They Come: His and Her Taiwan Stories” sets out the stories of recent migrants from 14 different countries, including Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The people in question include housewives, a radio host, a community development activist, and a fisherman, each of whom has his or her ideal image of what a family ought to be like. One objective of the exhibit is to draw out that image, past, present and future.
Yupayong Kongwattanasin, who hails from Thailand, speaks fluent English and was a successful career woman with a university degree in economics before she met and fell in love with her husband in Thailand. But then her husband’s employer transferred him back to Taiwan, and thus she left her homeland to take her place in a traditional family in the Meinong District of Kaohsiung.
Because her husband is an only son, Yupayong had to take up the household duties of the wife of an eldest son even as she struggled to deal with the difficulties of life in an unfamiliar land. The need to learn the ropes in Taiwan made life much tougher for her. She didn’t begin to feel really comfortable until after her daughter started school and she herself became a school volunteer.
The tiny kitchen in her home has been a place where she can relieve her homesickness. In a video shown at the exhibit, Yupayong talks at length about the traditional life she has led for 17 years in Meinong. In a drawing that she made, she uses a few spare strokes to hint at the sort of future she envisions for herself, with a Taiwanese-style residence on the left and a Thai home on the right. Her hope is that she can travel back and forth freely between Taiwan and Thailand.
Another person featured in the exhibit is Sok Kollyan, a native of Cambodia who was the first chairperson of the TransAsia Sisters Association, Taiwan (TASAT).
Growing up in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and longing to escape from the red terror, she met a man who at the time was using a matchmaking agency to look for a bride. The two met not via the agency, but through a friend. At their first meeting, Sok really impressed the man with her fluent English. This was something he was hoping for in an ideal spouse, and so he decided to marry her. But despite her professional training as a nurse, Sok’s ability to care for children was called into question. She realized she would have to learn Chinese in order to stick up for herself, so she enrolled in the very first Chinese reading course ever held in Meinong for foreign spouses, and became the first chairperson of TASAT.
Nguyen Binh Tran, who is now studying for a master’s degree in sociology at National Sun Yat-sen University, is another person who has had to show true grit to do well in a foreign land. A university graduate in her native Vietnam, when asked about her educational background Nguyen has always been frustrated to have to respond: “Do you mean in Vietnam? Or in Taiwan? If Vietnam, then I’m a university graduate. In Taiwan, I only have an elementary school education.” A fiercely proud woman, she has now become a radio host who also works part-time as a social worker and is always helping others.
Interestingly, while people generally think of migrant workers as always doing manual labor, the fact is that many do translation and other white-collar jobs.
Chou explains that among the more than 600,000 immigrants and migrant workers currently in Taiwan, over 60,000 are in Taiwan to do white-collar work, but many people don’t know that. One of the people featured in the exhibit, Duong Ngoc Oanh, translates and works as a labor broker. As an ethnic Chinese person from Vietnam, she originally came to Taiwan to study in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at National Chi Nan University before taking up translation.
Then there is Linda, who works as a caregiver at a medical facility and in her free time is a self-taught photography buff. In addition to taking photos for other Indonesians in Taiwan, she and some partners have set up a photography studio that offers wedding photo services for Indonesians who meet and marry in Taiwan. And beyond that, she has also enrolled in an open university set up by the Indonesian government in Taiwan. She has never been one to pass up an opportunity to pick up new skills.
Sok Kollyan, who hails from Cambodia, married a Taiwanese man and moved to Taiwan. Once here she set about learning Chinese, and is now a voice for the immigrant community
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