At midday during the National Day holidays, the Ping­tung railway station teems with people. About ten stalls are scattered throughout the station concourse. They abound with foreign delicacies, toys, and other imported products. Many travelers passing through, and migrant workers coming here on their day off, stop and strike up conversations. Immigrants manning the stalls enthusiastically introduce the products in fluent Chinese. This is cultural exchange in its most basic form and the embodiment of the accomplishments over the past year of the county government’s New Immigrants Community Development and Cultural Promotion Program. 

To promote cultural exchange, new immigrants teach traditional skills for weaving toys and other objects out of pandan leaves, palm fronds and other plants.

Telling one’s own story

“New immigrants”—people who have arrived since the 1990s by marriage, mainly women from Southeast Asia and mainland China—have already become a visible part of Taiwanese society, but to the public they can still feel both familiar and unfamiliar. Tsai Shun-jou, director of the nonprofit Juridical Association for the Development of Women’s Rights in Ping­tung (JADWRP), explains that while her organization often speaks up for the immigrant community, Southeast-Asian culture will best be represented not by outsiders but by the immigrants themselves.

Tsai therefore operates under the principle of letting immigrants speak for themselves. She often helps facilitate opportunities for immigrants to speak in public, whether it is just a five- or ten-minute speech or a full three-hour presentation, which allows people to introduce their native lands and to express their own thoughts. The 2016 New Immigrants Community Development and Cultural Promotion Program, organized by the Ping­tung County Cultural Affairs Department and the JADWRP, was also intended to provide comprehensive support for new immigrants.

The plan mobilized dozens of immigrants who helped organize working teams among the immigrant community, and in September 2016 they began to draft the plan and draw up a budget. The following November they submitted their proposals to the county government for consideration. Implementation of the program began in March 2017, and the JADWRP kicked things off by inviting lecturers with community development experience to offer comprehensive training both in the substance of community building in all its facets, and in techniques to present their experiences through public speaking.

Ultimately the participants delivered a total of 67 lectures in various public arenas, such as educational training courses, forums on gender, and community outreach centers. From the perspectives of their own life ­experiences, the immigrants explored similar or complementary aspects of their native cultures and the culture of Taiwan. These included living in a multicultural society, handicrafts, and cooking lessons, among other things. Each group was like a breath of fresh air, kindling the spirit of cultural exchange.

Ng Sok Geok, a Chinese-Malaysian, practices traditional Indian henna body art. “Malaysia has three major ethnic groups, Malays, Chinese and Indians,” she says.

Cultural surprises

Cooking ingredients like pandan leaves, lemon grass, and butterfly pea flowers are already common in Taiwan, but their traditional uses are still quite limited compared to their uses in Southeast-Asian cuisines. For an example, Thinnaphat Fang, who immigrated from Thailand, points to pan­dan leaves, with their natural aroma of taro and their use as the source of a natural green dye. “At the lecture, many seniors said that their Southeast-Asian daughters-in-law cultivated the plant but that they themselves had no idea what it was used for,” Fang says.

She taught them that pan­dan leaves could be used as an ingredient in many desserts, such as kue lapis (Indonesian layer cake), cendol (a sweet drink made from coconut milk and palm sugar), coconut pastries, and cakes. “It’s fragrant and magical,” Fang says.

“The juice of crushed pandan leaves, strained through a cloth, can also be added to glutinous rice or boiling soybean milk to add a unique flavor,” says ­Phong Kim-lian, who is originally from Vietnam. Different cooking methods are expanding the range of possibilities for using these ingredients in Taiwanese cooking. 

Ma Yue’e and Su ­Yuong-chen, known for their skilful, clever creations, are both originally from Indonesia. When Ma Yue’e travels along the main route leading to her adopted home in Heng­chun, the coconut palms towering on the sides of the road summon memories of Indonesia. In Heng­chun she teaches the older generation to weave coconut fronds into hats, fans, baskets and other useful goods that are lightweight, environmentally friendly, and well-suited to local conditions, and display the creative energy of Indonesian culture.

Su ­Yuong-chen also demonstrates Indonesian customs through the making of ke­tu­pat (rice dumplings wrapped in palm fronds) and toys woven from palm fronds. “Taiwan’s rice dumplings [zongzi] have the stuffing inside the rice, while Indonesia’s rice dumplings have the stuffing on the outside!” Su adds with a laugh. There are similarities and differences, just as there are between Taiwanese and Indonesian culture.

Immigrants arrive not just from Southeast Asia. Lin Feng, an artist from Inner Mongolia, is shown here doing pyrography.

Taking center stage

Pingtung is a major agricultural county and attitudes are conservative. It has a special place as the nation’s first region to experiment with community building for immigrant residents. In reality, however, on arriving in Taiwan after marrying a Taiwanese man, most immigrant women not only have to immediately begin working to help support their new family, they often also bear the dual responsibility of raising children and caring for the elderly, which leads their husbands’ families to frown on their having contacts outside the home. Those around them generally lack experience of interacting with immigrants and unconsciously harbor discriminatory attitudes, creating barriers between the different ethnic groups. 

The New Immigrants Community Development and Cultural Promotion Program was intended not only to create a platform for communication between locals and immigrants, but also to encourage immigrants who have been in Taiwan for a decade or more and have adapted to local life to begin to participate in public affairs. “Community development means developing people, so public participation is essential,” says Lee Jia-ling of the Pingtung County Cultural Affairs Department’s Division of Arts Promotion. “New immigrants are already a part of the community, so of course we should cultivate their ability to participate in public affairs.”    

Tsai Shun-jou, who has been the constant companion of new immigrants on each step of their journey, is also looking to the future. “The government is about to introduce Southeast-Asian languages into the primary school curriculum,” she says. “This year some key schools began to implement the policy, and from 2019 it should begin to be rolled out nationwide. When the time comes, immigrants with teaching experience will be in the vanguard of the initiative.”

Venturing out of the house doesn’t mean leaving home so much as establishing a deeper connection with the local community. After two or three decades of struggling and setting down roots, Taiwan’s new immigrants have become indispensable cultural advocates.

To help introduce themselves to the local community, new immigrants often share artifacts from their own cultures. Pictured here is an angklung, a traditional Indonesian percussion instrument made from bamboo.

Ma Yue’e weaves traditional Indonesian hats with the palm fronds native to Hengchun, an example of an immigrant who has already settled into life in her adopted home.