The New Arrivals: Southeast Asian Immigrants and Migrant Workers in Taiwan

Three themes constitute the focal points of “The New Tai-ker: Southeast Asian Immigrants and Migrant Workers in Taiwan,” an exhibit that lays out the stories of immigrants and migrant workers from Southeast Asia over the past 50 years. Household items, photographs, videos, and works of art enable visitors to take a different perspective on the cultures and values of people of other ethnicities.

An exhibit representing the many packages large and small that migrant workers send back home to loved ones.

Linking up with Southeast Asia

One exhibit area, which focuses on the theme of “Cold War, Anti-Communism, and Anti-Chinese Sentiment: Southeast-Asian Immigrants of a Half-Century Ago,” looks at links between Taiwan and Southeast Asia dating back to the 1960s and 70s.

The exhibit is being curated by Chou Yi-ying, a research assistant in the NMTH’s Exhibitions Division. She says that prior to this exhibit the museum has previously held other events to do with immigrants, but the principal focus in most cases was on Southeast-Asian immigrants and migrant workers who had come to Taiwan either as brides or for employment. But the fact is that a wave of ethnic Chinese also came to Taiwan from Southeast Asia in the 1960s, spurred by such factors as anti-communism and Cold-War conditions to take up residence or study here. One of the ethnic Chinese whose stories are told in this exhibit area is ­Huang ­Yuntu, who moved to Taiwan along with his father and older sister. The family settled in Chang­zhi, a rural township in Ping­tung County. They would soon become part of a larger community of ethnic Chinese immigrants from Indonesia who settled in the Chang­zhi area.

Chou explains that in the more distant past many people left the coastal areas of Fu­jian and Guang­dong Provinces in mainland China in search of a better life in Indonesia, Vietnam, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Included among their number was the entrepreneurial ­Huang family. Eventually, however, ­Huang Yuntu’s father came to Taiwan as a tourist to scout out conditions here, and happened by chance to spend time in Gui­lai, an area in Ping­tung City. Noting that the land and climate there were quite similar to that of Indonesia, he decided to move his family to Taiwan, where he would one day actually have the honor of meeting President ­Chiang Kai-shek.

Faded black-and-white photos show, among other things, the abacus that the ­Huangs used for business, as well as a cast-iron bedstead that they had shipped here from Indonesia. In addition to ­Huang ­Yuntu’s family, this exhibit area also tells similar tales of ethnic Chinese families who moved to Taiwan from Vietnam during those years.

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.

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

A different future

The third exhibit area is designed as a mock-up of Taipei Railway Station, where migrant workers and immigrants congregate in large numbers. It introduces the history of the Taiwan International Workers’ Association and the Taiwan International Family Association, NGOs that have been working since the 1990s to further the interests of migrant workers and immigrants, as well as more recently established entities such as ­TASAT, 4-Way Voice, and Brilliant Time Bookstore.

This exhibit area provides information on a community service campaign launched by the teachers and students of Nan­guo Elementary School in Chang­hua City to provide assistance to immigrants. In addition, this area features a timeline that shows legislative, human rights, and social justice issues that came to the fore in the 1990s when the number of immigrants and migrant workers in Taiwan increased sharply. The timeline also shows some of the key activities pursued by 4-Way Voice, TASAT, and other such NGOs.

Says Chou Yi-ying: “From a historical standpoint, I personally hope to use the telling of people’s life stories as a way to spur the general public to develop a new understanding of these new arrivals in Taiwan, and then to think upon related issues, and create a new Taiwan.”

The New Tai-ker exhibition organizers invited Yupayong Kongwattanasin (an ethnic Chinese from Thailand) and others to make drawings about their ideas regarding family.

The New Tai-ker exhibition organizers invited Yupayong Kongwattanasin (an ethnic Chinese from Thailand) and others to make drawings about their ideas regarding family.

The New Tai-ker exhibition organizers invited Yupayong Kongwattanasin (an ethnic Chinese from Thailand) and others to make drawings about their ideas regarding family.

The exhibition “The New Tai-ker: Southeast Asian Immigrants and Migrant Workers in Taiwan” uses household items, photographs, videos, and artworks to take a different perspective on the cultures and values of people of different ethnicities.

The exhibition “The New Tai-ker: Southeast Asian Immigrants and Migrant Workers in Taiwan” uses household items, photographs, videos, and artworks to take a different perspective on the cultures and values of people of different ethnicities.