Basic human rights
Chang lived in New Zealand for three years and became a citizen, but he came back because of his elderly father. When he returned, neighbors said happily, "So life isn't good over there." Chang has noticed that if people in Taiwan have a direct reaction in encountering emigrant returnees, it's "assuring themselves that they were right not to emigrate." Chang Wen-teh has his own feelings on the subject and would, in fact, like to tell them the good points of living abroad, but he worries about the reaction he would provoke, and so he doesn't say anything.
Wang's friends and relatives disapprove of his leaving the homeland, and he has his own feelings about their disapproval. At his clinic, he opens his family genealogy and says, "My ancestors came from the mainland. I didn't invent emigration. People have a right to look for a better place to live."
Why pick Canada? His reason: The United States is still the world's superpower, but the conditions for applying to immigrate to America are too strict and there is too much crime in some of its big cities. So he selected Canada, just next door, thinking that his kids can later go study at American universities.
Dr. Wang's choice explains why the number of Taiwanese emigrating to Canada in 1993 and 1994 surpassed those emigrating to the United States.
To the new emigrants, America is, to use a movie metaphor, "a critical success and a box-office failure." Liang Jung-kuei, president of the ROC Emigration Association, asserts that the US$1 million the United States requires business immigrants to invest doesn't pose the biggest hurdle to Taiwanese emigrants. The trouble comes with the stipulation that you've got to create 10 jobs.
Comparatively speaking, New Zealand and Canada are much more flexible. And for three straight years beginning in 1991, the number of Taiwanese emigrating to America fell while the numbers going to New Zealand and Canada rose.
Making money off one's own
Economics is the major reason many emigrants return. And when they jump back into their old careers, they often make a start in another business on the side: emigration.
Wang Hsien-chi says that when he emigrated to New Zealand in 1988, few Taiwanese could be seen in Auckland. And so, wanting company, he thought of coming back and introducing the nation to friends and relatives. With a simple operation based out of his apartment, he puts on some seminars about emigrating that are well attended. When he applied to register the company, it was like a second spring. His neighbors and his former colleagues at Taiwan Power all became customers.
After Dr. Wang moved to Vancouver, he began to work in the real estate business, and in one year he sold four houses, all to Taiwanese.
Chang Wen-teh invested in a local hotel in Auckland, but thinking of his responsibility for his father, he makes three or four trips a year back to Taipei. He still has his old company, and with his brother he is also "holding in-home seminars about going to New Zealand" and making a video about emigrating.
Turning the antennae back home
The new emigrants in their thirties and forties aren't thinking of retiring to a life of leisure. For them a sense of success and self-worth comes from their being busy with work.
"Owners of Taiwan's small and medium-sized businesses need to be busy to feel secure," observes Chang Wen-teh's younger brother Chang Jung-kuei, who went to Canada, New Zealand and Australia for their video about new emigrants.
He believes that they gain a sense of security by accumulating wealth. And so even if they start with as much as NT$50 million, when their savings hit NT$49.99 million, they'll start to panic. Hence, "the professional antennae are all pointing back to Taiwan," Chang Jung-kuei says.
"Those who can come back do." Those who don't, he reckons, haven't done so because Taiwan has also changed greatly over the last two years. They are looking for opportunities, but they have their conditions.
The documented rising number of students returning each year from study abroad serves as a giant labor pool for jobs requiring highly educated workers. Now even these returnees need breaks to find a good job.
The development of cross-strait economic ties is another reason professional antennae are pointing back home.
Mr. Ho, a shipper, went to the mainland in 1989. In Guilin he invested in a hotel, and in Beijing he invested in a shipping business.
"In doing business with the mainland, status is most important," he says, echoing an opinion shared by many Taiwanese businessmen. "You've got to be on the spot"--because you've got to spend a lot of time dealing with the police and handling labor disputes. Over there, "you do the China trade, speak Cantonese, and hold a foreign passport." With the latter, at least you've got a way out if there's trouble.
A story of a mother and father
What are the aerialists working so hard for?
Mr. Ho says that having grown up in Taiwan, he knows what the educational system is like and doesn't put any great demands on his son's academic performance. Getting a just-passing mark of 60 every time would be good enough for the father. But this approach won't work in the real world of junior high in Taiwan. Getting a 60, his son informed him, would get him the teacher's rod. And so, for the sake of the children, Ho's wife took their daughter and son to Toronto three years ago.
Most of the new emigrants hold the notion of "sacrificing the older generation for success in the younger."
The older generation are extremely hesitant about passing the rest of their days in a foreign land, and when they encounter obstacles they take the road back. Regarding the younger generation, however, the parents say straight-out that they "can't go back."
When Chang Wen-teh told his elderly father living in the Taoyuan countryside that he was taking his family far away, "My father thought that we were giving up on him. He didn't know what he had done wrong." Wen-teh promised that he would return in three years, just like a son coming back from military service.
Eventually he came back, but he told his three children to stay, hoping they would get settled and advance with their studies.
With his children unlikely to return to study, their "aerialist" father is made most happy by seeing their development.
Chang observes his twelve-year-old son, taller than his seventh grade classmates by a head, going to work at McDonald's for spending money when back in Taiwan on vacation. The father admires the son's independence and self-reliance. Dr. Wang happily sees his daughter submitting an article to the local paper about how her outlook on life has changed since she's been studying abroad.
Aerialists for how long?
Adult suffering is accepted as coming with the territory. The aerialists all carry their own pains and doubts, but they keep these to themselves.
Recently, Mr. Ho felt unwell and went to the hospital for two days of tests. The doctor told him that he has mild heart disease, but he won't tell his wife: "To someone overseas alone, you report only the good news, not the bad."
"The older you get," he says, "the more you dread the long plane rides." He plans to quit being an aerialist after a year. Having a family divided by geography is no way to live, he thinks. About spending the rest of his days abroad, he is of two minds. At one moment he says, "retirement is too boring," and at the next he marvels, "There's too much to do. Just tackling the back yard alone, I'll never be able to finish."
Dr. Wang has a different viewpoint: "No problem. I can fly until I'm seventy." Nonetheless, his wife complains that after taking care of the children by herself all these years, she has no life of her own. Dr. Wang can only tell her that the days of their separation are just temporary, and that they'll end when their youngest child goes off to college. Then she too can fly back and forth.
Leaf through any newspaper, and you'll come across full-page advertisements urging you to emigrate. Why go? Why split the family in two different countries? When you find a reason compelling enough to convince you, why not try to shed some light on what you don't know about your adopted land before packing your bags?
[Picture Caption]
p.23
If a son is going to study in Canada, you're in for a big "aerial" move. Today the purpose of emigration is often educational, and applying for citizenship becomes a means to an end.
p.24
Taking advantage of summer vacation in New Zealand, Chang Wen-teh (second from right) has taken his son (third from right) to visit grandpa in the Taoyuan countryside. With Wen-teh's younger brother's family there as well, it makes for a big family reunion.
p.25
Main Destinations of ROC Emigrants, 1990-1994
p.26
With New Zealand a hot destination for Taiwan's emigrants in recent years, seminars about emigrating to that nation are big draws.The Taiwanese community there has increased from 400 in 1991 to over 4000 today.
p.27
Applying to emigrate involves a series of procedures, from sending in documents to being interviewed. On average the whole process takes about half a year.
p.27
In 1991 the ROC government legalized emigration agencies, and now Taiwan has more than 200 of them.
p.29
A beautiful living environment where there's space to breathe and extensive leisure facilities: What many Taiwanese emigrate for. This photo was taken in California. (photo courtesy of Wu Chia-shun)
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