Maybe you know a friend who has gone. Maybe your parents have tried to get you to go. Maybe you have even gone yourself. Whatever the answer is, if you grew up in a Taiwanese family in the US, Canada or even other places, chances are you have heard of “Love Boat.”
Officially known as the “Expatriate Youth Language Study Tour to the Republic of China,” the program has been active since 1967, and in its heyday up to 1,200 Taiwanese American and Chinese Americans, as well as many Canadian and college students of Taiwanese and Chinese descent went on the program every summer.
It was sponsored by Taiwan’s government to first and foremost promote its own narrative of politics and culture to the children of “expatriates,” hoping to indoctrinate them in official government ideology. But as time went on, it became known as a great place to meet potential romantic partners, and hence the program was notoriously dubbed the Taiwan Love Boat. Summer flings, long lasting friendships, long distance romances, and even marriages have resulted from the relationships begun on the Love Boat.
Looking the legacy of this program is a new documentary by Valerie Soe, an assistant professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University and a filmmaker. She was also a camper herself on Love Boat back in the 1980s.
“Back then, the Republic of China government in Taiwan saw itself as the sole legitimate heir to ‘China’ and proper Chinese culture, and that’s what they promoted on the tour.” Soe said.
Soe said the biggest theme she wants to convey with the film is how Love Boat reflected Taiwan’s own search for its own identity, and how the official view of Taiwan evolved over the last half a century since it began—from the bastion of proper Chinese culture to something unique in its own right, then yet again to something more inclusive and diverse.
According to Soe, Love Boat was established first as an outreach program designed in part to convince Taiwanese youth in the US, Canada, and Europe to support Taiwan in its ongoing conflicts with the People’s Republic of China. At the time, both Beijing and Taipei were vying for legitimacy to represent all of China. After the United Nations expelled Taipei’s representatives to the China seat and replaced them with Beijing in 1971, Taiwan’s government ramped up its support for Love Boat.
“Around the same time, many Taiwanese were immigrating to the US and raising families there. But parents found that their American-born kids were growing up speaking English, watching American television, and a lot of times, marrying non-Taiwanese spouses. These parents found Love Boat to be an easy solution that would allow their kids to learn more about their heritage and at the same time maybe meet their ideal Taiwanese American mate.” As designed, Love Boat’s high-minded cultural aspirations included Mandarin-language classes, martial arts, and traditional Chinese arts and crafts like brush painting, but the program’s notoreity as an excellent place to hook up and find romance provided an incentive for students to sigh up. “It was a win-win-win situation,” Soe observed.
“Although it may seem like a place for Taiwanese American kids to hook up and party for a summer, in fact Love Boat is a much more subtle and clever tool in Taiwan’s diplomatic arsenal. Lacking the economic, political, or military sway of China, Taiwan instead has chosen to achieve influence by other means.”
And Love Boat can claim some credit. In her film, Soe features Justin Tan, a content producer at Buzzfeed, who is also an alum. Tan is part of a significant media platform, giving him opportunities to increase Taiwan’s pull on cultural trends in America. Tan says,
“While I was there, I just remember I felt a very deep connection to Taiwan. I was like, ‘What is happening to me right now? Am I falling in love with this country?’ And I was, I was absolutely like falling in love with the culture, the people. To me at that time in my life it was like the coolest country ever, the Taiwanese were the coolest people ever.”
Soe also features Congresswoman Judy Chu, who went on Love Boat in the 1970s. She now represents the 27th Congressional district in the US House of Representatives and sits on the Congressional Taiwan Caucus.
“Many more Love Boat alumni who were born and raised in North America were so affected by their summer sojourn on the Love Boat that they resettled in Asia. Conversely, as a result of their involvement with the Love Boat, some Taiwanese-born counselors and staff migrated to the US and live and work there today. Other participants met on the Love Boat and eventually married. And many more continue to foster deep friendships that started decades before on the Love Boat.” Soe said.
But as Taiwan opened up to democracy, competing narratives of what the Taiwan nation is came to the fore of public discourse. The cultures of the Hoklo and Hakka settlers, and of indigenous Austronesian peoples began challenging the dominance of the official “proper, traditional Chinese” culture promoted by the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). As the definition of Taiwanese-ness and what constitutes the state of Taiwan is in dispute, these cultural indoctrination programs that once served to promote the old definitions went out of fashion.
Since then, other organizations have joined in to offer similar tours to promote Taiwan to an overseas audience, including Tzunah Foundation’s International Culture Tour, the Taiwan American Student Conference summer camp, and the tech and entrepreneur-focused Anchor Taiwan. Taiwan’s government have also offered additional programs, such as the Taiwan Tech Tour for students to find corporate internships.
The growth in the offerings for foreigners of Taiwanese descent perhaps signals the continued demand for young Americans seeking to reconnect to their heritage and a fun summer adventure abroad, as well as continued demand for parents who are from Taiwan and want their children to understand the parents’ own cultural experiences and identities in a way not possible back in the US. But the proliferation of these programs also speak to Taiwan’s changing identity itself, as different programs focus on different aspects of Taiwan or even different narratives of Taiwan for its attendees.
Will we see another flagship program in the future that sets the standard for all other programs, with a curriculum so authoritative that it essentially defines what Taiwan is for young Taiwanese Americans? Or will the search for a narrative about Taiwan continue to spread out in all sorts of conflicting directions, each only able to tell a part of the Taiwan story? Only time will tell, but given the diversity of Taiwan and the pace in which Taiwan changes, any attempt to be the end-all-be-all voice of Taiwan might just be a futile exercise.
In any case, the biggest question remains: are the hookups and romances an unintentional consequence? Or were they the ulterior goals all along? To find out, go over to Love Boat: Taiwan’s Indigogo page and help them get to the finish line.
(Feature photo of performance artist Kristina Wong as featured on Love Boat: Taiwan, courtesy of Love Boat: Taiwan)
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