Author: NGA Shi Yeu

Co-Listening as Defiance: The Facebook Soundscape of Taiwan’s Sino-Myanmar Gen Z and the 2021 Myanmar Spring Revolution

Written by Tasaw Hsin-Chun Lu. After Myanmar’s 2021 coup, Taiwan’s Sino-Myanmar Gen Z created a nightly revolutionary soundscape through Facebook Live. By co-listening to the clang of pots and pans, revived protest anthems, and newly sharpened hip-hop, they transformed distant violence into shared urgency. These circulating sounds stitched together a fragile yet insistent counterpublic, allowing young listeners in Taipei to grieve, rage, and imagine with those in Myanmar. Through this quiet, collective listening, they claimed a sense of belonging that crossed borders and defied the junta’s enforced silence.

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Singing for the Mountain Lands: A Pivotal Indigenous Music Concert in Taiwan

Written by Eric Scheihagen. The author illustrates the 1984 Singing for the Mountain Lands concert in Taipei, organised shortly after the Haishan Coal Mine Disaster, which killed mostly Amis miners. It details how Indigenous musicians and activists, led by Hu Defu, used the concert to raise funds and publicly address discrimination, harmful stereotypes, and political issues. The event became an important milestone in Taiwan’s growing Indigenous rights movement and helped catalyse later organising efforts, including the formation of the Taiwan Association for Promoting Indigenous Rights.

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Water Nexus: Can Semiconductors and Sustainability Coexist in Taiwan?

Written by Alexis Huang. This article examines Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)’s water–energy nexus, tracing its ecological costs, sustainability efforts, and infrastructural challenges. Despite advances in wastewater recycling and renewable integration, TSMC’s growth remains constrained by environmental limits, showing that long-term leadership depends on systemic reform, not technological fixes.

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The Rise and Exclusion within Multicultural Discourses of Immigrant Integration in Taiwan

Written by Chien-Ping Liu. This article examines how transnational marriage migration has reshaped Taiwan’s demographic and civic landscape since the 1990s. It traces the shift from stigmatisation to multicultural recognition through grassroots advocacy and state developmental agendas. While bottom-up movements advanced inclusion, state-led multiculturalism often instrumentalised difference, reproducing class, gender, and geopolitical hierarchies within Taiwan’s immigrant integration discourse.

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Vietnam Kinmen Association (Fuji Temple): A Symbol of Taiwan’s Soft Diplomacy in Saigon before 1975

Written by Meiyuan Kou. This article traces the history of the Kinmen Association (Fuji Temple) in Saigon-Cholon, established in the early 1970s as both a religious hub for Kinmen migrants and a channel of Taiwan’s soft diplomacy in South Vietnam. It examines how this small community institution fostered transnational ties, cultural continuity, and identity preservation across shifting political landscapes before and after 1975.

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Of Swallows and Nests: The Migration Trajectories of Kinmen’s Wartime Generation and Their Return Home

Written by Junbin Tan. This article traces the Lin family’s multigenerational migration from wartime Kinmen Island to Southeast Asia and beyond. Anchored in an ethnographic encounter with Grandma Lin and her family, the author follows the Lins’ migratory trajectories of departure, separation and eventual return, revealing how Kinmenese mobility was shaped by political restriction, economic necessity, and the moral economies of kinship.

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