Talking Taiwan Interview About Love Boat: Taiwan with Asian American Studies Professor and Filmmaker Valerie Soe
For many overseas born Chinese and Taiwanese, the Love Boat language culture study program was quite the cultural phenomenon and rite of passage. We are dedicating two episodes of Talking Taiwan to the topic. The first will feature Asian American Studies professor and filmmaker Valerie Soe who’s made a documentary film called Love Boat: Taiwan. Learn more about the Love Boat program, the lasting impact on its participants- college and high school-aged individuals away from home for 6 weeks in Taiwan. It was the quintessential summer camp experience.
What’s interesting to me is that the Love Boat program, which was started and run by the Chinese Nationalist government (aka the Kuomintang) set out to aggrandize the Republic of China (which at one time claimed to rule all of China), but instead, what it seems to have done is to solidify the difference between Taiwan and China in the minds of Love Boat participants.
In the next episode of Talking Taiwan, I’ll be speaking with New York Times Bestselling author, Abigail Hing Wen, a Love Boat alum herself about her debut young adult novel, Loveboat, Taipei.
Here’s a little preview of what we talked about in this podcast episode:
What the Love Boat program is
How the Love Boat got its nickname
How the program evolved over time
The lasting relationships and Love Boat alumni connections
Selection of the Love Boat program counselors
Escape routes that Love Boat program attendees used to sneak out at night
The Baby Boat or Tugboat program
Typical rites of passage for the Love Boat participants
Why Valerie had to stop working on the documentary for a year
How to raise money for an independent documentary film
What advice Valerie has for documentary filmmakers
What Valerie would like people to take away from her film
The influential alumni of the Love Boat progra
