Taiwan has been caught between two global superpowers for decades. China sees the island as a breakaway province that will eventually return to its control, possibly by force. The U.S. sees it as a key democratic ally in the Eastern Pacific, as well as a strategic military outpost. Often overlooked, however, is how Taiwanese residents feel about the country’s precarious existence. Leo Chiang explores this in his Oscar-nominated documentary short called Island in Between. He was born in Taiwan and lives there now, but grew up in the states.
Island in Between is set in the Kinmen Islands, which are nestled within the coast of mainland China. Chiang describes the place as a beautiful, natural environment that is surrounded by destruction, including bombed-out buildings and bunkers painted with camouflage.
Those are remnants of the Chinese Civil War, a decades-long conflict that ended in the late 1940s. Chiang says the islands served as the frontlines for the Nationalists, the losing party that was retreating.
Chiang says residents in Taiwan often hear about the miserable experiences soldiers sent to Kinmen endured during that time. “People [are] always talking about [how] the mainland soldiers [would] swim across the strait and kill the Taiwanese soldiers at night. There were definitely regular bombings.”
He continues, “A lot of them were actually propaganda bombs, where you drop the bomb, and it [didn’t] necessarily have a lot of explosives in it, but they’re full of propaganda fliers.”
Chiang moved to San Jose when he was 15 years old — without his mom and dad. He says that was a common practice at the time. Known as “parachute kids,” middle- and upper-class Taiwaese parents would send their kids to the U.S. while staying behind.
“Part of the reason was very much this instability back in Taiwan. … Even though economically it was doing really well, [parents] always worried, if something happens, we want our kids to have a path out. … I was definitely one of the privileged few who did get sent out to the U.S. and had an American education.”
Chiang moved back to Taiwan in 2017, describing himself as a Trump refugee. When the former president was elected, he and his partner decided that they didn’t have to stay in the states. Plus, he felt a long-standing desire to return to Taiwan. Prior, he had a couple of failed attempts at moving back due to feeling like an outsider.
“When I moved to the U.S., the priority was always to integrate, to assimilate. And I really, in some ways, turned my back against my Taiwanese identity. And as I got older, it felt like that should be a priority for me to really find a way to reconnect, for me to really fight and find a way to keep growing my Taiwanese identity.”
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As he matured, Chiang says he realized that the narratives he learned in Taiwan were effectively anti-China propaganda. Over time, he became curious about what the mainland was really like.
“It cannot be this monolithic, dark, miserable place. So as somebody who does speak the language, who does know the history of China, I was looking for opportunities to go there and check it out,” he explains. ”One of the things why I love doing this work is I get to go to places that I've never been before and meet really interesting people. And for me at that moment in the mid-2000s, early 2010s, China was it.”
During the mid-2010s, Chiang traveled in and out of China, and says his filmmaking wasn’t well-received by the country’s government. Meanwhile, state censorship was on the rise.
However, Chiang makes a point to separate the Chinese government from its people. He adds that Taiwanese public distrust of China is high.
“It's the regime that is doing this. What it's done in Hong Kong, it appalled the Taiwanese people. Here in Taiwan, you’re watching Hong Kong, which had made a deal with the Chinese government that they were going to do this one country, two systems, having self-rule, having [an] election. And then one day China decided I'm done, we're done. … This is an unreliable partner. There's no way that the Taiwanese people want to have anything to do with negotiating with the Chinese government.”
In Island in Between, Chiang focuses on these types of emotions that the Taiwanese people are experiencing, especially as political tensions between China and the U.S. continue to fester. “It’s this sense of limbo and helplessness and powerlessness that Taiwanese people live with day in and day out, and now for 70 years.”
He adds, “This latest round of escalation, maybe, is getting more people around the world to be more curious about it, to want to learn more about it, which is really great. But for a lot of the Taiwanese people, it's just more of the same. And maybe it's more serious than before, but it's not brand new, and did not come out of nowhere.”
Chiang says there is also a growing Taiwanese distrust of the U.S., especially as American politicians decide on whether or not to financially support the war in Ukraine.
“Watching the flip-flopping of American attitudes, or the congressional attitudes specifically, towards Ukraine has a lot of Taiwanese people worried. Two years ago, Ukraine was not a domestic political issue. You had bipartisan support. Taiwan has that now. But everybody's worried that what if Taiwan also gets politicized by the division of the U.S. political system, and two years from now, there's a bill there and people will be arguing, ‘Well, we shouldn't support Taiwan anymore.’ So that is definitely a cause for concern for a lot of Taiwanese folks.”
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