Love Boat: Taiwan explores the Overseas Compatriot Youth Study Tour, a cultural exchange program that started in the 1960s. Once used as a political tool by the KMT Nationalist government to reach generations of diasporic Chinese youth, the program is often colloquially referred to as the Taiwan Love Boat due to its reputation as a place for
participants to fall in love (and party, drink, and fight).
One of the longest-running summer programs in the world, Love Boat spanned a number of large political shifts in the region, aspiring to connect young people to their roots through cultural programming—or some would say, propaganda.
Director Soe, who was herself a Love Boat participant in the 80s, presents the differing positionalities and experiences of program participants from the 60s to the present day, who in one way or another, find themselves part of this program and are expected to cultivate a relationship with their Taiwanese homeland and develop new understandings of their identity. Love Boat: Taiwan bears witness to the evolving intricacies of what it means to be a hyphenated Asian.
– JG