They also bond to discuss issues that their non-Asian friends-or their parents, for that matter-wouldn’t understand: college admission quotas, everyday racism, and the pressures to succeed and go into professions their parents choose for them. The characters in Loveboat, Taipei aren’t just concerned with dating and clubbing. Yet she can’t help but enjoy the freedom, even though she feels that she really is “for-Ever Wong” in her parents’ eyes. Ever has a running list of all of her parents’ rules, ticking them off in her mind each time she breaks one. The counselors and teachers look the other way when the students sneak out at night to go clubbing or pair up. But at night and in the dorms, it’s anything goes. During their summer in Taipei, they attend classes in Chinese language, along with electives like calligraphy, Chinese traditional medicine, Chinese dance and martial arts. Ever knows nothing about Taiwan apart from that it’s an island off the coast of China.įor many of the students in the program, including Ever, their strict Chinese parents haven’t allowed them to date in high school. They’ve applied for her to attend the Chien Tan heritage summer program in Taiwan. Ever keeps this secret to herself and before she can spring it on them, her parents reveal a secret of their own.
What they don’t know-and certainly wouldn’t approve of-is that Ever really wants to dance and has also gotten herself admitted to the fine arts program at New York University’s Tisch School. After rejections from the Ivy League, Ever finally receives an offer from Northwestern University. Her parents, immigrants from Fujian via a short spell in Singapore before settling in a Cleveland suburb, are set on her becoming a doctor. Her protagonist is 18-year-old Everett Wong, who goes by the nickname of Ever. Loveboat, Taipei, Abigail Hing Wen (HarperTeen, January 2020) And since heritage programs to places like Israel and Greece are rites of passage for American teens of many ethnicities, Abigail Hing Wen has chosen a setting-and title-for her debut young adult novel, Loveboat, Taipei, that is likely to resonate beyond Asian-Americans.
The subject of a recent documentary, it was perhaps inevitable that it would be mined for a novel. It’s been a mainstay for teens with family ties to Taiwan, including restaurateur and TV personality, Eddie Huang. Started during martial law in the late 1960s to provide North American Chinese teens with a cultural experience back in the old country, the “love boat” program took on this nickname-a reference to an American TV sitcom of the 1970s and 80s-after it became known (perhaps among participants rather than their parents) more for debauchery than serious studies. The program, funded by the Republic of China, has been dubbed the “love boat”, but has nothing to do with ships or the sea. When Abigail Hing Wen was a teenager, she spent a summer in Taiwan to get in touch with her Chinese roots.
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