Off to Southeast Asia, to teach
The Grandmother’s Bridge trip pushed Lin Chin-ling to reflect on her future, and she decided to go abroad to teach. She got a job at the Taipei School in Ho Chi Minh City, and in August of 2015 flew with her younger son, a junior high school student, to Vietnam, to begin a new chapter in her teaching career.
Lin says that in Vietnam the children of Taiwanese–Vietnamese marriages lack understanding of Taiwan’s culture, whereas in Taiwan the children of “new immigrants” suffer social discrimination and lack nurturing from their mothers’ native cultures. Bringing the resources of both sides into play for these children will be one of the rewards of Taiwan’s tilt toward developing economic links with Southeast Asia. She has collected various Taiwan resources that she wants to share with students in Vietnam, building bridges between them and Taiwan.
Her son has experienced some culture shock. A lot of English is used in his school in Vietnam, and his classmates hail from a variety of nations, including Malaysia, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. When class lets out, a mix of languages are spoken: English, Vietnamese, Korean, Cantonese and so forth. Multicultural and cosmopolitan, it’s been a rewarding experience for her son.
The program’s distant flowers
In 2015 the National Immigration Agency and the New Taipei City Bureau of Education both launched Grandmother’s Bridge programs. The NIA selected 44 groupings (33 of new immigrant families and 11 of teachers), comprising 99 individuals in all, to go to Southeast Asia. New Taipei City’s program, meanwhile, selected 44 students to go Vietnam, Thailand and other nations for cultural itineraries or corporate internships. They also selected mothers and children to go on trips to spend time at Grandma’s house. Regardless of the specific content, Grandmother’s Bridge programs aim to create or strengthen ties between the children of immigrant mothers and their mothers’ native lands, so that those children can enrich their lives with multiculturalism and cultivate skills and understanding that can help Taiwan in its relations with ASEAN nations.