Born in 1977, the tall and slender Chiou speaks with a firm but warm air, and sports a smile reminiscent of Julia Roberts’. Hailing from Thailand, her given name “Yadrung” is Thai for “rainbow.”

Born to a single mother who had to leave them to seek work, Chiou and her two older brothers were sent to live with different relatives, and it is to this background that she credits her independent spirit. In college she majored in accounting, but her best grades were in sociology, possibly a hint to where her future would take her.

After graduating, she met a man who worked for a multinational courier company, and eventually married him and settled in Taiwan. She had given little thought to the nature of such cross-cultural marriages, simply hoping that Taiwan would be a great place to build on her past work experience and start building a future.

With a broad, winning smile, Yadrung Chiou is confident and calm when telling her story.

A little help from the mother-in-law

When she first arrived in Taiwan, the language barrier was bigger than she’d anticipated. “I’m very much an independent person,” says Chiou, “but since I couldn’t speak Chinese, my husband’s family treated me like a helpless child, and inevitably this made me very upset.” Her inability to voice her feelings led to no small number of clashes with her in-laws. At one point, she even ran off back to Thailand, planning to never return to Taiwan. While her in-laws were the victims of rumors of their son’s “sham marriage,” it was something her own mother said that inspired Chiou to return to Taiwan and start again: “Once you’ve made a decision, you need to see it through. If you really can’t make it work, only then is it OK to give up.”

During Chiou’s adjustment period, about three years, her mother-in-law was concerned she was spending too much time cooped up indoors and encouraged her to get outside more. In addition, to help Chiou adjust to Taiwan life, her mother-in-law also asked a friend’s beauty salon to hire Chiou, getting her work washing hair, but also giving her the chance to interact with more people.

Chiou’s journey into the world of social activism began with a chance encounter with a Vietnamese woman at the salon. The woman recommended that Chiou take Chinese classes at Yonghe Community University, igniting a new passion for learning.

The Trans-Asia Sisterhood Association also uses drama to communicate their members’ circumstances and aspirations. This photo shows members performing Be Seen at the association’s 12th-anniversary reception.

New horizons through community university

Those classes not only taught basic Chinese, but also encouraged the women to discuss any problems they’d encountered in their everyday lives, using them to help further develop the women’s skills. Chiou quickly proved to be the student with the most questions, and her engagement saw her elected as a class officer. Recognizing her organizational skills, Chiou’s teacher recommended she start volunteering, and thus began her work with the Trans-Asia Sisterhood Association.

“The association aims to provide support to other women from Southeast Asia,” says Chiou. “Their mission is to give us the tools we need, to give us the fishing rods we need to catch our own fish.” They don’t care about education level—as long as the women want to learn, the association is there to give them the opportunity to do so, as well as to provide patient assistance.

Yadrung Chiou has countless experiences of taking to the streets. She believes that one’s rights have to be fought for. (courtesy of Yadrung Chiou)

You’ve got to fight for your rights

Chiou’s first experience of taking to the streets with the association came in 2003, when they protested the government’s “reckless” establishment of the National Immigration Agency. The government had rushed through the establishment of the agency, having decided to get 75% of the staff through transfers from the police but not having made any preparations to cover the rest. As a director of the association, Chiou became its public spokesperson; however, her Chinese was still rough and her accent thick, making her worry she wouldn’t be able to properly communicate the feelings of her sisters. Other women were more afraid that taking to the streets without having received their national ID yet would result in their being deported. Regardless, they all understood that one’s rights don’t just pop out of thin air—they have to be fought for. In this case, the protests were successful, and the NIA’s establishment was postponed until 2007.

By standing up and doing the right thing, the women were able to secure their rights. These “marriage immigrants” were also unable to enroll in the National Health Insurance and Labor Insurance programs, get work visas, or apply for benefits after workplace injuries. Confronted by these and other problems, the women began thinking, studying the Immigration Act, the Nationality Act, and other laws related to their rights.

To encourage others like them to get involved in public affairs, in 2005 the Trans-Asia Sisterhood Association worked with Professor Hsia Hsiao-chuan of Shih Hsin University’s Graduate Institute of Social Transformation Studies to publish Don’t Call Me Foreign Bride! Five years later, the association released the documentary Let’s Not Be Afraid!, which follows the association’s growth and advocacy work. Chiou was part of the film as well, doing some of the shooting and even learning to use editing software. Let’s Not Be Afraid! was the collective work of the association’s members, and through it they strove to tell Taiwan their stories from their own perspectives.

The work of the Trans-Asia Sisterhood Association comes in three categories: organizational empowerment, community education, and political activism. This photo is a group shot of Yadrung Chiou (first from left) and other association staff.

Handling family relations through communication

Chiou also began using the communication skills she’d learned at community college and with the association to work on her own family relationships. At first, her in-laws didn’t agree with her activism. While her mother-in-law was an open-minded person, she was opposed to the idea of Chiou protesting on the streets. To help win her over, Chiou offered an example of what she was fighting: “Everyone says the children of Southeast-Asian immigrants are developmentally challenged; if it were your grandson they were talking about, would you be willing to have him labeled like that?” Obviously Chiou’s mother-in-law was opposed, and after giving it some thought, she began supporting Chiou’s efforts to fight back against such popular stereotypes.

When it comes to raising her child, Chiou is a strict mother, firmly requiring her son to do chores and wash his own lunch box. She is a strong believer in the idea that one of the most important things in childrearing is making sure your children know their responsibilities and the reasons for them.

Some people think Chiou is lucky to have such a supportive husband and mother-in-law; for her part, she says “every marriage, every family has its complexities and things they find hard to tell others.” But through constant communication, she has been able to get the freedom to do her own thing. While her family’s financial situation leaves her with no need to worry about money, Chiou doesn’t want to simply rely on her husband.

From her start with Chinese classes through her work with the association and on the streets, by 2008 Chiou’s activism earned her an Outstanding Contribution Award at the National Youth Public Participation Awards, and in 2014 the Eball Foundation invited her to participate in a public education project and share her experience of overcoming problems and pushing her own limits. Yadrung Chiou has given her time and her energy to fight for equality for immigrants to Taiwan and to make her new homeland fairer and friendlier to new arrivals.

Chiou has always striven to become more capable as part of the association, whether just as a participant or as a speaker. She has even been a director of the association, and currently she works as their executive secretary. (courtesy of Yadrung Chiou)

Chiou’s mother-in-law has been one of her greatest supporters, encouraging her to meet more people and get involved in the community. (courtesy of Yadrung Chiou)

In 2008, Chiou was honored with an Outstanding Contribution Award at the National Youth Public Participation Awards. (courtesy of Yadrung Chiou)