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China says it has sovereignty over the democratically governed island of Taiwan. Taiwan says no and is in the midst of buying nearly $400 million of U.S. arms to defend itself. And yet, there's romance across the Taiwan strait. As NPR's Emily Feng reports, China remains the biggest source of new immigrants to Taiwan, mostly through marriages that are now highly politicized.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: These trees maybe collapsed during this most recent typhoon.
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: I had to navigate a fallen tree in total darkness in this Taipei compound.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: The residents here are technically squatters, and nearly all of them are Chinese-born women. These women only wanted to use their surnames because they travel to China often, and such ties can be investigated on both sides.
MS MENG: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: This woman, named Ms. Meng, hails from eastern China. Now 72, she met her late husband in the late-1980s when travel, once forbidden between China and Taiwan, was finally allowed, four decades after they'd fought a devastating civil war.
MS MENG: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: He was a soldier in Taiwan, and like most other soldiers, he found a bride in China to care for him in his old age, jokes Ms. Meng. And so began a big wave of Chinese immigration into Taiwan.
MS MA: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: Another Chinese wife, named Miss Ma, says, after more than two decades in Taiwan...
MS MA: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: ...Neither Taiwan nor China recognize her as a true citizen. She and the other Chinese wives are now fighting a Taiwanese eviction order. And there are hundreds of thousands of women like her in Taiwan caught in the middle of these tensions because according to Taiwan's immigration bureau, more than 60% of immigrants to Taiwan in the last 30 years came from China, usually through marriage. Angela Hui is a Chinese woman who moved to Taipei with her Taiwanese husband two years ago.
ANGELA HUI: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: She jokes she used to think Taiwan was a province of China's. For decades, the stereotype was, these women were uneducated grifters skimming off social welfare benefits from both sides.
HUI: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: Hui resists the stereotype. Younger Chinese emigres like her now move to Taiwan of their own accord. They work and are more educated.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Hello. (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: And hundreds of them, including her have become social media influencers with tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of fans on YouTube and China's version of TikTok.
HUI: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: Hui works part time filming YouTube videos. And she says, despite tensions, Taiwanese people remain curious about what's happening in China, like a jealous lover might keep tabs on someone they've broken up.
HUI: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: But she feels caught between both sides, getting criticism from both Chinese and Taiwanese fans for being a traitor. Because of Chinese emigration into Taiwan, there are also lots of mixed families, people with family ties to both China and Taiwan.
LIU JUNLIANG: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: This is Liu Junliang, a Taiwanese college student with a Chinese mother. He says he constantly has to prove to other Taiwanese people he is a true, loyal Taiwanese.
LIU: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: He says, as a young child, he felt ashamed of his split identity, only learning to embrace it in university.
LI YIJING: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: Li Yijing, whose mother is also Chinese, says after some confusion about her identity, she's grown to see herself as only Taiwanese, not Chinese. And she sympathized with Hong Kong protests in 2019 against China's central government, even though her own cousin is a Chinese military officer.
LI: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: She says she was nervous to watch documentaries about Hong Kong's protests because she feared she might see her cousin's face among the police beating demonstrators. Li Yijing says people like her are caught in a bind.
LI: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: If there really was war between China and Taiwan again, Li wonders, would they be asked to fight and kill their own relatives? Emily Feng, NPR News, Taipei, Taiwan.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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