Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go!” Many people have fond recollections of Grandma’s house from childhood. But for children of Taiwan’s immigrants, their maternal grandmother’s house is likely far away across the sea. Under the circumstances, it’s not easy for their mothers to take them back home. (courtesy of Tsai Hui-ting)
 

For Taiwan’s “new immigrants,” living far from home makes it difficult for their children to spend time with their maternal grandmothers and to bask in the love and attention of their mothers’ families.

One group is working to enable new immigrant families to be nurtured by both sides of their families, just like most other families in Taiwan. In 2011 TrendChip Education Foundation chairman Fang Shin-jou got together with Chang Cheng and Liao Yun-chang, who were then working for 4-Way Voice, the multilingual newspaper for readers of Southeast-Asian languages in Taiwan. They brainstormed and developed a program that emphasizes strengthening both education and family ties: Grandmother’s Bridge. The program’s funds go to support travel for Taiwan’s foreign spouses and their children, enabling them to spend time with the Southeast-Asian side of the family during summer vacations. One stipulation is that a teacher from Taiwan goes back with every family, thus bolstering multiculturalism in the classroom upon their return.

The program anticipates that the three kinds of participants will play different roles. It hopes that the “new immigrants” (Southeast-Asian women who have married Taiwanese men) will serve as “cultural ambassadors,” introducing their children to their own native cultures. The goal is for the children to form lasting ties to the mother’s side of the family. And the program aims to help Taiwan’s teachers gain a deeper appreciation for the difficulties that confront the new immigrants in Taiwan both linguistically and culturally, fostering greater empathy and understanding of the situations faced by their children in the classroom.

In 2015, the fifth year of the program, groups were sent to Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, and Myanmar.

When they return, the families and teachers hold meetings at which they share their experiences. Full of laughter and tears, their stories always resonate broadly.

In 2013 teacher Tsai Hui-ting shared her experiences of a Grandmother’s Bridge trip to Vietnam at TEDx Youth @Taipei. Ah-ran, the new immigrant mother on that same trip, has since opened a snack shop. In 2014, two teachers were part of a group visiting a grandmother’s home in Northern Thailand. One, Cheng Chi-tso, established a related program in Chiayi. The other, Lin Chin-ling, made news when she went to Vietnam to teach for a year, bringing her son with her.

After some in-depth travel experiences in Southeast Asia, which include “long-range home visits” by teachers, how can the seeds of wisdom gleaned from these journeys best be planted to sprout and grow strong? In the following two articles, we explore how these moving journeys started, and how they will continue to bear fruit….