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Ep 338 | Talking Taiwan Top 5 of 2025 Award Winner End of Year Review

Release Date: 01/02/2026

Ep 356 | Taiwanese Waves Celebrates its 10th Year Anniversary at SummerStage in NYC's Central Park

Talking Taiwan

This year Taiwanese Waves is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year and will be back at SummerStage in New York City’s Central Park’s Rumsey Playfield on Sunday August 16th. Doors open at 5:00pm. When Taiwanese Waves debuted in 2016, it set an all-time record for the highest single-day attendance at SummerStage. And since then it’s continued to introduce audiences to Taiwanese Music. This year’s lineup includes Golden Melody Award regulars 9m88, YELLOW and ØZI. You’ll also be hearing the psychedelic sounds of Mong Tong and from Taiwanese American singer-song writer Chance...

Ep 355 | Akio Yaita Outspoken Taiwan Advocate: In Taiwan I Can Make a Bigger Contribution

Talking Taiwan

While we were at last year’s Taiwanese American Conference West Coast in July of 2025 which was hosted in San Francisco Silicon Valley, we sat down with Akio Yaita (矢板明夫), the keynote speaker of the conference. As a senior journalist at Sankei Shimbun Akio has covered Beijing and Taipei. He’s been a strong advocate for Taiwan. In 2024 Akio obtained citizenship in Taiwan and founded the Indo-Pacific Strategy Thinktank. Related Links: As we were working on translating and editing our interview with Akio we were disturbed to learn that on July 6th Akio was assaulted after a speaking...

Ep 354 | Celebrating TAAC's 10th Anniversary: Island Reverence on Governors Island House 17

Talking Taiwan

The Taiwanese American Arts Council is celebrating its 10th anniversary and third year as an organization in residence on Governors Island. Island Reverence is the theme of this year’s residency. I recently sat down to interview three of the artists in residence at TAAC’s house 17 on Governors Island: Chia-Che Tsou, Dena Paige-Fischer, and Leon Chuang. Chia-Che has a fascinating story about how he ended up becoming an artist. Dena and Leon both coincidentally grew up with parents who are artists. Dena and Leon’s artwork are currently on view at TAAC house 17 on Governors Island...

Ep 353 | Birdy Explores Universal Themes of Freedom, Limitation and Identity Relevant to Taiwan

Talking Taiwan

We were at the dress rehearsal of BIRDY, one Hung Dance’s most critically acclaimed productions, which will be premiering in New York at NYU Skirball on July 17 & 18th. BIRDY explores the relationship between freedom, limitation, and identity through a distinctive movement language inspired by Tai Chi, traditional Peking opera and contemporary dance. Related Links: We sat down to speak with Lai Hung-Chung, Choreographer and Artistic Director of Hung Dance about his artistic vision for BIRDY and Wei-Ping Chen the dance company’s Operations Director. Lai told us that the themes of...

Ep 352 | Claire Wang (王婉諭) Chairwoman of the New Power Party Talks About Relaunching the Party

Talking Taiwan

We sat down to speak with Claire Wang (王婉諭), chairwoman of the New Power Party, one of Taiwan political parties, that emerged from the Sunflower Movement. While she never imagined herself going into politics, personal circumstances changed that. She’s a powerful example of transforming personal tragedy into action. Wang is a passionate advocate for progressive values and local democracy, from judicial reform and child protection to housing justice. Now she’s leading a new chapter for the New Power Party. Last July we brought Talking Taiwan to TAC-WC, the Taiwanese American Conference...

Ep 351 | Dr Hsing-Huan Wang Chairman of the Taiwan State Building Party an Unwavering Voice for Taiwan’s independence

Talking Taiwan

Dr. Hsing-Huan Wang is Chairman of the Taiwan Statebuilding party. Last July we sat down to speak with him at TAC-WC, the Taiwanese American Conference West Coast hosted in San Francisco/Silicon Valley. We talked about how he went from studying Buddhist philosophy and aspirations to pursue academic research as a professor, to accidentally becoming a politician. The Taiwan Statebuilding has a clear vision for an independent Taiwan and a Taiwanese Republic. The party also takes a hard line on China as an enemy state. Related Links: This interview was recorded just weeks before the...

Ep 350 | Cony Hsieh Kaohsiung Pride President Focuses on LGBTQ+ Issues and Reforming Taiwan’s Military

Talking Taiwan

Happy Pride month! Cony Hsieh is President of the Kaohsiung Pride Parade Association. We recently spoke with Cony about her experience as a lesbian woman serving in Taiwan’s military, and how she hopes her research on gender issues in the military can help push for reform in Taiwan’s military. Related Links: She’s also a podcaster and her podcast 微叛逆ê副駕 (which has been translated as “The Slightly Rebellious Co-pilot”) is about LGBTQ+ life experiences and gender issues in the military. She once created 28 days of podcast episodes covering a range of LGBTQ+ experiences for...

Ep 349 | Nymphia Wind Brings Taiwan’s Betel Nut Beauty Culture to the New York Pride March

Talking Taiwan

This year’s Taiwan Pride Float at the New York City Pride March was inspired by Taiwan’s Betel Nut Beauty culture. The concept and design was conceived by Nymphia Wind, who was already an established drag queen in Taiwan when she won RuPaul’s Drag Race season 16 in 2024. Related Links: Nymphia dedicated her win to Taiwan and that same year Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen congratulated Nymphia and invited her to perform at the presidential office. In 2024 Nymphia also appeared on the Taiwan Pride Float at the New York City Pride March. In 2025 Nymphia performed at the Paris Cultural...

Ep 348 | Jotham Hung Ceramic Artist and Educator on Finding Meaning and Fulfillment in Living a Creative Life TUF Part 3

Talking Taiwan

Jotham Hung is a ceramic artist and educator based in Southern California reflecting on his early experiences with art. Late last year I sat down to speak with Jotham about his evolution and journey to becoming a full-time educator artist and he shared the dark moment that led to his creative process which has resulted in pieces that reflect the themes of deconstruction & reconstruction, damage & repair. If you think you’re not creative, don’t write yourself off. Jotham believes everyone is an artist and has the potential to be creative. This episode is...

Ep 347 | John Enger Cheng on his Creative Process and How Inspiration Finds you Working

Talking Taiwan

Late last year, I sat down to speak with John Enger Cheng about the early roots of his creativity in childhood, his creative process as an artist, what it means to him to be Taiwanese American and how that shows up in his art. We also talked about how he maintains a creative practice and believes that inspiration finds you working. Related Links: In this candid conversation, John talks about his artwork that has been inducted into the permanent collection of Taiwanese Art Treasures Preserved Overseas – The Homecoming Exhibition of the Sun Ten Collection at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine...

More Episodes

It’s time to reveal the Top 5 episodes of Talking Taiwan in 2025. What’s notable about these 5 episodes is that they are among the most popular Talking Taiwan episodes of all time.

But before revealing the Top 5 episodes of 2025, let’s take look back on 2025, which was a busy year for Talking Taiwan! We hosted the inaugural Talking Taiwan Fundraising Gala at the elegant Eichholtz showroom in New York City in April. It was truly a magical memorable night. In April we were also invited to speak at the North American Taiwanese American Women Association’s (NATWA) Annual Conference.

For sometime we’ve been watching what was happening with the Great Recall in Taiwan which ultimately led to 24 legislators being put up for a recall vote on July 26th and another seven on August 23. The world had not seen anything like this happen on a national level in a democracy! And after Felicia interviewed a group of highly dedicated recall campaigners, she learned firsthand about the grassroots mobilization efforts that resulted in over one million signatures being collected in support of the recall vote, and she felt this was a historic moment that Talking Taiwan should be in Taiwan to cover.

Thanks to an anonymous donor who offered to pay for our flights back to Taiwan and others who made generous donations we were able to travel back to Taiwan for a week to cover the first recall in vote on July 26^th. We left shortly after returning from the Taiwanese American Conference- West Coast (TAC-WC) which was held in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was the first time we were invited to speak at TAC-WC about our work. While we were at the conference, we also set up an on-location podcasting studio where we interviewed several of the conference’s speakers. We look forward to releasing those episodes very soon in the New Year.

It's been an extremely eventful year for Talking Taiwan with many ups and downs. Spending only a week in Taiwan to cover the Recall Vote in July, and trying to conduct interviews, and edit and produce them in that time period proved to be a bit unrealistic and we’ll need to pace ourselves better in the future.

It was also crushing to witness the results of the Recall Vote on July 26th with none of the 24 legislators successfully recalled from office. While still recovering from that ordeal in July, we traveled to T.O. Webfest awards in September where Talking Taiwan was nominated in the Best Ensemble Cast category. While we didn’t win, it was our second nomination after being shortlisted at the International Women’s Podcast Awards in 2024 and winning a Golden Crane Award in 2021.

As we go into the 13^th year of Talking Taiwan, I’d like take a moment to especially thank everyone who has supported Talking Taiwan over the years and made a contribution to help fund our trip to return to Taiwan to cover the Great Recall in July.

We also want to thank each and every one of all of our amazing guests for being a part of the Talking Taiwan podcast.

Special thanks to our listeners. We remain committed more than ever to producing content that matters to people who care about Taiwan.

For links to the top 5 episodes of 2025 visit our website TalkingTaiwan.com. Wishing everyone a Happy Healthy New Year 2026! I’m your host Felicia Lin.

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