‘Love Boat’ summer camps in Taiwan for overseas Chinese recalled in documentary now showing
- ‘They laughed in the right places’ says filmmaker Valerie Soe of audience at premiere in California of her documentary Love Boat: Taiwan
- Programme to introduce young Chinese in North America to Taiwan that began in 1967 earned its nickname for the romances it spawned
“When my editor and I were cutting the film, it was hard to tell how it would flow and you just hoped to get the pacing right,” Soe explains from San Francisco, where she is based. “But I liked the audience reaction to the film. They laughed in the right places, and some places were tearful.”
“Some people in the audience had gone on the trip before and after the screening, one couple came up to me and told me they had met on the Taiwan trip in 1979 and got married afterwards,” she adds.
The 63-minute documentary explores the history of the programme, which was initiated by the Kuomintang government to encourage overseas Chinese in North America to return to Taiwan to study, work, and promote the self-ruled Chinese island politically on the world stage.
In reality, it was an opportunity for up to 1,000 people aged 18 to 23 to party, hook up and, in some cases, meet their future spouses – which is how the programme became nicknamed the “Love Boat” after the 1970s romantic comedy TV show.