For participants aged 18 to 23, the Overseas Compatriot Youth Formosa Study Tour had a far more romantic nickname. Dubbed the “Love Boat” in honour of the 1970s TV sitcom, it offered Chinese-Americans and Chinese-Canadians a chance to learn more about their heritage in Taiwan for six weeks in the summer. In its heyday, hundreds of young people signed up, got to know each other, and, in some cases, later tied the knot. There was culture but also memorable drunken revelry. Despite its nautical nickname, there was never an actual cruise ship involved. How this US writer’s Hong Kong love story got its ‘Ferry Tale’ ending Valerie Soe remembers it being hot during her 1982 trip. The island was still under martial law (until 1987) and locals got around Taipei on scooters because the subway had not yet been built. “I’d see five people on a scooter – an entire family, and no helmets, either,” recalls Soe, who was then studying at University of California, Los Angeles. Now 57, Soe had been keen to learn more about her roots, having grown up in Pinole, a mostly Caucasian suburb 30 minutes outside San Francisco. “I didn’t speak any Mandarin as I am fourth-generation Chinese-American and my family spoke Toisan, a dialect [from China’s southern Guangdong province] that would have been completely useless in Taiwan,” she says. The six-week trip involved language classes in the mornings, followed by cultural activities such as calligraphy, ink painting, dancing, martial arts, learning Chinese musical instruments, and sightseeing around Taipei and southern Taiwan. It cost participants only US$400 and the price of an air ticket. Everything else was taken care of – room and board, meals, activities and outings. (Full disclosure: I joined the 1991 trip.) The “study tours” started in 1967 with a handful of students, but the Taiwanese government later ramped up the programme, particularly after 1971 when Taiwan – otherwise known as the Republic of China – was ousted from the United Nations in favour of the communist-ruled People’s Republic of China. During its peak in the 1990s and early 2000s, the “Love Boat” attracted as many as 800 students each summer. The government hoped that through these trips, young overseas Chinese would grow up to support Taiwan, whether by returning to live and work on the island, or somehow politically. How Chinese-American found road to redemption after 21 years in jail Soe became one such person. She had such a good time on the trip that she considered making a documentary about it in the late 1990s, but the plan was delayed when her two children came along in 2000 and 2003. It wasn’t until 2014 that the San Francisco State University Asian American Studies professor finally began researching the documentary, and started filming the following year. Then in the summer of 2016, she took her family to Taiwan for a similar trip to the one she had made 30 years earlier. She also interviewed people for the film who had gone on the trip and were now living in Taiwan, as well as government officials involved in the programme. Now editing the documentary, Soe is submitting Love Boat: Taiwan to film festivals around the world and hopes to release it by the end of this year. “It’s such a huge phenomenon among Taiwanese-Americans,” she says. While researching the documentary, Soe found the study tour mirrored Taiwan’s history. The nationalist Kuomintang party established the Republic of China on Taiwan in 1949 after losing the civil war against the communists and fleeing mainland China. When it started the programme in 1967, the trip had been very much focused on Chinese culture. After losing the presidential election for the first time in 2000, the incoming pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party tweaked the programme to focus more on Taiwanese culture, including that of the island’s indigenous people. “The history is so interesting because there were so many changes,” Soe observes. “It’s hard to get all this information into a 70-minute to 90-minute movie.” Soe had no problem tracking down people to interview, however. She received responses from alumnae who saw the crowding page she set up to raise money for the documentary. She contacted Pierre Wuu, who established the Study Tour Alumnae Association in the mid-1990s, and set up a huge database of people who had been on the trip. Now 49, Wuu joined the 1991 trip. At the time, he was living in Toledo, Ohio, a US state with a small Asian population. “I had never hung out with that many Asians at one time. I had a great time,” he says, adding that he applied to be an overseas counsellor for the programme three years later. For Wuu, networking with other Chinese from all over North America was so fascinating that, in 1994, he quit his job in Chicago and moved to Los Angeles – which has a larger Asian population – to do more Asia-related work and start up the alumnae association. By organising events such as ski trips and reunions, he was able to reach even more alumnae, who he kept in contact with through a newsletter. Using Wuu’s database, Soe was able to connect with Victor Wong, who is now in his 70s and living in Toronto. Wong was among the first cohort on the inaugural 1967 study tour. He enjoyed it so much he enrolled his children decades later. One year on: adopted girl, reunited with birth parents on a Hangzhou bridge Soe also discovered that several famous people went on the trip. They included author, restaurateur and TV personality Eddie Huang, who wrote about his impressions of the Love Boat trip in his book, Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir ; US Congresswoman Judy Chu; Justin Tan, who produces and stars in Buzzfeed videos; actor Garrett Wang, who played Ensign Harry Kim in Star Trek: Voyager ; and singer Wang Leehom. “When Wang went, he sang a song for the talent show and won,” says Soe, adding that it was a cover of the patriotic song Descendants of the Dragon , written by Taiwanese singer-songwriter Hou Dejian. “The government was trying to make Taiwan as appealing as possible,” Soe says. “They were selling Taiwan as a fabulous place with wonderful folks and food. The trip goes into your consciousness. It was a brilliant, insidious way to get people into Taiwan.” Many of those on the trip ignored a 10pm curfew and stayed off campus into the wee hours, visiting night markets, clubs and karaoke lounges. There were even reported instances of wildly drunken behaviour and unplanned pregnancies that raised questions as to why the government was subsidising such trips. Because of the political winds of change since 2000, the tour has been modified considerably, with budget cuts and far fewer participants, now aged 12 to 20. Taiwan-based Dr Jeanne Li, tour organiser as head of the China Youth Corps, insisted the trips were (and still are) for young Chinese-Americans to learn about Taiwan and Chinese culture. “It should not be called the ‘Love Boat’,” she told Soe. Nevertheless, numerous couples found romance on the trips. Mehgan Yen and Evan Hung, who were then 17 and 19 respectively, met on their first day through a mutual friend, and were together every day for the entire six weeks. Hung was smitten, but too timid to make a move. “She’s beautiful and she has an energy there that drew me to her kindness,” he says, speaking from Denver, Colorado. How pricey Hong Kong ties young couples’ wedding plans in knots However, when the tour was over, they went their separate ways – Yen back to San Gabriel Valley in California, and Hung to Yardley, Pennsylvania. They didn’t speak to each other again until Hung visited his parents in Taipei seven years later and discovered through a mutual friend that Yen had returned to the island for work. Their reunion was serendipitous. Another two years passed before they started dating, long-distance, then Yen moved to Denver, Colorado to be with Hung at Christmas 2016. They got married late last year, with a reception in Taipei filmed by Soe. For Yen, the Love Boat was unforgettable. “I went before I went to college, so I got to experience for the first time what it was like to live in a dorm, be in another country, go out without my parents, go to clubs before I was 21 years old,” she says. On their first night, they joined others and sneaked off campus, through a basement window, to go clubbing, she explains. The next day they realised how dangerous their escape had been – having emerged from the basement next to a highway – but it left an indelible, warm and funny memory. It is these experiences that people bonded over, says Wuu, who knows of about 10 other Love Boat couples who later got married. “Ask 100 random alumnae if they are still in touch with people [who] they went on the trip with and they will say, ‘absolutely’ – 20 to 30 years later. These connections have a bigger impact on people. I don’t think the Taiwan government thought about that.”