Yvonne Welbon, a filmmaker who lived in Taiwan for six years, might have stayed on had it not been for a motorcycle accident that landed her in the hospital for a couple of months six years ago. “That was when I started thinking, Yes, I’ve had a great time, but what am I going to do with my life? Am I Wei Yi-fang [the Mandarin transliteration of her name], an exotic black American in Asia? Or am I Yvonne Welbon from South Shore?”
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When she’d arrived in Taipei in 1984, shortly after collecting a BA in history from Vassar, her Mandarin was spotty. She got a job teaching English for a living and enrolled in an elementary school “to learn the language and the culture from the bottom up.” That was when she discovered that the American term “racism” didn’t have a Chinese counterpart. “I had to explain to my students what it meant,” she recalls. “Sure, some of them were curious about me, about my skin tone and my hair. But all accepted me as an honored guest in their home. I was given a new identity, one unburdened by racial prejudice. Interestingly, Taiwan itself at that time was going through an identity crisis, thrown out of the United Nations, which recognized China. Not being recognized by the international community, however, did not prevent it from achieving.”
Then the accident caused her to look homeward. “I’m, after all, an American, as was my grandma who emigrated here. I must deal with life in America, racism and all.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo / Chip Williams.
