Ne5w Bloom Magazine
Date: 06/23/2019
By: Brian Hioe

New Bloom editor Brian Hioe interviewed Valerie Soe, the director of Love Boat: Taiwan. Love Boat: Taiwan is a recently released documentary about the Overseas Compatriot Youth Formosa Study Tour, better known as the “Love Boat”, a program which provides a monthlong tour of Taiwan for individuals of Taiwanese or Chinese descent born outside of Taiwan or China from 1967 onward. The “Love Boat” program remains widely known among diasporic Taiwanese even today. 

Soe and Hioe’s conversation, which was conducted by e-mail after a meeting in Taipei, is reproduced below. 

Brian Hioe:  First, for readers that don’t know you, could you first introduce yourself.

Valerie Soe:  Sure. I’m Valerie Soe from San Francisco. I’m a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University. And I’ve been making films since the 80s. Mostly short films. Actually, Love Boat is my first feature film.

BH:  As comes up in the film, you participated in the Love Boat program. When was that and kind of how would you describe it?

VS:  I went on Love Boat when I was in college. That was 1982. It was a long time ago. But I think I went I was 20, so probably about the age that most people will go. That’s about the median age, I would say.    [FULL  STORY]