'Born Independent,' Taiwan's Defiant New Generation Is Coming Of Age
Much of Taiwan's older generation sees itself as exiles from China. Younger people, including a metal vocalist-turned-legislator, identify the island as home — a free society independent from China.
It was on a family trip to Japan when Jui-Ting Hsi's patience with her father Kuo-Jen Hsi reached its limit.
The family, on vacation from Taiwan, had filed into a characteristically silent and crowded subway car in Tokyo when the family patriarch began speaking loudly, attracting a few glances from other passengers.
Jui, 26, waited until they exited a station in downtown Tokyo to scold him. "I just told him, 'you have to respect their culture. You don't talk out loud in the metro and that's their culture,' " Jui remembers telling her father. "And he's like: 'Oh, but we're Chinese! We don't care about that.' I said 'No! Chinese!' And then we started to fight and everything."
