My dad hadn’t joined a protest in 50 years.
But on a rainy night in July, he stood beside me on Ketagalan Boulevard — wrapped in a thin yellow raincoat, chanting with thousands in the storm:
“大罷免，大成功!” Succeed, the great recall!
Two days later, we were out again, not for a festival or family reunion, but to vote in a high-stakes recall.
It wasn’t just about voting.
It was a quiet act of resistance.
In 2024, Taiwan’s opposition passed sweeping laws that shifted power away from the executive branch and toward the legislature, a move many saw as eroding democratic checks and balances.
Taiwan’s democracy is still young, and these changes raised urgent fears about authoritarian backsliding and growing Beijing influence.
When protests didn’t work, citizens turned to recall votes.
For many of us, it felt like a last stand for democracy.
All the July 26 recalls failed.
And the silence that followed felt heavier than the rain.
Another round is coming in August. But in that moment, it already felt like something had cracked.
I’m still trying to process what that means.
I came back for my family.
I wanted to be here for my parents as they age, to be present, to reconnect.
Those values — freedom, sovereignty, safety — didn’t just become fragile overnight.
They’d been eroding for a while.
I just wasn’t ready to see it until I came back.
I don’t want to live under authoritarian rule.
I also don’t want to spend the rest of my life fighting it.
And yet… I’m not sure what the alternative is.
This is the quiet grief of many midlife returnees, the ones who leave behind stable lives overseas to come back “home,” only to realise home may no longer exist in the way we hoped.
If I stay, I worry for my safety and theirs.
If I leave, I carry the weight of abandoning them.
There’s no painless path.
But that night, standing beside my dad in the rain,
something still flickered.
He didn’t have to come.
But he did.
Not because he thought they’d win.
But because he knew silence wasn’t an option.
And maybe that’s where hope lives, not in outcomes, but in the act of standing together when it counts.
I still don’t know where “home” is now.
But maybe home isn’t something you return to.
Maybe it’s something you build — in values, in action, in who you choose to stand with when things get hard.
And maybe that’s enough for now.
If you’re watching from afar: please keep your eyes on Taiwan.
What happens here matters — not just for us, but for anyone who believes democracy is worth defending.
And if you’ve ever wrestled with the tension between home and truth, between love and freedom, I’d love to hear your story too.
👉 I’ve linked an article on the Great Recall here, if you’d like to learn more.
