About the Program
Did you know that Taiwan, Scotland, and Canada share historical ties dating back more than 150 years?
Did you know that many of the missionaries who influenced Taiwan’s modern development were Scottish?
Did you know that George Leslie Mackay also had close ties to Scotland?
Travel back in time to the 19th century with Dr. Mimi Sung of Tainan Theological College. Starting from the history of churches, immigration, and transoceanic migration, we will gain a new understanding of the deep, yet rarely discussed, connections between Scotland, Canada, and Taiwan. Following the migration of people throughout time, let’s explore how the three societies have shaped multicultural identity respectively, and how this can guide us toward the future.
Sung grew up in a small fishing village in Kaohsiung. At age eighteen, she travelled to the other side of the island to study at university in Hualien, learning what it meant to live between mountains and ocean, between home and the unknown. After graduation, she moved to Taipei and worked there for several years.
Sung’s interests in life and human minds eventually led her to Bristol in the United Kingdom, where she completed a master’s degree in education counseling and began to listen more deeply to stories—others’ and her own. Returning to Taiwan in 2012, she continued working and then entered Tainan Theological College and Seminary to pursue a Master of Divinity degree. In 2017, this journey took her farther north, to the University of Edinburgh, where she embarked on doctoral studies and, in 2023, received her PhD.
Moving through many cities in Taiwan and beyond, Sung has remained a traveler across literature, art, psychology, theology, Christian faith, and history—always searching for what ultimately gives meaning to a human life.
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TAIWANfest Vancouver is grateful to be held on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam Indian Band), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish Nation), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh Nation). We acknowledge our privilege to be gathered here, and commit to work with and be respectful to the Indigenous peoples of this land while we engage in meaningful conversations of culture and reconciliation.