Southeast Asian artists didn’t just take trophies. Their wins hint at migrant communities’ growing presence in Taiwan — moving from the margins into the spotlight.

Author: Lucyna Szczykutowicz

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The echo of the Golden Bell Awards still celebrates the artistic genius in Taiwanese radio and television — and reflects social changes taking place on the island of 23 million.

Often described as Taiwan’s equivalent of the Emmys, the Golden Bell Awards honour the most outstanding productions and performances among hundreds of entries across Taiwan’s radio and television industries. However, the recent ceremony did more than celebrate artistic achievements. It brought overdue attention to a long-neglected social issue: how Southeast Asian communities are seen — and too often reduced — within Taiwan’s cultural imagination.

Two breakthroughs stood out. Liên Bỉnh Phát became the first Vietnamese, and the first nominee from a Southeast Asian country, to win Best Male Lead in a Television Series, one of the ceremony’s major acting honours. And later in the programme, another Southeast Asian performer, Thai national Emmy Huang, continued this breakthrough.

Together, their recognition suggests a shift in visibility for Southeast Asian communities in Taiwan, who are often perceived within society as low-skilled migrant workers — and a shift in the kinds of stories Taiwan’s mainstream industry is finally willing to put on its biggest stage.

What’s Golden Bell Awards about

The 2025 Golden Bell Awards were presented across three ceremonies between October 17 and 18: one for radio broadcasting and two for television. Hosted annually since 1965, they remain one of the three major entertainment and cultural awards presented in Taiwan, along with Golden Melody Awards for music, and Golden Horse Awards for films. Golden Bell notably awards the best of the best of the local radio and TV industry across dozens of categories spanning from program awards, to individual ones.

What might seem like just another night of industry celebration is, for viewers, a chance to see how entertainment echoes subtle shifts — not only in Taiwan’s television and pop culture, but also in its politics and society.

Breakthrough on the drama stage

History was made on the second night of the awards. Liên Bỉnh Phát won Best Male Lead in a Television Series, becoming not only the first Vietnamese actor to do so, but the first Southeast Asian ever to be nominated. The award matters, but the role matters just as much.

Liên was recognized for his performance in the PTS co-produced crime-medical drama The Outlaw Doctor. He plays Fan Wen-ning, a successful Vietnamese plastic surgeon forced to give up his career and move to Taiwan to cover his mother’s hospital bills. Without a work visa or legal status, Fan takes on whatever jobs he can find — hospital cleaner, underground doctor, anything to ease his mother’s pain — after she is injured while working as a migrant carer in Taiwan.

A similar milestone signalizing the shift in the industry came at the end of last year, when Wanlop Rungkumjad earned a Best Leading Actor nomination at the 61st Golden Horse Awards. He was the first ever Thai national to receive the nomination in such a major category. Standing alongside top Taiwanese actors like Chang Chen and Jason Jieh-wen King, Rungkumjad’s nomination came from his role in the Taiwan co-produced film Mongrel. For his performance Rungkumjad has already claimed Best Actor at the 27th Taipei Film Festival in July of this year — the first Thai to do so. In Mongrel, Rungkumjad portrays Oom, an undocumented migrant caregiver navigating a harsh and exploitative system.

Put simply: these wins and nominations are not only about individual performances. They highlight a changing mainstream willingness to centre Southeast Asian characters as full protagonists — rather than background figures defined solely by labour.

Why these roles resonate in Taiwan

As of the end of September of 2025, Taiwan’s foreign residents have surpassed a million mark — at least four-fifth of them are migrant laborers coming from four Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand. In any major Taiwanese city, it’s common to see an elderly Taiwanese person accompanied by a Southeast Asian caretaker. Taiwan belongs to one of those unfortunate nations facing the issue of an aging society – young people continue to leave, while the elderly population grows. As a result, roughly one-third of the island’s migrant laborers, especially women, now work in elder care.

Generally speaking, stories such as that of Fan or Oom don’t come as surprising. News reports regularly surface about migrant workers who were once trained medical professionals in their home countries, now performing illegal medical procedures in Taiwan. This is not to justify or normalize such practices, but to understand the desperation and critical situations that lead people to resort to such actions.

But let’s also notice how we barely pause to ask why Fan’s mother was in Taiwan to begin with. It is because anyone familiar with Taiwanese society already knows the answer.

From stereotypes to representation

The Outlaw Doctor doesn’t just acknowledge those migrant workers – it gives them a voice. It shows them as people with families, ambitions, and dignity. Most importantly, it offers an unapologetic critique of the prejudice and hardship they face while living in the shadows of Taiwanese society.

A scandal erupted in recent years after the French supermarket chain Carrefour aired a commercial starring a Taiwanese comedian A-Han. The ad featured A-Han performing as his internet persona, 'Ruan Yuejiao': a Vietnamese spouse living in Taiwan, known for her heavy accent and stereotypical behavior. The situation caused an upheaval among the Vietnamese communities living in Taiwan.

Racist attitudes as such are difficult to address in Taiwan, as they usually hide behind seemingly harmless microagressions and media-reinforced stereotypes, not quite falling into the model of racism as understood in the West. For one instance, we see discriminatory terms like ‘Vietnamese Hottie’ (越南妹/越南辣妹) and ‘Foreign Bride’ (外籍新娘) being used by many Taiwanese people in their everyday language, often without even realizing their harmful connotations. To this day it remains a real and largely overlooked social problem.

In that context, Liên’s success at a major Taiwanese entertainment event can be read as a sign that this society may be starting to address these issues more openly — through the kinds of roles it writes, funds, and rewards.

A second breakthrough: Emmy Huang

That hope surely grew stronger this year. At the Golden Bell Awards, another Southeast Asian performer, a Thai national Emmy Huang continued this breakthrough. She won Best New Talent for her role in the acclaimed TV film Crown Shyness, for which she was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

Her character, Zaizai, is a migrant worker, but that is not the entire story. The film gives her agency and depth. She is portrayed as a devoted mother to a daughter back in Thailand, and a supportive partner to her Taiwanese girlfriend, who gets caught up in a cross-generational family conflict. But most importantly, Zaizai is her own person, someone fully able to stand up for herself and take care of her own well-being and safety.

It stands out how Zaizai’s character is portrayed and received. She is seen not just as an undocumented worker, but as a possible “new resident”, a full member of Taiwanese society. Recognition of Huang’s performance signals a significant step forward for Taiwan’s entertainment industry.

Zaizai’s character once again demonstrates an increasing awareness of the island nation’s multinational and multiethnic reality, brought to the general audience without turning a blind eye to the social challenges that these communities continue to face.

Author’s bio

Lucyna Szczykutowicz is a doctoral researcher in Taiwanese cinema, culture, languages, and literature at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU).

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