When Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho was growing up in Vancouver during the early 1980s, there was no term to describe kids like her. Her parents were living and working in Taiwan. Meanwhile, Ho was living in a nice house in Dunbar with four older, school-age siblings.
In her new family memoir, The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street (Douglas & McIntyre), the North Vancouver author shares what it was like keeping this secret from her teachers and classmates. Ho recalls forging one parent’s signature on report cards—only to be advised by another astronaut child that the ruse is more convincing with a fountain pen. Ho also became adept at offering excuses for why her folks had to skip parent-teacher meetings.
“There’s a deflection that we’ve all mastered,” Ho tells the Toronto Spark over Zoom. “Lying, by the way, is a huge tool in the astronaut kid’s arsenal.”
She describes The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street as a “reclamation project” because for many years, she felt that shouldn’t discuss her upbringing in public. Now, Ho hopes that by sharing her story, she can help today’s astronaut kids—or parachute kids, as they’re sometimes called—their parents, and their community.
“Interestingly, several teachers have reached out,” the author states. “They want to know how to better support astronaut kids who are in their schools right now. So, I do think it’s resonating.”
Her honest, reflective, and emotional page-turner has risen near the top of the B.C. Bestseller List. Ho writes candidly about painful challenges that she faced as a teenager, including intense feelings of displacement and awkward meeting with her parents visiting from Taiwan. But she also thinks that being an astronaut kid offered certain pluses, such as learning how to solve problems and becoming more self-reliant.
“I don’t think that any experience is wasted if you reflect on it,” Ho states.
Astronaut Children touches on Taiwanese isolation
Ho was born in Chutong (also known as Zhudong or Jhudong) in Taiwan’s Hsinchu County in 1971. That was the same year that the United Nations passed a resolution recognizing the People’s Republic of China as the only legitimate representative of China. This vote confined Taiwan—a country with its own constitution, currency, health-care system, passports, and flag—to the diplomatic sidelines.
Then in 1979, the United States extended diplomatic recognition to Beijing, thereby accepting the One China policy. The People’s Republic of China insists that Taiwan is a long-lost province of China even though the Communist regime has never ruled island nation. Also known as the Republic of China, Taiwan was a colony of Japan from 1895 until the end of the Second World War.
Ho writes in her book that the deteriorating diplomatic status of Taiwan in the 1970s contributed to her parents’ decision to immigrate to the West. They first moved to Costa Rica, which had diplomatic relations with Taiwan, before gaining admission to Canada.
However, her parents had a tough time after moving to Vancouver. Her father had been practising medicine as a surgeon for more than 20 years in Taiwan before immigrating. But the College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C. didn’t recognize his credentials so he couldn’t get a medical licence here. Ho recalls that the college told her dad that it could only grant permission for him to go back to university as a third-year medical student.
“It was really insulting,” she says.
It also wasn’t practical for him to go back to university. Her father was the breadwinner for five children, plus his wife was having difficulty adjusting to Canada. According to Ho, her mom had an extroverted, warm personality, but she couldn’t communicate easily with Canadians because of her limited English.
“Her personality changed when she lived here,” Ho says. “I think she was completely isolated. When she was talking to neighbours, for example, she was timid.
“She kind of hid behind us to interpret for her,” the author continues. “She would truncate conversations and run back into the house.”
A strange dissonance inside
In the end, her parents made the difficult decision to return to Taiwan so her father could revive his medical career and her mom could resume working as administrator of their private hospital.
Her parents discouraged their children from speaking about their unsupervised domestic situation in Vancouver for fear of judgement from the community. In addition, they felt that their children’s teachers wouldn’t understand why they were living in Dunbar unsupervised. And that could lead to trouble.
“Your parents tell you, ‘You’re very lucky. We’re working hard for you in Taiwan. We don’t take weekends. We don’t rest. We’re working for you. You’re privileged to live in a nice house in a safe neighbourhood,’ ” Ho says. “It was always this strange dissonance inside. Am I privileged or am I impoverished? I could never reconcile those feelings.”
She notes that people looking at her childhood through a well-meaning Western lens have asked how her parents could have possibly left their children to fend for themselves.
“I think as a 12-year-old, I would have agreed,” Ho acknowledges. “But now, I think, is poverty such a wonderful thing?…
“So, I think they did the best they could,” she continues. “They knew that they could just go back to Taiwan, resume this extremely flourishing practice, and help us out, right? Going to university was not an issue. It was expected of us. Tuition was never an issue because they paid for it. They wanted our futures to be brighter.”
Astronaut experience recorded in journals
Ho’s early language challenges in Canada have parallels with what her parents experienced in Taiwan. They were both born under Japanese colonization, which meant they spoke Japanese in school. Ho’s father was Hakka and her mother was Hoklo—the two major pioneering Taiwanese communities with Chinese ancestry. The Hakka were more rural, speaking their Hakka language in agricultural communities. The Hoklo were often urban dwellers, speaking Taiwanese Hokkien.
Then, her parents had to switch to become Mandarin speakers in school after Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Forces asserted control over Taiwan.
In Ho’s case, she was speaking Mandarin in school in Taiwan before moving to Canada. She then had to learn English in a hurry to survive in school before eventually becoming a writer.
Ho worked on her book for about eight years but she reveals that it has been in the back of her mind for most of her life. She considered different genres, including fiction and even mystery, before deciding that it needed to be a memoir. Fortunately, she kept many journals and diaries, which she could revisit as she was drafting different chapters.
Nowadays, there are more satellite families and astronaut kids living in cities such as Vancouver and Toronto, but it’s rarely discussed in the open. This is the case even though these family members are sometimes separated due to public policies around the recognition of foreign credentials or the prevalence of linguistic or accent discrimination.
Yet in contrast to the early 1980s when there was little understanding of this issue, there’s a great deal more curiosity about astronaut kids.
“My childhood was a long time ago,” Ho concedes. “I don’t know that my book would have been as well-received or even published a bunch of years ago.”
Though it took a long time to write, she’s thrilled that The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street is making such an impression on educators, parents, and other authors.
To learn more about Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho and The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street, visit her website. It includes contact information for anyone interested in inviting her to speak at schools, book clubs, or public events. Purchase the book through the Douglas & McIntyre website or at local bookstores. The Toronto Spark is on Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
