2022 Taiwan Pride: A return to form
On October 29, the 2022 Taiwan Pride parade cemented the island’s reputation as the LGBTQ+ rights mecca of East Asia.
Tens of thousands joined the circular processions and marched from Taipei City Hall Plaza through one of the busiest downtown areas near the famed Taipei World Trade Center.
‘Determined to be seen,’ rain or shine
The last full-scale Pride parades to take place in Taiwan were in 2020. Due to the effects of COVID-19, Taiwan Pride was scaled down in 2021: mainly celebrated online with events held in smaller venues, market booths set up across Taipei, and no physical march.
Organizers estimate that over 120,000 people attended the Taiwan Pride this year after it attracted close to 200,000 participants in 2019 and 130,000 in 2020.
This year’s Pride was a return to form for Taiwan as its borders opened to visitors earlier in October.
The island usually sees plenty of visitors- mostly from neighboring Asian countries- for Pride, and its borders having been opened only several weeks beforehand probably contributed to the lower turnout than in previous years.
“I decided to come back for Pride as soon as the quarantine was lifted,” Chunlang Chen shared in an interview with Bloomberg.
Chen is an accountant who is originally from Taiwan and is now living in San Diego. He attended the march with a group of friends from California, some of whom were attending Taipei Pride for the first time.
It was a rainy Saturday afternoon. Some brave souls came out topless or only in their underwear, armed with a colorful mix of umbrellas to go with so many rainbow masks, flags, and face paintings.
“The fact that you have so many people coming out rain or shine, I think that even brings out the spirit of the people. We are determined to be seen,” Chen said over the background music of Queen’s I Want to Break Free.
‘An Unlimited Future’: The 20th Taiwan Pride
Hsiao Pai, a spokesperson for the event’s organizer the Taiwan Rainbow Civil Action Association, told news outfit CNA that this year’s theme, “An Unlimited Future,” was aimed at demonstrating sexual liberation, a cause advocated by the association over the past two decades.
The event hoped “to build a Taiwanese society where gender, sexual orientation, and relationships are celebrated through people’s lives and where every individual can live authentically to realize their potential,” the association said in a statement.
This year’s Pride is Taiwan’s 20th. It had come a long way from the inaugural parade two decades ago when organizers offered participants masks in case they wanted to conceal their identity.
Now the island has become an important meeting point for the region’s LGBTQ+ rights groups, scholars, and politicians.
Liting Tan, originally from Singapore and also known as drag king Uncle Southside, told CNA: “I think that Taiwan gives us hope. In Singapore, a lot of the times gay Pride has been suppressed because LGBT+ values are not Asian values.”