There are approximately 378,600 Taiwanese immigrants in the United States, with 3 percent living in the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV metropolitan area. Within the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, the top three counties of residence among Taiwanese-born immigrants as a percentage of the total county foreign-born population are: Montgomery County, Maryland (1.6%); Fairfax County, Virginia (1.2%) and Arlington County, Virginia (1.2%). More than half (59%) of Taiwanese immigrants in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area arrived in the United States between 1960 and 1989, with a median year of arrival of 1987. This is notably earlier than the overall median year of immigration of 2000 among all other immigrants in the area. Taiwanese immigrants in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area are highly educated, with over half (57%) holding a master's, professional, or doctoral degree.
Dr. Huwy-min Liu was born and raised in Taiwan, where she completed her primary and secondary education. Before moving to the United States in 2007 to complete her PhD, she earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from universities in Taiwan and Hong Kong. After receiving her PhD from Boston University in 2015, Dr. Liu spent four years in Hong Kong as a professor before moving to George Mason University in 2019. As an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at George Mason University, she has focused on her anthropology studies and wrote the book, Governing Death, Making Persons: The New Chinese Way of Death. Dr. Liu hopes to “pass [on] my passion toward anthropology to more American students” and “to help more people know about anthropology … a key means to help us understand our social world.”