2017-02-14 Interview with Max Kalkhof

How was your weekend? Did you go for this, you said you have to spend something, and you were going to do...

Yeah, the National Travel Card. I went to Tamsui, and found that all the public servant colleagues, the participation offices, all they said about the difficulties of using this card was true. I ran into all those difficulties myself.

What kind of difficulties?

For example, back when the National Travel Card was first introduced, there were so‑called traveling areas, areas of interest, and then you can only spend the National Travel Card around those areas to promote tourism.

The regions have changed. In Tamsui, there is now a street that’s actually a main tourist street, but it’s not part of the original tourist zone, so you can’t actually spend money there. The original zone has moved a little bit, so I had to go to the other side of the zone, which means that there’s not a lot of updates about the areas worthy of tourism, so to speak.

As soon as I bring out the card, the person, the staff, at the counter said, "Oh, you have to buy more than NT500 in order to use that card, which probably they wouldn’t say to any other tourist with any other card. Then I asked a little bit about whether they are a favorite destination of National Travel Card usage, and she said, "Yes."

I bought some cleaning powder and quite a few drinks, tea, to make it up to 500. It’s questionable whether this actually promotes tourism.

That’s my weekend report. How’s yours?

Quite fine, actually. Too cold. Now it’s getting warmer. I’m very happy about that. As to your career, can you tell me how you got in touch with all this...Oh, just one thing I forgot. I told you this article’s going to be for "WIRED Germany," but probably it’s going to be for someone else. Do you know Die Zeit?

Yeah.

It’s probably going to be for Die Zeit, so it’s going to be....

Even more mainstream.

...a broader readership than WIRED. Are you fine with that?

Of course. We’re posting the transcripts on the Internet. [laughs]

Can you tell me how you got in touch in the first place with all this IT stuff? How did you get in touch with hacking, software programming, and this stuff? At what age, and how, and why?

It started when I was eight. I was already very much into mathematics. I saw some books from, probably, my uncles that describes this programming language called BASIC. I don’t have a computer at that time. It was the year of personal computer, around ’88. ’89.

You were born in 1980, right?

’81. The thing is that not many people at the time have personal computers. It’s expensive. They were just introduced basically in Taiwan. A lot of them are manufactured in Taiwan as IBM PC clones, as they are called. There’s a lot of hobbyists interested at the time, but not that mainstream. I didn’t have access to one.

I do have access to programming books, so I just took a piece of paper and drew some keyboard, and started programming by writing the responses that according to the book the computer will respond. I would write CLS and enter, and then click those paper keys and then erase the screen because that’s what CLS does in BASIC, and so basically it simulates a computer.

I think that’s really my introduction to hacking, is just seeing it as a machine that does mathematics, and not something that’s dependent on any particular hardware. It’s the way they’re thinking.

You were using a computer to do this.

No, it’s just paper.

Just paper?

Yeah. Pencil and paper.

I see.

Later on I would learn that Richard Stallman learned computing the same way, without access to a computer, with pencil and paper. I really do think that it teaches programming in a way that brings out the imagination, instead of being limited by the then very limited hardware.

Later on after doing this for quite a while, my parents decided to anyway buy me a computer, a personal computer. I started programming, and of course finding a lot of limitations in the hardware. Still it behaves much as I had predicted. I used computer as basically just a very quick calculator, and to help me learn more advanced mathematics without having to write a lot of formula, and then also teach my younger brother mathematics.

I wrote a graphics program that teaches fractions, again basically that teaches fractions basically for my younger brother who was four at the time.

Which language did you start to learn first?

BASIC, because that’s built in.

BASIC. You were eight years old?

Yeah. And then I learnt also Logo which is not quite a general purpose programming language, but a very good educational language. Those are the two main languages that I learnt. Then later on I would learn Perl around 13 or 14, and switched to that as my permanent language.

When did you have your first own computer, personal computer?

Around maybe the second semester when I was eight. At most just six months, maybe less...

...have your own.

...between learning programming and having a personal computer. They both happened when I was eight.

When did you realize that there is something like a hacking scene, a hacking culture, and when did you get attached with this scene or with this culture?

With the community?

Yeah. With the community.

I read about it I think first when I was in Germany actually. I stay in Germany for a year, and I was 11 at the time. At the time there was already...

Is that when you went there?

Basically I spent the year when I was 11 there, and went back when I was 12. During my time in Germany, there’s already a culture around the Saarbrücken University where people would share information about personal computers and so on. Personal computers were already quite advanced at the time.

My dad of course being a PhD student, had access to the university network and so on. The World Wide Web wasn’t implemented back then, because it was ’92. Tim Berners‑Lee was still busily inventing the World Wide Web. I didn’t have this idea of a web‑based hacking culture. Not yet.

It’s more of personal computer hardware, this kind of hacking. I wasn’t very much into it. I was just aware of its existence. I went into the local bulletin board systems team when I was back in Taiwan, and that was in ’93. I bought them up then. I think it was 1,200 baud. That was just out.

1,200 what?

Baud. B‑A‑U‑D. It was considered fast at the time, and then 2,400 for a while, and then 56k. That was the three modems I owned. Then everybody switched to ADSL. I started when modem become available, but not the general World Wide Web. I bought a modem mostly to dial into the existing bulletin board systems set up on people’s homes.

People would dedicate one phone line to host a local bulletin board system for their neighbors to dial in and share software, and share posts, and so on. I learned about the UUCP network, which is a pre‑Internet Internet, that way, in the bulletin board systems.

That gave me access to the Jargon File and to Eric Raymond’s work, and to the early discussions around object‑oriented programming, which happens mostly on Usenet groups. Then I started reading Usenet.

By late ’93 I was given a dial‑up to Internet via the National Taiwan University network. Still using the same modem, I’m now, then, able to dial into the Internet.

Then I started learning the usual tools, Archie, Finger, FTP, things like that. Then, when the World Wide Web became available, I switched to the World Wide Web. Before that I was also into Gopher for a while.

That was about...?

’94.

If I remember it right, you went to Germany because your dad pursued a PhD in what?

In politics.

Political science?

Yeah, studying...

At Saarbrücken. You lived in Saarbrücken too?

In Dudweiler.

Which is close to Saarbrücken?

Yeah, it’s a satellite city.

You said you realized that there was something like a scene or subculture around hacking when you were there.

Around hardware hacking,

How did that happen? Did you read some magazines? Did you see it on TV, or did you hear people talking about it?

Right, because at the living room, which is my father’s main work field of study, he would interview the exiles, the people who fled Beijing after the Tiananmen protest. That was his subject of his PhD thesis, the dynamics of student movement in Tiananmen.

It was the year...?

It was that year.

Tiananmen was in ’89?

Yeah, and people fled to Europe around ’90 or ’91. It was this rescue.

Your dad wrote his thesis in ’91?

’92. He went to Germany one year before me.

Around ’91?

Around ’91, and then I went there around ’92. He’s already established a network of friends, both German friends, and also fellow Tiananmen protesters. Many of them...

For example?

For example? Personally, I’m more acquainted with, say, @FengCongde’s work . There’s some extended network where they communicated over this thing that I was aware of, but haven’t used, myself. Like Internet, obviously, [laughs] but that I haven’t accessed at the time.

Also, because many of those are students, they were university students during the protest, so they still pursue their original degrees in mathematics, and science, and so on.

They’re also part of this research network. They also share the lack of information access when they were pursuing their studies in China, and then the wealth of access that’s just booming via their university networks.

It’s a common thread of discussion, but I can’t pinpoint which sentence brought me aware that there is a personal computing thing.

It was the discussions between your dad and...

And his research subjects.

...and his research subjects that made you aware that there’s something like a world of hacking?

That’s right.

Your dad wrote his thesis on the dynamics of student movements?

In Tiananmen.

He was focusing on those Chinese people and students who fled to Europe?

That’s what he has immediate access to, but also via correspondence, I’m sure.

Is he teaching today, still, in Taiwan?

No, he was editor in a national newspaper when he started his PhD study. Then, after completing, he went back to the press, still working as a deputy editor‑in‑chief for many years, and then retired.

He retired?

Right, and then ran some community college for a while.

Which was the magazine?

The newspaper was called "China Times."

"Zhōngguó Shíbào"?

That’s right.

Is he still attached today with some of his German colleagues, or friends, or...?

Yeah, sure, we went back to Saarbrücken a few years ago and visited.

Frequently, or just once or twice?

Just once, but we corresponded with my great primary school teacher, Frau Wagner, and his professor’s widow, and so on. Frau Domas.

Tell me about Frau Wagner. You mentioned her last time, too.

I have fond memories. [laughs] I was stationed in this Dudweiler school at the first grade because, although technically I’m like fifth grade, but my German was so bad that there’s no way that I could just enroll...

You didn’t speak German at all, right?

I didn’t speak German at all, and not English, either. In any case, I was given preferential treatment back in Taiwan because my mathematics was really, really good.

In the primary schcool system they didn’t put any emphasis on this kind of super specialties. They work, instead, on the social dynamics of students, and the wellbeing of people’s dignity, and things like that. Behaving like adults, that’s the main educational agenda, which I felt, at that time, that the Taiwanese education is seriously lacking, by the way.

I have fond memories because Frau Wagner saw me not as someone who need to specialize on anything, but to ensure my well-being, that I fit in, and well adapted, bring some interesting friendships, had something to share, and so on, with the classmates.

That’s the first teacher who ran the schools this way, which is pretty standard in German education, but not as standard in Taiwanese education at the time.

She was the principal of the school or just your...?

No, just my class.

Class teacher. Teaching anything?

Other than sports and so on, there’s just one in general.

She was teaching every subject.

Most of things. Especially the basic mathematics, and German, and things like that. History, I think. In any case, she was responsible for most of the class.

Was it hard to go to a German school and to live in Germany out in a small place? I’ve never heard of this place.

It used to be a coal mining town, I think. Then it ran dry for some reason. I had many classmates whose families were originally miners or working in the other related fields and so on.

I expected it to be hard, but it was actually much easier than I thought. First, I don’t really need a lot of vocabularies to get around.

Why is that?

Because people read those foreign languages and those expressions quite accurately. I thought that customs would be different, about the language to be different and so on. The kids behave like adults.

That’s what I expected my fellow classmates to do when I was in Taiwan. It was like I was the only adult in a classroom of kids during the first few years of my primary school in Taiwan. In Germany, it’s like...

In terms of body language or in terms of...?

Yeah, in terms of reasonableness. In terms of emotional intelligence. In terms of being able to express myself properly and things like that. It’s like the social protocol is actually viable for me, and the vocabulary just pick up from there.

There’s not much psychological adjustments that I need to make.

Really? [laughs]

Yeah. I learned bicycling, and swimming, and everything in Germany.

Culture‑wise, was there something that made you feel, "Ooh, I don’t like this. I don’t want to be here?" [laughs]

Food. The food was terrible.

No, not really terrible, but it could be better.

For example, what was there that you did not like?

For example, there’s a lot of interesting memories, like when I was re‑diagnosed with this heart problem that need surgery in a few years, otherwise I’ll probably die according to the doctor.

I went to Heidelberg, I think. Somewhere with a larger hospital.

Heidelberg, there’s a big one.

Right, to have this microsurgery to diagnose the actual conditions of the heart. Then I woke up from the anesthesia, and was served cold bread and wurst, something like that. I was like, "I really miss the food they have in Taiwan hospitals?" [laughs]

I think that it’s the temperature. It’s not the food. In Taiwan, we would probably serve a hot porridge or something like that. I think it’s the temperature that meant the most.

Warm dishes?

Yeah, warm dishes and so on, in any case. Other than that, I liked that they are being pünktlich, being punctual with time. I like being tidy with language and with social norms. I really liked the pronunciation system where you get to speak exactly as the alphabet said.

I kept having this problem with English. Generally as a programmer, I like rules. I like breaking rules, but having rules in the beginning was the precondition. In German culture, there’s a lot of those worlds of rules.

What is it with your heart that you just mentioned?

It’s VSD. It’s this congenital condition, ventricular septal defect.

I’ve never heard of it. What is it?

Basically, there’s two halves of the heart, and there’s a hole between the two halves in my case, so that blood containing CO₂ will remix with blood containing O₂.

Does it affect your health, or?

Yeah, of course. That means that I am usually at a...My body was in this condition like I was in very high altitude, with half as much O₂ in the blood in the worst conditions.

You’re walking on mountains all the time, basically.

That’s right. I can’t get angry. I can’t get upset, because otherwise the brain runs out of oxygen, and my face would turn purple and I would faint. I was born with that condition. It gradually healed around four or five, but then it reoccurred when I was in Germany.

It was so serious that you had to be treated in the hospital?

Yeah, to be treated. Then I decided to go back to Taiwan to my original doctors.

That was one of the reasons you went back?

That was one of the primary reasons, yes.

What happened exactly when you were in Germany? What made you...?

I enrolled into a fußball club. As a precondition, I had to go through this basic examination of my health. The doctor listened to my heartbeat and said there was a serious problem. "You probably want to find a big hospital."

Then he sent you over to Heidelberg?

Yeah.

You wanted to join the local soccer club?

Yeah. Or maybe Trier. I forgot the exact city name.

That was one of the reasons you went back. One of the main primary reasons?

Everybody told me that I could get a better heart surgery in Germany. That’s not quite a reason as much as the excuse. I didn’t really want to get a surgery in Germany, but there’s very complicated reasons around that, and the food, which was just an excuse.

You went back to have a surgery in Taiwan?

In Taiwan, and then stayed in Taiwan.

But your dad stayed on in Germany?

For another year or half a year. Before he defended his thesis, the final step, he went back also to Taiwan. So he’s a PhD candidate.

What about your health today? Today, do you still need to go check your heart every now and then? Do you have to take medicine?

I’m supposed to check every year or so.

Every year?

I’ve been neglecting it for 10 years or so. As one of the perks of working this job, I was subjected to two very serious examinations sponsored by taxpayers. They found everything is fine with my heart. It should be fine.

Because of the surgery you underwent years ago?

Because of the surgery, yeah. When I was 12, and it took a year or so to heal. Supposedly, I am fine by when I was 15 or so.

Let’s jump a bit.

Yes, of course.

Hold on, do you want to jump over...? Let’s jump to Tsai Ing‑Wen and how she picked you. How did she know that you’re around? How did she know that you might be a person she wants to work with?

It’s a mystery. I don’t know. What I know ‑‑ my side of the story ‑‑ is that I’ve been working with public servants as a coach, mentor, lecturer in the public servant training center since late 2014 for a year and a half or so.

Around mid ’16, I was in the middle of a class, and then I got a call that says there’s a meeting by the Premier that want to talk about Asia Silicon Valley redefinition, which was one of Tsai Ing‑Wen’s main campaign during her presidential campaign.

There’s some resistance from the startup scene here around the particular way that this policy is being carried out. I was called to the meeting with the Premier and that’s the first time I met the Premier.

We talked about how to redefine the Asia Silicon Valley plan to make it more...

You just said Premier, but you’re not referring to Tsai Ing‑Wen?

No.

The Premier at that time was...?

Lin Chuan. I met Tsai Ing‑Wen when I was sworn into the office. I didn’t have any other contact with her until then.

In the Asia Silicon Valley meeting, we talked about these kinds of things. Then it was brought out that we really need a minister with a portfolio that understand the language of the startups, the digital economy and stuff because there wasn’t a minister with that portfolio to handle this.

In the previous few years, there was two ministers with that portfolio who handle this aspect, minister Simon Chang, who went on to become the Premier during the transition times, and minister Jaclyn Tsai.

The woman I just met last week?

That’s right. The two tech-and-cyber ministers before, they paid a lot of attention to Internet, hacker culture, makers, and those developments. There wasn’t at the beginning this much emphasis at the current cabinet. There’s a lot of talking past each other at Asian Silicon Valley scene and also around the plan.

The Premier essentially asked me to find a minister for him to recruit, around the circle of my friends and acquaintances. I came out with a list of maybe five people who I think would be more fitting than me for this position. I ask each one of them, and they all said no.

Then I also asked around for some other people, but nobody agreed. They almost all said that I should be in this position, even if I’m a lesser fit than them, but they have better thing to do. I think the important thing is that they wouldn’t enjoy this position, but I actually would. That also counts.

At the second Asian SV meeting, I reported back to the Premier saying, "Well, I couldn’t find anyone, but I’m willing to give it a try." Then we started negotiations around my work conditions and everything. That’s pretty much it. That’s the story. Then I met Tsai Ing‑Wen when I was sworn into office.

When you were sworn in.

Yeah, and during the National Day, I think, but not otherwise.

Building this Asian Silicon Valley in Taiwan, you said, really is one of your main tasks, right?

Asia, the noun form, Silicon Valley was the plan. The original resistance was that everybody, just as you said, added a aim to it, which means that we want to be the Silicon Valley of Asia, which is what drew so much resistance because it’s not feasible to build a Silicon Valley in Asia.

The culture, for one, is completely different. We re-branded and redefined it. My contribution was to introduce this middle dot between...

What does this dot stand for?

It stands for connection. The plan is now 亞洲・矽谷 or 鏈結亞洲、連結矽谷, "linking Asia, connecting to SV". It’s about Taiwan becoming a hub, one of the many hubs, like Singapore is a hub, too. Linking with these regional hubs.

In the beginning, it was Asian Silicon Valley?

It was advertised as such. Cabinet people did not defend it in a way that sounds convincing enough to the people who actually spend time in Silicon Valley, so it’s everybody...

Now it’s Asia.Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley, meaning linking Asia, connecting to SV.

How will you do it?

How will I do it? There’s now a agency that takes care of that. It’s the ASVDA. The ASVDA page ‑‑ we can just bring it up.

Can I see the top again?

Sure.

Asia Silicon Valley Development Agency.

That’s right.

Asvda.org.

Mm‑hmm.

I’ll note this. Asvda.org.

As you can see, the linking Asia part is mostly around the angel‑round fund, the incubators, and so on, on the upper left side. The deregulations on the upper right side, and then the platform for linking integration and demo fields, fields of pilot at the lower right side.

Then the connection of people and introducing people to their counterparts in SV and the other Asia hubs on the lower left side. That’s the four main strategies. It’s the pink circles.

Can you tell me concretely, what’s your vision of Taiwan? How do you wish to see Taiwan’s tech scene in a few years?

First of all, I would like to see a culture that’s not afraid of failing. This is one of the main differences between the SV culture and Taiwanese culture. In Taiwan, a lot of people want to run a startup, but also there is social stigma around people who failed a few startups.

One of the reason is that we don’t have a very healthy series A investment culture. People have to actually get into debt or other kinds of...Even convertible bond was not as popular as it is in SV and so on.

Basically, there’s a lot of social stigma because it really costs quite a bit to start a company. It costs more to start, try a bit, and then fail. In SV, if somebody failed three times or four times, that mean that they’re probably one of the good founders now because they then learned from the postmortems.

Also, in SV, especially in the tech scene, we share postmortems. When one startup fail, their CTO will usually write a postmortem that explain what they did wrong. The whole ecosystem learns from their experience. In Taiwan, we don’t do that much.

In the regulation side, we need to make it almost costless to start a company, to make it cost less to start and get some initial round of investment then fail. Then we need to establish a common culture, especially around young people, that’s it’s OK to fail, and it’s OK to fail a few times.

What barriers are there at the moment to build up a startup, to found a startup?

First of all, there’s a lot of paperwork involved. If you want to build a company in Taiwan, it takes anywhere from six days to three months to properly establish all the parts, like the English name of your company for foreign trades, and the registration, and taxation, and so on.

Not many people use the online platform to do that because the online platform is now distributed, fragmented in all these different ministries and units. I think they provide hyperlinks to each other’s systems, but that’s not saying much.

Preferably, one should be able to streamline all the operations online instead of doing paperwork in a local registry. That’s just a registry. Then to raise funds, to apply for grants and things like that, with also a lot more paperwork involved with proof of spending and things like in paper invoices and so on.

It’s anyway a lot of overhead. Once you get this much overhead, you need dedicated staff to handle that side of things, which then means at least one or two fulltime staff just to cover the logistic operations, which makes starting a startup even more costly. If you run it for a year, then it’s a lot of cost. Just by lowering this logistical cost to almost zero, I think, would do a lot to change the culture.

You just mentioned other Asian hubs or IT hubs like Singapore. What does Singapore have that Taiwan does not have?

First of all, Singapore really had a very streamlined company registration system. They overhauled their company law a couple of years ago just for this purpose. They also are, I think, finally introducing the financial sandbox system around FinTech, for example.

You can start a FinTech company that does something that the bank does without getting the same permits that a bank requires, which is a lot of due diligence work. You can run a small operation, target it at maybe 100 people for three months just to prove that this business model is worth having.

Therefore, the regulators do work with you collaboratively ‑‑ not as your regulators ‑‑ but to try to take this experiment and then take it into one of the possible areas of allowed financial operations. Or it’s a bad idea, and they could disallow it.

It’s a way to start experiments with new modes of inventions around blockchain and whatnot, and then bring it into a regulatory framework with a multi‑stakeholder discussion.

In Taiwan, we’re now introducing this as part of this plan. Many little bits of things like being friendly to foreign talents, and for their families to stay for extended amount of time, and enjoy healthcare, and things like that.

You also mentioned that part of the job is linking startups to the American Silicon Valley.

To their SV counterparts in SV or anywhere, really, but SV primarily.

What’s your relation? Do you know founders in the Silicon Valley?

Sure.

How do you know them? What’s your...?

What’s my connections?

Yes.

The ASVDA agency set up for that, had their C‑level people, I think all of them are Silicon Valley veterans who returned to Taiwan to run this. They already have a lot of personal connections.

My own personal connection is mostly around the open‑source community, the free culture community and so on, which underlies many of the new startups. The AI scene is almost entirely open‑source at this moment. The IoT scene is not.

AI is artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence.

What’s the IoT?

Internet of Things. The Internet of Things scene is not completely open‑source, but it’s still founded upon many open‑source bedrocks and so on. Of all those ecosystems, a lot of things are actually in the hands of international open‑source communities who have their own agenda and their own protocol to share research and so on.

Taiwan, historically, is not that connected to this international free software community. Taiwan has a very vibrant local free software community speaking mostly Mandarin. In the later last decade, we’ve been working deliberately on establishing those international connections.

Personally, I visited around the Perl language and scripting languages. I held something like 20 hackathons over the course of one year in many continents in like 14 countries just to link everybody together and to work on the next version of the Perl language, which is one of the largest open‑source communities.

That was before you started working for the government?

Yeah, of course. That was in 2005. Just by meeting personally, the key people I thought play a lot of role in the open‑source communities back then, and then establishing a common vision together. I was community organizer at that time. My personal connection was mostly around those open‑source communities.

When the local Taiwan community want to invite somebody over, or to exchange or something, there’s often the official way, which is to call their companies, but also an unofficial way, which is to set up a few online video conferencing meetings and you meet exactly the right people.

That’s one of my contribution. Another plan, the ASVDA plan, is the digital nation plan that want to build a basic digital literacy into the education system, into the governance system, and into the civil society.

That’s the terrain that the ASVDA and other plans grew out from. My main focus is on the digital nation plan. ASVDA is now in the capable hands of the deputy minister Kung Ming‑Hsin of the National Development Council and other C‑level people who return from Silicon Valley to run this.

It’s a semi‑independent agency now. Technically, I oversee it, but mostly just to check the overall direction.

Speaking of Asia, there’s so much going on in China, also the tech scene. Beijing has been called the Silicon Valley of Asia a few times.

It was Shenzhen, but in any case, yeah.

I think Shenzhen was more because of the production.

The shanzhai culture.

Anyway, what I wanted to say is for example, there’s this ranking of the richest guys in China, the Hurun ranking. Number two, at the moment, is the founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma.

That’s right.

Number three is the founder of Tencent, Pony Ma. There are those big companies, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu.

They’re doing well.

They’re making huge amounts of money.

Yeah, they’re doing well.

Can Taiwan keep up with them?

No. It’s not even on the same dimension. A lot of the media business, because of the particular Internet situation of China’s Internet, foreign services were somewhat unwelcome depending on their stances with the Beijing government.

A lot of them are satisfying the same needs of social means and so on, but because of their configuration of the China intranet, they were able to get a upper hand compared to foreign multinationals.

Taiwan is on the outside of that firewall. There’s no way for Taiwan to build something and capture this intranet market as a Chinese company without unification. It’s out of the question. It’s just not possible.

The same holds for anyone who’s outside the firewall, Japan or Singapore. Nobody said we want to capture the Weibo market.

You’re right. One reason of why those companies are so successful and so huge is because the Internet actually is working like an intranet in China. Then again, like those companies, they develop features.

For example, WeChat. I think it started a chatting program, a chatting app. Now it covers everything. All the features you can think of. Western tech firms, they look at this and think, "Hey, that’s great. We want to have this too." There’s innovation coming from China from those companies and going back to the US, to Europe, to other places.

That’s great.

Is there any interaction between Chinese tech companies, Chinese tech startups, and Taiwanese startups?

Sure. Of course we look at each other’s ideas. There’s quite a bit of flow of people both ways also.

Do you have some examples?

I virtually taught a class in Hangzhou even after I became the digital minister.

You taught a class in Hangzhou?

Yeah, I taught a class in Hangzhou.

On what? A class on...?

It’s virtual reality for civil deliberation.

Who was organizing the class?

The China Academy of Arts.

Of arts?

Of arts, yeah.

Why did they invite you?

Invited me? Because I was considered a expert in that particular field I guess, and I spoke Mandarin, which was a plus. Then I introduced all these open‑source tools that they can run inside intranet, which is an extra plus. I wasn’t personally there in the flesh. I was a robot, a virtual avatar and everything.

There’s a lot of ideas and thoughts. It’s not just to Hangzhou students. It’s also linked to a Kaohsiung classroom. It’s a three place connection kind of thing.

OK. Part of this plan is also to attract foreign startups to come into Taiwan?

Foreign talents.

Foreign talents?

Also startups, yes.

Why should they choose Taipei and not Beijing?

You can choose both. It’s a plus.

But you wanted to have them here, I guess.

Yeah. If you stay in Taiwan, there’s food and everything, but there’s this regulatory framework that we’re looking at that basically naturalizes a lot of Taiwan’s social welfare system, and also the programs around foreign students, and graduates, and so on so that they could naturally develop their interests after becoming an exchange student in Taiwan or something like that.

It’s not like out of the blue you choose Taiwan for the health insurance. There is more like you already have some connection or you have Taiwanese friends, then you discover it is a friendly place for you to pursue your...

Let’s think of a guy who spent maybe one semester in Taiwan, studying Chinese.

You happen to know that kind of guy? [laughs]

No, just making up a story. He or she also spends some time in China. Now he’s thinking about founding a startup in Asia. He’s considering Taipei, but he’s also considering Beijing. What would you tell him? Why would should he come to Taiwan, to Taipei?

Of course, the main thing is that whether it’s an intranet business, or whether it’s an Internet business, or if it’s both. It should be a very clear business decision.

If you want to be a intranet business, that is primarily single population, then of course you want to found it in Beijing. On the other hand, if you wanted to be a Internet operation, then Taipei is a pretty reasonable choice. So is Tel Aviv, or Singapore.

Are there big startups or tech companies in Taiwan?

Sure.

Can you tell me some...

Yeah. The thing is that they are known mostly within Taiwan.

...that might be known in foreign countries?

In foreign countries?

For example, in Germany, I think everybody now has heard of WeChat. It’s not common to use it in Germany or in Europe, but a lot of people at least have heard about this app.

The thing is that Taiwan is mostly around...the software scene is mostly revolved around the hardware and firmware thing. The German people will have heard of VIVE, of course, which is this VR headset that’s currently the best one. I don’t know for how long, but currently the best one.

Of course, the gaming computer that Asus, or Acer, or MSI brought out. Or any of those WiFi, or any of those peripherals, they’re all from Taiwan and they’re recognizable brands. However, it’s not like there’s one single piece of app from Taiwan that everybody would recognize. It’s the computing material, the firmwares in them, the ecosystem, the server software, and everything that came out of Taiwan.

It is more like hardware, right?

Yeah. There’s the Trend Anti-virus, of course, but it’s one comparatively narrow segment. Yeah, it’s mostly as part of the Internet of Things or as part of some cutting edge hardware that you see telling yourself that it’s almost always part of a integration with software and hardware.

People wouldn’t think HTC as a software company. They will think they are a phone or a VR company, but of course what drives that phone or VR is mostly software.

It’s often said that Taiwan has a lot of brands that are actually producing for other brands, and then that’s one of the...

OEMs, yes.

...problems of the industry. For example, Foxconn producing hardware for Apple. Apple is known, Foxconn is also known but for other reasons.

[laughs] I would not comment on that.

You know what I mean?

[laughs] Yeah.

Just like, do you see for other companies?

That’s right.

Is that a problem in your eyes?

Not particularly. That’s just the traditional place Taiwan had in the value chain, and it’s a very valuable place. Like the TSMC, although none of the computers that we use...

Sorry, TS?

Taiwan Semiconductor, which produces a majority of all the chips. It’s the number one semiconductor foundry for many years in their particular domain. Of course, one would hear "Intel Inside" but not "TSMC inside".

It’s hugely profitable but it’s not a brand. I don’t think TSMC thinks it as a problem. If the industry doesn’t think of it as a problem then that we shouldn’t.

In the ASVDA, are there any other big names involved? For example, I remember one of the founders of Yahoo actually was a Taiwanese. I’m not sure if he was a Taiwanese second‑generation, so actually American or Taiwanese. Are there any big names involved that I might know or a German reader might know?

There’s Foxconn.

International importance.

There’s MediaTek. No, I don’t think any of them are particularly known. Of course, they would be known by their German counterparts, anyone working in the IT industry. But in the general population, no, I don’t think any of them are household brands. We’re looking at this very understated part of the Asia and Silicon Valley link.

How much time do we have left?

Minus six minutes.

All right. Let’s again jump. You registered for female when you were 20? This thing with the passport, now your passport says that you’re...

I filled in none as the gender when I was sworn in.

Really?

Yeah, I did. It’s very well known here.

What I know is that you filled in female as gender when you were 20‑something in your passport or something.

Where did you read that?

I don’t know.

Wikipedia probably.

I don’t know.

The thing with Wikipedia is that I cannot edit it myself, the parts that are wrong. No, I didn’t do that. I didn’t do anything like that.

All I did was that I wrote a blog post that said Runtime Typecasting, which is an inside joke to programming language geeks, that explained that there are some people in Europe know me as a woman and some people in Asia know me as a man.

Of course we’ve never met face to face, or sometimes over the phone, there’s a lot of confusion. I was explaining that I’m this transgender who is OK with whatever gender pronouns that people refer me to, and I’m living as a woman for a while, but it’s not a big deal. It’s a blog post to explain some of those confusions.

When did you write that blog post?

2005. Some editors in Wikipedia picked up on it a few months afterwards, and then the rest of these citations.

What does your passport say, gender‑wise?

We don’t have a gender field on the passport.

When you were sworn in you said you...

I wrote "none" at the gender field, and also at the political party field. They’re close to each other.

Government documents, or what kind of documents?

On the registration document. As a minister I have to register my personal details.

They have this field, like "no," "none’?

It’s a input field. I can write anything, and it’s next to the party field.

Nobody said something? It was accepted? Everybody was fine?

Sure, of course.

Did you face any kind of discrimination around this issue?

No.

In the hacking scene?

It’s common in the hacking scene, actually.

Now, in politics?

No.

No?

People are generally fine with it.

You consider yourself to be transgender, right?

That’s right.

What does it mean for you? It’s neither male nor female, or it’s...?

No, both.

It’s both?

Yeah. It’s unrestricted by pronouns, basically.

It’s what?

Unrestricted by pronouns. My performance is not gender informed. That’s a technical way to say it. The Judith Butler way to say it.

What does it mean in a simple way, "It’s not gender informed"?

In the simple way, it’s...

Have you read Judith Butler?

A lot. It means that I do whatever I think is OK to do, not thinking whether it’s a female thing or a male thing. That’s it.

I understand people, I recognize people by their values, also, not by their genders, or roles, or whatever. According to the golden, or even the silver, rule. I expect the same in return.

When was that that you started to feel this way or think this way? What made you feel or think this way?

Long as I was born, something like that.

Really?

Yeah, my parents didn’t gender discipline me, so I never really felt like I should behave as a boy or girl. Around adolescence my main counterparts are all bulletin board system friends and people on the Internet where gender really means nothing.

I wasn’t socialized in a gendered manner. By adolescence I would already have quit school actually and joined my first startup. In that startup there was LGBTQ people in the five co‑founders. It’s not considered something that a gender role should have anything to do with our startup. That’s the socialization I went through.

There was no key experience or key thing that made you...

No, not at all.

...think, "Now let’s look at things differently"?

No.

I remember, I read somewhere that your document said you were a male, and then you registered for female when you were, I don’t know, 20‑something.

No, not at all. I changed my name. That’s for sure.

You changed your name?

Yeah, but that’s the only document that was changed.

I see. What’s your...?

Original name? My original name is Tang Zonghan, traditionally meaning the Tang dynasty inherited the Han dynasty. It’s a extremely traditional Chinese name.

Traditional name, and you changed it to Tang?

Tang Feng, which is like Phoenix.

Why?

First of all, Feng...

Phoenix from the ashes?

Phoenix is a pan‑gender word in the Chinese language. In 龍鳳 it’s female, and 鳳凰, it’s male. It’s a traditionally...

Compared to dragon it’s what?

Long Feng, when we say Long Feng, Feng means female. When we say Fenghuang it means male, because Feng is a male bird in the Fenghuang pair, but when we say Long Feng, Feng always means female. It’s a transgender word. It’s the most transgender word I can find in the Chinese language.

That’s cool. That’s very cool, actually.

The other thing is that it’s not so traditional Chinese. I never really liked this, what they call 法統, the traditional lineage. They’re from the Han dynasty, all the way to the Republic of China, which was the culture my father was brought in. He invested a lot of his imagination in my name.

Was he disappointed when you...?

Not at all. I checked my new name with him. If hadn’t agree, I wouldn’t have used as well.

Really?

Yeah, he is OK with it. Also, I never really liked this idea of a chosen people kind of thinking. There’s a lot of cultures with this chosen people kind of thinking, some major, some minor. The dynasty lineage is one of those chosen people things. As a practitioner of open knowledge, sharing, and so on, I do think it’s not a huge barrier, but it is a barrier to this international exchange of ideas.

Then again, your English name, Audrey, is somehow more female than male.

It used to be a male name, before Audrey Hepburn.

That’s, of course, who I think of when I heard the name Audrey. I think of Audrey Hepburn, so I...

Before Audrey Hepburn it’s a neutral name, and a few centuries before it’s a male name.

Really?

Yes, you can check that.

Is there a famous example?

No, there is no famous example, but it used to be that Audrey, Aubrey are both gender neutral or male‑ish names a few hundred years ago. I checked before choosing my name.

You applied for your change of your name when you were how old?

24.

Is that difficult?

Not at all.

Because it’s more common to change your names in Chinese society. Is that right?

That’s right.

It’s not unusual to change your name.

It’s fashionable, actually.

Did you talk with your parents about transgender issues?

Yeah, of course.

What was their view on it?

I don’t know. I was part of the immersion. My mom’s pretty transgender, herself. She was brought up as a very tomboyish person. Look at Judith Butler and you have a pretty good image of my mom. She behaves in a way that’s unrestricted by gender stereotypes. So, I was told, was my father’s father, my paternal grandfather, and so on. It wasn’t seen as something unusual in my family.

When you started considering yourself as transgender you talked to them?

Maybe when I was 14 or something. Yes, why not?

They liked it? They said, "Yeah, why not?"

Yeah.

That’s pretty cool.

Of course.

I can think of many people that would behave differently, so it’s not...

Compared to "Mom and dad, I’m dropping out of high school," it’s minor.

When you dropped out of high school...

The same year.

14, why?

Because I want to learn from the Internet, and the school is preventing my hours in the day.

You decided yourself that you don’t want to continue high school education?

Yeah.

How did you pursue...?

I went to universities, and I started listening in to those graduate studies.

What did your parents say about that decision?

They’re worried that without diploma I would go nowhere, but they are also happy because their professors are now my professors. I went to the same university they did.

You started going to universities?

Their alma mater, their university.

Did you have private teachers at home?

No, I went, crashed into, courses that I’m interested in.

In university and on the web?

Yeah, that’s right.

You don’t have a diploma from...?

Anywhere.

From a high school, from a university?

No, not at all.