So paulo: So Paulo is not typically thought of as a hotspot for Taiwanese restaurants and Boba tea shops, much less places that attract long lines of patrons. Yet there are Taiwanese eateries such as Mapu, owned by the Lin family, that have become deeply rooted in the industrial city and attract throngs of visitors. Established in 1979, Mapu first served ethnic Hakka dishes prepared by first-generation expat and founder Mrs. Lin because she was homesick. Gradually, her restaurant shifted from Hakka cuisine to other signature Taiwanese dishes such as braised pork rice and fatty pork gua bao, whose aromas made a recognizable splash around the Asian-based Liberdade District located in So Paulo’s subprefecture of S©, she told CNA.
According to Focus Taiwan, the Lin family is just one of several Taiwanese families who have built a neighborhood around the Rua 25 de Mar§o street by the Asian district, a community with a history spanning seven decades made up of ethnically Hakka and Hoklo Taiwanese people. More broadly, these families are among a decent-sized contingent of immigrants from Taiwan who have made their mark on Brazil through food, agriculture, and philanthropy.
Currently, most ethnic Chinese immigrants to Brazil reside around So Paulo, with approximately 70,000 individuals hailing from Taiwan and about 200,000 from China. According to Brazilian census data, the first Taiwanese expat to the South American country was probably Dr. Yang Yu-chi, the eighth director of Changhua Christian Hospital. After stepping down from his leadership role at the historical hospital, he was sponsored to further his studies in England, the home of Changhua County Hospital’s founders Dr. David Landsborough III and Rev. Campbell Naismith Moody, in 1953. Later, Yang transited to the United States before getting a visa to travel to Brazil in 1955, where he stayed for the remainder of his life.
The first significant group of Taiwanese immigrants after that consisted of six Christian families from a Changhua Presbyterian congregation who applied to become farmers in the South American country. The group of 32 departed on the MS Tegelberg from Keelung on Aug. 20, 1963, with their farming tools for Santos, the main port that serves So Paulo. Five days after arriving in Brazil, the families jointly bought a six-hectare farm for US$4,000 east of So Paulo near the city of Mogi das Cruzes, and it has since expanded into a base for over 80 households engaged in mushroom farming. The community is distinguished by a giant Taiwanese Presbyterian church visible from the So Paulo to Rio de Janeiro highway that stands among mushroom sheds that now produce 85 percent of Brazil’s mushrooms.
Aside from eateries such as Mapu and its current owner Duilio Lin or the mushroom farming community outside So Paulo, individuals such as 84-year-old philanthropist Liu Hsueh-lin have also made important contributions to local society. Lin, a former president of the World Taiwanese Chambers of Commerce, is an example of an entrepreneur who started with nothing before giving back to his second home after achieving success. He said he was drawn to Brazil when he was 20 years old after reading about the South American country in a friend’s magazine. By Oct. 10, 1965, the 24-year-old Liu and his two older brothers Liu Hsueh-te and Liu Hsueh-kuei were reunited at the Port of Santos and soon began working in construction for English bankers employed by banks in the city of Itirapina northwest of So Paulo.
They handled projects such as mansions, farms, horse stables, and even private runways for the English bankers, and after a year of hard work, they were able to save up enough money to expand their family group to a company based in So Paulo. By 1975, they were employing nearly 400 workers and building 200 housing units a year. Beyond his family’s business achievements, however, Liu is best known for his philanthropic contributions to the country. “Everything should be shared and not owned exclusively by one person,” was what Liu’s mother used to tell him. “If someone offers you a bowl of water, you should return with a bowl of tea.”
That life motto was what prompted Liu to start donating to facilities for disabled children as early as the 1980s. In 2007, he founded an education center that has provided free music, language, and computer classes to over 3,000 underprivileged children, and some of those with good enough grades were even sponsored to further their studies in Taiwan. He also assisted Brazil’s late Bishop Jos© Song Sui-Wan, who was of Chinese descent, in building an Indigenous children’s rehabilitation center in the Amazon region. Between 2011 and 2020, Liu funded the establishment of kindergartens and daycare centers for So Paulo’s Monastery of Saint Benedict.
Liu’s most lasting contribution, however, may be chronicling the history of Taiwanese immigrants like him in Brazil over the past seven decades. He organized a committee that eventually published “Raiz: Historia da Imigracao Taiwanesa no Brasil” (Root: History of Taiwanese Immigration to Brazil) in 2024, which won him an award from the Federation of Overseas Chinese Associations of Taiwan’s expat communities. The Taiwanese presence in Brazil will never match that of Japan or even China, but through restaurants making Taiwanese specialties, farms growing mushrooms, or philanthropic endeavors helping vulnerable children, Taiwanese immigrant families continue to have an impact on South America’s biggest country.
