Ready For His Close-Up

Tseng Jing-Hua Shot To Fame With A Tender Coming-out Drama. This Taiwanese Star Is One Of The New Generation Of Asian Actors To Keep On Your Radar

- NAVIN PILLAY

Tseng Jing-hua was 21 when he first stepped into a gay bar. But he wasn’t there for a good time. “I only went because I wanted to research about the gay lifestyle and community for my role in Your Name Engraved Herein,” he explains in an interview over Zoom. Sitting in his manager’s office in Taipei, casually dressed in an offwhite t-shirt and a white cap worn backwards, the Taiwanese actor, 25, spoke about how he prepared for his breakout role in the highest-grossing LGBTQ+ motion-picture in Taiwan’s history, currently available on Netflix.

Set in the 1980s, after Taiwan was liberated from the oppressive regime of martial law, the film follows the relationship between Tseng’s character, Birdy, and his classmate A-han (played by Edward Chen Haosen), which develops from platonic friendship to bittersweet romance. Tseng admits that he struggled to relate to his character. Growing up in the rural township of Dongshan in Yilan, he spent most of his childhood helping out at his parents’ breakfast eatery, exposed to little else outside of his periphery. But he was determined to portray his character realistically, and felt it was necessary to understand what made him tick. He shares, “I had no clue how to play this role. For someone who had grown up in the countryside, it was quite unimaginable. It was only my second film, and there were many experiences and emotions that I had not encountered and could not have understood at that point. The people I met at the bars defied the stereotypes I had in my mind. They were warm and welcoming, and chatting with them was so effortless.”