Why these Taiwanese Americans flew home to vote

"I shouted his [William Lai's] name so much on the night of the election, I lost my voice the next day," says Nancy Yang, who flies home to Taiwan from San Francisco every four years so she can vote.

William Lai Ching-te won Taiwan's presidential election on Saturday, giving his ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) a third, unprecedented term. And Ms Yang is one of a few thousand Taiwanese living overseas who returned last week to vote in an election that China had framed as a choice between war and peace.

In Taiwan, where voters must cast their ballots in person, many travelled to their hometowns - even Mr Lai went to Tainan in southern Taiwan to vote. Others, like Ms Yang, flew across the world.

"The rallies, the noise - you feel the excitement being here," she says. "You feel like you're making a difference on the ground."

It's unclear how many of the voters were Taiwanese Americans, but some 4,000 citizens living abroad registered to vote, according to the Central Election Commission. Relations with China were a major factor for the Taiwanese watching from afar, and especially those who live in the US, which has long been Taipei's most powerful ally.

"China thinks it owns Taiwan. We don't think so. We don't belong to you," Ms Yang had declared the night before the election, when the BBC had met her while she was volunteering at a DPP rally. Clad in the party's green varsity-like sweater and surrounded by green and pink flags, she was all smiles, talking to voters and other volunteers.

The former IT manager has lived in the Bay Area for 40 years. She said this election felt different, compared to the last one in 2020: "This time we had three parties, and it was a close race."

The DPP was battling