Before Dang Nhut Hao came to Taiwan, he knew nothing about semiconductors. Growing up in Dong Thap — a southern Vietnamese province on the Mekong Delta famous for its rice fields, red-headed cranes and lakes dotted with lotuses — Dang loved biology, and got into one of Ho Chi Minh City’s most prestigious undergraduate science programs in 2019. But his family couldn’t afford the tuition. At the age of 18, Dang took out a loan of 80,000 New Taiwan dollars ($2,450) and flew to Taipei to join a semi...