The Taiwan History Podcast: Formosa Files

Two-time Academy Award winning director Ang Lee (李安) is probably the most globally famous person from Taiwan. But this Pingtung-born movie master actually started out wanting to be an actor. And, if it had not been for his wife’s insistence to keep pursuing his filmmaking dreams, Lee would likely have given up and opened a Chinese restaurant instead! Luckily for the world, that didn't ...

The Korean War would almost certainly have ended much earlier but for the tricky question of what to do with Chinese POWs. The 21,000 Red Chinese soldiers captured were finally given a choice: go home to China...or go to "Free China" on Taiwan, the ROC. The choices made by these captives were not, however, free from influence. Every side in the conflict had an angle that would benefit themsel...

It's 1950 and a war-weary world is at it again. Communist China pours fuel on the conflict in Korea by sending in a quarter of a million soldiers. ROC President Chiang Kai-shek has, from the start, offered to send his Nationalist troops. MacArthur is now, more than ever, determined to use them. But American president Truman continues to say "No!" and he fires MacArthur over the...

Kaohsiung Harbor was, in the late twentieth century, one of the world's busiest ports, but back during the time of the Opium Wars, it was still a rather secluded and hard-to-find place. Based on the somewhat embellished " A Cruise in an Opium Clipper ," this is the story of how a British merchant ship carrying chests of opium found its way to Takao -- modern-day Kaohsiung. Today, of course, opium...

After the Americans introduced baseball to Japan in the late 19th century, Japan took the game John Ross might call "a corruption of cricket" to their new colonial possession, where it became a hit. Surviving -- somewhat surprisingly -- the arrival of the Nationalists in 1949, baseball was officially ignored for the most part, which helped usher in a "Golden Age'' for the game and its rise to the...

Taiwan's only English radio station, International Community Radio Taipei (ICRT) has been a part of millions of Taiwanese -- and many an expat in Taiwan's -- lives since it took over from the US military in 1979. Tim Berge, a 30+ year Taiwan resident, has spent most of his years here working for ICRT, and is today the station's GM. In this new Formosa Files interview feature, Tim Berge talks to Er...

Taiwan lies at the heart of what's called the "first island chain," a boring name for a long line of amazing islands that stretches from Borneo to Russia’s Kuril Islands. The main island of Taiwan's closest neighbor is Yonaguni Island, part of what is today Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. Formerly it was part of the Ryukyu Kingdom, itself a vassal state of first Ming China, and then Japan after a 1609...

After unifying Japan’s warring states, supreme feudal lord Hideyoshi launched a massive invasion of Korea. In 1593, a year into this Imjin War of 1592-1598, he sent an envoy to Taiwan on a doomed mission to establish formal diplomatic and trade relations.  In 1609 and 1616, the Japanese Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, hoping to establish indirect trading links with China, sent two larger missions to...

April 1997. Taiwan’s crime story of the century starts with the kidnapping and murder of a celebrity’s 12-year-old daughter by a trio of hardened criminals. In the seven-month crime spree that follows, there are more kidnappings, killings, rapes, police manhunts and shoot-outs. The climax comes in November when Chen Chin-hsing (陳進興), the sole survivor of the trio, takes foreign hostages; South...

The high number of deaths during the 1996 Mt. Everest climbing season supplied a tragic plotline for books, movies, and documentaries. Taiwanese climbers did not come out of these accounts looking competent -- to say the least -- but the record may need to be corrected. Here's the story of Makalu Gao, who survived a death sentence: an overnight stay at the top of the world -- without food or oxyge...

How do you get a famous, one-armed democracy activist -- who is under house arrest and being watched 24/7 by the authorities -- off of a well-guarded, militarized island? Hint: A team of brave supporters, some forgery, and a whole lot of chutzpah. Hear the conclusion of the tale of the amazing life of the late Dr. Peng Ming-min.

Dr. Peng Ming-min (彭明敏) was a Taiwanese pro-independence/pro-democracy activist who lived an exceptional life - losing an arm in a WWII US air raid, witnessing the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, and being arrested for sedition after returning to Taiwan -- to name just a few of the amazing parts of his life story. In part one of this tale, we delve into Dr. Peng's background and take you up to the...

Two-thirds of this island is mountainous, and climbing the mountains -- or even just driving across them -- is an awesome experience. But, woe be to those that are unprepared... or, sadly, just unlucky. With many peaks over 3,000 meters, when things go wrong up there, they can go very wrong.

Western-style adoption (as in a couple taking a baby home from an orphanage) has not been and is still not very common in Taiwan. But there are plenty of local ways kids find new homes here, including a now-abandoned, rather shocking "brother-sister/husband-wife" arrangement! And -- for a time -- quite a few girls, in particular, were adopted by American, Australian and European parents, who...

In 1622 and then again in 1631, crew members (including foraging parties and shipwreck survivors) from Dutch ships were killed by the aboriginal people on Lamey Island, what is today’s Pingtung County’s Xiao Liuqiu (小琉球). The Dutch East India Company’s regional headquarters in Batavia (Jakarta) sent orders to the Dutch commanders on Taiwan to: “Completely depopulate the island......

It's 1895 and Formosa has officially become part of the Japanese Empire. Not everyone on the island is super happy about this, and bursts of violent resistance are put down by imperial troops as they march for the rebel capital of the self-declared Republic of Formosa, Tainan. Japan's General Nogi is losing patience. If Tainan doesn't surrender, he might just level the city with artillery. Bu...

After the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, nations around the world began thinking about acquiring nuclear weapons of their own. Among them was China, then ruled by supreme leader Chiang Kai-shek. The Nationalists' retreat to Taiwan interrupted those early ambitions, but when the PRC successfully detonated a nuclear device in 1964, CKS stepped up efforts to develop nukes. This sec...

When did people first get to Taiwan? Was there a land bridge? Plus... a few interesting legends. A short phone call that's a fun intro to Taiwan’s prehistory.

The Dutch were expelled from southwestern Taiwan by pirate warlord and Ming loyalist Koxinga in 1662. Their relatively brief stay of 38 years was marked by impressive achievements and lasting impacts. But why they were there in the first place? What did they want? Who did they trade with? How did they get along with the locals? Enjoy a mini "deep dive" in this bonus episode exploring Dutch Formosa...

In 1933, on a winter’s night in the Russian town of Yekaterinburg, Faina Vakhreva -- then 17 years old -- was walking home and became the unwanted subject of attention of a Russian man who began harassing her. A 23-year-old Chinese man also walking home at the time, saw what was happening and chased away the harasser. The Chinese man was future Taiwan (ROC) president Chiang Ching-kuo. Faina and CC...

In the mid-1990s Taiwanese politicians got together, and, after much wrangling, settled on a national health insurance system that today is the envy of many countries around the world. Here's the story of how we got to a single-payer, government-subsidized, mandatory program that provides more than decent care at incredibly decent rates. While not without faults, overall, it's...

In the 1980s, Japan's, South Korea's, and Taiwan’s massive fishing fleets gained notoriety for their destructive driftnet fishing. The use of giant driftnets, sometimes tens of kilometers long, threatened to turn the oceans into deserts. In 1989 the United States launched a high-seas sting operation, which culminated in a US coastguard cutter chasing a Taiwanese fishing boat carrying illegall...

Despite the failed attempt to create a myth of a Pacific Ocean "Bermuda Triangle" near Taiwan, the seas around this island are indeed cruel... ships sometimes disappear without a trace. It's little wonder the majority of temples here are devoted to Mazu, Goddess of the Sea, who watches over fishermen. We tell of shipping and transport vessels encountering tragedy, but two of this episode's most su...

The word "stalemate" defined relations between Taiwan and China in the 1970s and early 1980s. Neither side wanted to legitimize the other with "official" talks so ideas such as postal and travel links, as well as the most important - family reunions - went nowhere. But everything would change in 1986 when a former ROC Airforce U2 spy plane pilot did the unthinkable - hijacking his C...

Maysang Kalimud, better known by his Chinese name  C.K. Yang  (楊傳廣), is arguably the greatest Taiwanese athlete of all time. In 1960, this native Taiwanese from the Amis tribe came within an inch of winning the Olympic decathlon competition held in Rome. He took silver, but C.K. Yang's friendship with the man who won gold in that event in '60, American Rafer J...