Coming soon! The first major book from our new publishing venture Plum Rain Press (English translation): "Three Tribes in Dutch Formosa" by Dr. Chen Yao-chang 陳耀昌.

TAIWAN HISTORY - Formosa Files Episodes

Aug. 8, 2024

S4 – INTERVIEW: The Island: a personal account of Taiwan’s extraordinary transformation by Mark O’Neill

John chats with veteran Hong Kong-based journalist and author of The Island (2024) Mark O'Neill, who tells us what Taiwan was like in the early 1980s, when he first came to study Chinese. Despite a mysterious knife attack an…
July 18, 2024

S4-E16 - Political Assassination Attempts, 1928-1970

Japanese princes, Taiwanese activists, a Korean martyr, American generals and presidents, Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo. It’s an action-packed episode with an amazing cast of characters. These little-known Tai…
Oct. 12, 2023

[ENCORE] The 4,300-Kilometer Chase of an Illegal Taiwanese Fishing Boat (1989)

Taiwan loves seafood, and boats from this island trawl for yummy ocean offerings thousands of kilometers away from our shores. Taiwanese fishing vessels are very good at what they do, but they weren't always so good in how t…
April 28, 2022

S2-E9 - The Murder of Pai Hsiao-yen 白曉燕 and the Alexander Family Hostage Crisis

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 kidnapp…
Jan. 9, 2022

S1-E23 - Walls of Death

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 …
Nov. 11, 2021

S1-E13 - The Orangutan Craze

As one of the four "Asian Tigers," Taiwan's economy roared in the 1980s, but free-flowing money came with downsides such as the exploitation of wild animals, including tigers.