TAIWAN HISTORY - Formosa Files Episodes

Decathlete athletes are special. The sport is TEN events: sprint 100 meters, then 400 meters, then race 1500 meters; then comes 110 meters with hurdles you have to jump, then it's on to the long jump, the high jump, pole vaulting, discus throwing, javelin throwing, and finally, shotput. It's exhaus…

"The Sand Pebbles," which tells the story of the USS San Pablo, a US Navy gunboat operating in China in the 1920s, was shot in northern Taiwan over the winter of '65-'66. The movie was directed by Robert Wise, of "The Sound of Music fame, and starred "the King of Cool" Steve McQueen. The film was t…

Joyce Bergvelt's book Lord of Formosa is a novel, but she's an author who has extensively studied the Dutch colonial period and the main characters involved. Lord of Formosa, therefore, might be closer to a history book than fiction. Listen to John speak with Joyce as they discuss the complicated, …

Join us as we try to answer some questions we've gotten, such as "What is Whisby and... just why?" You'll also discover Eryk's shameful secret (he loves betel nuts!), and hear John's opinion on re-introducing the extinct clouded leopard.

Long hailed as a “historic diplomatic breakthrough,” the reality is that US president Richard Nixon's 1972 trip to China has been rather oversold. Yes, the brief Mao-Nixon meeting did start a thaw in relations, but Nixon may have given more than he got. Here’s a gripping tale of geopolitical strate…

Some of the earliest photos we have of Taiwan were taken by a British photographer who visited the southwest of the island in 1871. Taking pics back then was far from “point and shoot.” It was “get inside portable darkroom, grab delicate glass plate, cover with chemical A, then B, then C, then expo…

Arguably the single most important event in Taiwan’s history – and certainly the most dramatic story – was the arrival in 1661 of warlord and Ming loyalist Koxinga (鄭成功 Zheng Chenggong). After a fierce struggle, Koxinga evicted the Dutch, who had established a successful settlement in southwestern …

Eight happinesses? If you’ve heard of or seen the famous movie about the remarkable British missionary Gladys Aylward, you'll know that the film (which was originally set to be shot in Taiwan) was called “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness.” Well, like many parts of her story, things were changed for t…

All languages borrow words from other languages. These “loanwords” often come with fascinating historical backstories, their adoption the result of encounters by traders, scholars, and adventurers; and the result of colonialization, as was the case with Taiwan, 1895 to 1945, when many Japanese word…

Today, the district of Madou (麻豆區) in Tainan City is home to about 43,000 people. It has a pleasant small-town feel, an economy mainly based on agriculture, in particular, a citrus fruit called the pomelo ( 柚子). Back in the 1620s, when the Dutch arrived, Madou -- then called Mattau -- was inhabited…

Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was a highly controversial two-term ROC president (2000–2008). How “A-Bian” studied and fought his way out of rural poverty to the highest office, thus bringing 55 years of continuous KMT rule to an end, is the single greatest personal political story in modern Taiwanese histor…

Ever heard of the film "Attack Force Z"? No? Don't worry... almost no one has. Filmed in Taiwan, this WWII story featured both Mel Gibson and Sam Neill, long before they became major Hollywood stars. Gibson later called the film “pretty woeful... it's so bad, it's funny.” That's an unfairly harsh a…

With their fearsome winds and dramatic downpours, typhoons have long been a part of Taiwan's history. Join Formosa Files for a look at a few notable typhoons that have hit Taiwan in more recent times, as well as some interesting asides, such as: When did typhoons get names? Why did they once only u…

In this fun Season Two finale, John Ross and Eryk Michael Smith battle with the AI phenomenon ChatGPT. Who knows more about Taiwanese history, John or the scarily omnipotent AI chatbot which may soon render humans obsolete? Does Eryk know more about Kaohsiung’s Nanzih District than the smartest mac…

Relations between the R.O.C. (Taiwan) and Spain have never been as close as Taiwan's ties to, for example, the United States. But back in the days when Taiwan was ruled as a one-party state, there were more connections than one might think between the R.O.C. and Spain, which was also a one-party st…

At the turn of the 20th century, Japan was on a roll. After taking Formosa and Penghu from Qing China in 1895, Japan beat mighty Russia in 1905. Eager to show the world its newfound economic strength – and to highlight the successful development of its new colony – the Japanese parliament voted vas…

The southern peninsula of Taiwan was a "ship graveyard" for a very long time as unseen rocks and reefs gashed holes in the sides of vessels and left them stranded, or on the seafloor. The Western powers and Qing authorities both agreed that a lighthouse at the far southern end of Taiwan would be a …

You're hiking in the hills of Taichung in the early 1990s and suddenly come across ... an orangutan? What's more, this massive great ape is um ... in need of some, um ... "affection," and gets handsy. An unlikely scenario, right? But, that story is true! There was a time when Taiwan was gripped by …

This week we have another snippet from the audiobook of John's 2020 book, Taiwan in 100 Books. This extract tells the tale of Janet Montgomery McGovern, a feisty anthropologist who managed to cut through the red tape and official disapproval from Japanese colonial authorities in Formosa during her…

No, we're not talking about romantic adventures; in this episode, the "dating" we're discussing is the days, months, and years kind. Why is it about to become the year 112 in Taiwan? Why is 2023 not just the year of the rabbit, but the year of the water rabbit? Why do some people in Taiwan have thr…

Eryk calls John for a chat about Yen Chia-kan (嚴家淦, Yan Jiagan) the president of the Republic of China (Taiwan) for three years following the death of Chiang Kai-shek in 1975. Who was C.K. Yen, and why isn’t he better known? Here’s the story.

We generally don't discuss politics very much on this podcast, but, when one of the world's most well-established international experts on politics in Taiwan is gracious enough to be willing to chat – we're gonna talk politics. While this might be perhaps too 'deep' for some, if you've spent some t…

Ever heard of Count Maurice Benyovszky? He's not well known in Taiwan, but after this Polish-Slovakian-Hungarian semi-nobleman had a chance encounter with this island in 1771, he wrote a travel account that remained influential into the twentieth century. And the best part? Most of what he wrote is…

A fighter for women's rights, human rights, freedom of speech, and democracy, you can disagree with Annette Lu's politics (or with some of her very controversial comments) ...but you can't deny the impact this outspoken woman has had on Taiwanese society and history. Here's the story of how the dau…