THE TAIWAN HISTORY PODCAST – FORMOSA FILES

TRANSCRIPT

S5-E 7- Bits and Pieces (of Babies, Teeth, Russians, and Books)

Release Date: March 18, 2025

Time: 20:42

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Welcome to Formosa Files. Can't believe it's season five, John. Season five.

Awesome. We're going to do our first bits and pieces episode of the season. It's time to catch up with some news and also look back at recent episodes, talk about some of the things, information, opinions, which we didn't have time to include in those episodes.

The Taiwan History Podcast, Formosa Files, is made possible through the generous sponsorship of the Frank C. Chen Foundation.

We kicked off season five of Formosa Files with Taiwan's shrinking population. Looking at the very successful birth control campaigns, perhaps a little too successful because the country went from a fertility rate of six kids to just one. And we also looked at what the consequences of this new reality are. And we looked at possible solutions. So, John, what did we miss out of that episode?

Perhaps how the sharp decrease in the birth rate from the 1950s to the 1980s, you know, from almost six to less than two, contributed to a very favorable but temporary population structure, very favorable for economic growth. Have you heard of something called the demographic dividend?

Yes, the demographic dividend. I've also heard it called the demographic bonus, which is exactly what you just described. The benefit of having a greater share of the population in the working age range.

Yes, economists have typically used the age range of 15 to 64. So, with few elderly and now fewer kids, that working age group in Taiwan was high during Taiwan's economic miracle years. So, let's say from the mid-1960s, when Taiwan stopped getting economic aid from the U.S., into the 1990s. And we see something like nine percent economic growth each year.

Yeah, incredible. But you, of course, have heard of the economist Paul Krugman, right? Yes, an American economist. He won a Nobel Prize a while back.

Yeah, he wrote an influential article back in 1994 called The Myth of Asia's Miracle.

The Myth of Asia's Miracle. Yes, he argued that East Asia's rapid economic growth was primarily due to high inputs of labor and capital rather than productivity or efficiency gains, thus making it unsustainable in the long run.

And part of the labor input was that the demographic dividend included more female workers.

Yes, he had a point, but he overstated his case and he dismissed innovation. He dismissed Taiwan's ability to move up the food chain. And also, you know, the really hard work and diligence of the Taiwanese.

Yeah, and then there was a highlight for me in that episode when we looked at the amazing example of former President Tsai Ing-wen, the youngest of 11 siblings, but herself unmarried and never had children.

Yeah, I hadn't realized that either. I came across that reading Nikki Alsford's Taiwan Lives: a Social and Political History, an academic book published by the University of Washington Press, he looks at a wide range of individuals who have played a part in Taiwan's history.

So, it's fair to say that for Formosa Files, it's more difficult for us to find stories about women. And it's not just because we're misogynists, is it, John? The truth is, you know, they had less opportunities in the past. They were less part of politics and war.

So, I'm curious what other women Nikki Alsford profiled in his book.

Okay, I'll run through them. I forget her name. A Japanese woman from the colonial period. She married a Taiwanese charity worker. He died quite young. She carried on the charity work. And then there's a chapter on the woman who was the trigger for the 228 incident, the woman selling cigarettes.

Ah, the silent mother of the 228 incident, Ling Chiang Mai. She got bullied and that incident escalated into the 228 incident.

Yes, and there's a chapter on San Mao, the writer.

We covered her story, but only through an extract of an audio book of your book, Taiwan in 100 Books.

That's right. So, this Taiwan Lives also features an activist, a leader of the wild lily movement from around 1990. And another figure you know well, Chen Ju.

Chen Ju, yes. The long-serving mayor of Kaohsiung, former political prisoner, Kaohsiung incident veteran. She finished her, I think, 12 years as mayor and then moved up to Taipei. She's running the Control Yuan.

And finally, there's Taiwanese singer based in South Korea, Zhou Tzu-yu. And she's a member of the girl group TWICE.

Ah, yes. She made headlines 10 years ago when she was pressured by the People's Republic of China. They bullied her into making a public apology. She said something totally innocent. “Taiwan,” something, “my home,” like that.

She had to get up there and go, “there is only one China and the two sides of this trade are one.” If she didn't do it, she would have lost her chance to be part of this mega group. So, I'm glad she did it for her own sake. I wouldn't want to deny her her career. So, I'm not going to give her any grief over it. But, you know, she was 16, I think, at the time. So, the Chinese bullying was sickening.

Yeah, not a good look. Anyway, some interesting women in that book.

And we're always keeping an eye open for women who have made contributions, who have compelling stories. Yes. So, I'm often reminded that there are plenty of women's stories in history. They're just hidden in the shadows. And they're right. Absolutely true. History does not do women justice. We will do our best to try to rectify that. OK, John, you're going to possibly make fun of me for this, but I did go looking for a female dental angle for that recent episode we did on white men toothpaste. What I found, though, didn't make it into our chat.

Eryk, you forget the white man toothpaste episode actually did have some female content. You know, we talked about the indigenous women pulling out their teeth for cosmetic reasons. Anyway, tell me more about your research.

Well, as you know, at Formosa Files, we scour some rather dense information sometimes, academic papers, rather dry stuff.

Get to the point. What did your research into female teeth reveal?

OK, in 1939 in colonial Taiwan, Japanese Taiwan, there were 40 female dentists. So, 1939, 40 female dentists, which was about 11% of all the dentists of these 40 female dentists. 33 were Taiwanese and seven were Japanese.

11% female and mostly Taiwanese. Not bad. Better numbers than I would have guessed.

And as of 2023, there were 5,160 female dentists in Taiwan, accounting for almost a third of all dentists. And this will change because if you take a look at dental college numbers, the number of female students is climbing and is currently at 42%. I know this is fascinating, isn't it?

OK, fascinating enough. And I am a fan of female dentists, their small, gentle hands. But that info is not exactly narrative history gold. I can see why you didn't bring it up.

But it's out there now. So, yeah, I did give you an opening there. Easy to make fun of.

So how about you? Any suggestions? More feminine touches there?

OK, you want a cute, lacy dress, feminine touch. We could have brought up the custom of the tooth fairy, a lovely childhood custom, second only, in my opinion, to Santa Claus. OK, I didn't know you were a fan of Santa Claus or the tooth fairy.

But the tooth fairy is not a Taiwanese custom.

True, but we could have mentioned that and cleverly segue to the Taiwanese custom of disposing of teeth.

Oh, OK, OK. Yeah, they don't do it anymore. Taiwanese don't do it anymore, as far as I know. But like you go back a generation or two and what was it, that children's teeth were thrown on a roof?

Yeah, that's what I've heard. Rooftop tooth throwing. Something of an East Asian tradition. What I've heard differs, but I think if a child lost an upper tooth, they threw it on the roof. And if a child lost a lower tooth, they buried it underground.

This was apparently meant to help teeth; new teeth grow straight. OK, I don't quite see the logic in that. But, you know, tradition's tradition. Something that also was brought up after we discussed the immigration issue was that we didn't do enough research into the falling demographics of Southeast Asia. Somebody pointed out that a lot of those countries are actually also on the same trajectory.

So perhaps immigration from Indonesia, Thailand, whatever, may not work either. So, gulp.

Uplifting.

Yeah. Anyway, our second and third episode of the season was on the Taiwan independence activist, fighter, radical Nylon Deng, Zheng Nan-rong.

Yeah, that started out as a single episode, but there was just too much there and ended up as two.

Yeah, and it also started out as a kind of a traditional narrative of the story. And we pulled the first recording that we did because I just started, you know, chasing this rabbit hole and that rabbit hole. And there was so much interesting information. It really turns out to be more of like a battle occurred between the police and his supporters. And instead of pouring gasoline over himself and setting himself a light in a traditional self-immolation thing that you would think of, we're talking about some canisters or containers of gasoline under a desk and lighting it boom. So, this was more of a violent act of protest in a way than what we traditionally thought of. And I'm really glad we found that because people have contacted us to say that they had not also understood the story in that way. And I got ahold of Emily Wu, who we quoted in that episode. She's going to be talking to us soon about it. She also said that the Deng family museum where they have like a memorial foundation, that they've been addressing this specific issue as well and retelling the story with more balance. So that was fascinating. Then episode five, we talked about the South African Airways disaster flight 295 in 1987 and also Taiwan, South Africa relationship. Don't think we left anything on the cutting floor of that one though.

No. Episode six was that journey of a Russian naval officer through Taiwan in 1875, maybe a spy.

I'm going to say probably a spy. Interesting how many Russian connections to Taiwan there actually are because in the intro, we went through them and we've covered what? A Russian bombing of Taipei in 1938. The Republic of China, Taiwan Navy seizing a Russian oil tanker in the fifties.

But there was another story we covered and didn't mention in that intro. Yeah. We did an episode in season one from Russia with love, ROC first lady, Faina Chiang.

This was ROC president Chiang Ching-guo’s Belarusian wife. A woman the future president met when his dad sent him to the Soviet Union to learn political and military leadership from the peasants, I suppose, and to strengthen ties between the KMT and the Soviet Union. And John, the more you study the organizational structure of the KMT, the more you see how closely they actually are structured. I'm not saying anything good or bad, just, you know, interesting.

But yeah, this was 1925 when he got sent to Russia. A lousy place to be. Thanks, dad.

Yeah, seriously. But it would get worse because his dad purges the communists in 1927, many in Shanghai. And by purge, we mean massacre. So, Chiang Ching-guo ends up stuck in Russia as a hostage. It took a decade before he was allowed to return to China. So double thanks, dad.

It's not that well known, but Chiang senior had actually been to Russia himself. In 1923, KMT leader and Republic of China founder Sun Yat-sen had agreed to accept aid from Moscow.

He sent Chiang Kai-shek on a three-month KMT mission to the Soviet Union. And Chiang Kai-shek, he was not impressed by what he saw. He was disappointed in not getting Soviet support for his plan to fight Chinese warlords and create a unified China.

Hmm, not impressed. Yeah, Chiang Kai-shek rightly saw that the Soviets were just using the KMT and actually, you know, backing the Chinese Communist Party until it got strong enough and then it could challenge him and them. Stalin said something like we can use Jiang as a peasant uses his horses.

We can use him to lead the battle against the imperialists, which is a strange quote, because yeah, I don't get that. Yeah. I'm peasants affording horses.

And do you use horses for fighting imperialists? I guess you could. But anyway, at that point, Stalin wasn't even the leader yet. Right.

Lenin was the leader and in poor health. That's one way of putting it. He was in a coma when Jiang Kai-shek was there and they never met.

Right, right. The leader he spoke most with was Trotsky, Leon Trotsky. And Jiang said he found him the most forthright of the leaders, both in speech and conduct.

Oh, the Trotskyites will be pleased to hear that. So, he may not have agreed with him, but he found him forthright. And so actually arguments between Trotsky and Stalin were going on right about then.

The struggle for power, right? And some of it involved differences of opinion about Jiang Kai-shek. Jiang became the leader of the KMT after Sun Yat-sen's death in 1925. Stalin says, yes, we can work with this guy Jiang and his KMT.

Trotsky says, nyet. And Trotsky was validated by Jiang Kai-shek's 1927 purge of communists. It was vindication of his position.

Terrible loss of prestige for Stalin. But this was not enough for Trotsky to defeat Stalin. No, the man of steel would prevail and Trotsky would soon be exiled and eventually dead.

Although he lasted longer than you think. He made it to 1940 before he got an axe pick in the head by a Soviet agent while he was in exile in Mexico. But getting back to the story of Havel Ibis, the Russian who journeyed through Qing era Taiwan, there was an interesting side story we didn't have time for.

Do you remember he was in Keelung and needed to get back to Danshui in a hurry? And he had a kind offer of riding with a Chinese Navy gunboat. And the thing that stood out was he was super surprised that the Chinese officers could speak English, not just speak, but speak well, even fluently. Yeah, yeah, amazing.

That ship was the Fuxing, a wooden gunboat built in 1870 in Fuzhou, Fujian, at a modern shipyard built with French help. It was about 50 meters long, a hybrid. So, it's rigged with sails, but also has a steam engine.

Among her arms were some Krupp guns. Krupp, perhaps the world's best artillery manufacturer from Germany. A very international effort.

And this Fuxing and the modern shipyards that produced it were symbols of modernizing China, part of the self-strengthening movement. China's attempt to modernize and be able to stand up to foreign powers, which didn't exactly go the way they were hoping. I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

It's just because Japanese were exceptional. It wasn't such a bad effort from the Chinese. Okay, that's your take.

So, you said the name of the gunship was Fuxing. So, Fu, blessing, good fortune. And the Xing means star.

Fuxing, lucky star. Star of good fortune. But this ship was not especially lucky, was it? Nine years later, it was sunk by the French.

Yeah, the opening round of the Sino-French War of 1884-85, which included battles here in Taiwan. There is an irony here. The French sinking ships that they had built or helped to build.

Yeah. You and John Groot, long-term resident of the Danshui area in Taipei, you guys did a two-part series on the Battle of Danshui. Yes, that's right.

And John Groot also walked around Taiwan, right? Yes, he wrote an excellent book called Taiwanese Feet. Similar to the Russian walking around, or not quite around, but walking. Not a spy, this Canadian chap, as far as I know.

That we know of, yes, yes. One of the cool things about the Russian guy in 1875, though, was his interest in indigenous people. And he really paid a lot of attention to indigenous people over his, what, six-week trip? He seemed to be really interested in where they came from.

He hoped that from collecting information about the languages and doing his skull measurements or whatever, examining their appearance, he could come up with some idea about their origins. And he did express an opinion based on his travels and research. But yeah, he had the modesty to admit he had very limited knowledge.

So let me read his quote. The following is only a hypothesis, and the correctness needs to be proven by more detailed research. I compared the Formosa dialect with words from various Malay languages and found that the language of Formosa is most similar to the language of the Philippine Islands, especially the Tagalog dialect.

From this, I deduced that the Formosan people immigrated from the Philippine Islands, more precisely, immigrants from Luzon. So, the main island just down there in the Philippines? Well, that's not the consensus today, but it's not a bad guess. I guess he just got it the wrong way around.

The language and people went from Taiwan to the Philippines, part of that great Austronesian expansion. But not necessarily, right? But they could have gone back. Yes.

Yeah. It's not an area I know much about, or actually, I guess no one really knows much about. But he was right to associate them.

Absolutely. You've got to, like you said, you've got to admire him. He's 22 years old.

He's not going to university. Eryk, maybe we can sign off with a little bit of promotion. You mean self-promotion, or what are you looking for? Books.

Books, plumber and press. John has been very hard at work editing. What are the ones on the shelves or about to be on the shelves? Well, at the moment, we have A Tale of Three Tribes in Dutch Formosa and China Running Dog by Mark Kitto.

It's a wonderful novel set in the crazy high fever days of China, Shanghai, 2000. Ex-pats getting into trouble. China Running Dog.

We also have a collection of stories about rural Taiwan, living in and exploring the countryside and the wilds of Taiwan written by some of the best Taiwan writers out there. That's coming very soon. All of these fine books can be, at least the information about it, can be found at plumberainpress.com. All right.

Enough bits and pieces for today. Thanks for listening to a scattered Formosa Files episode. That was a review we got recently.

Really?

Yeah. “Good podcast, but bumpy.”

Bumpy. Can we find out where they live?

No.

All right. Bye.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.