FORMOSA FILES PODCAST S4-E28: The Pirate Husband-and-Wife Duo Who Terrorized Taiwan (1800-1809)
She loved opium, handsome pirates, and spoke English... plus she allegedly (it's almost certainly not true) sometimes went into battle topless! He was a pirate warlord who, at one point, had hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of men under his control. Meet the Tsais (Cais): 蔡牽 and 蔡牽媽 a crazy couple who deservedly became absolute legends. This story's English information comes mostly from Maritime Taiwan: Historical Encounters with the East and the West (East Gate Books) by Prof. Henry Tsai.
Cover shows an example from a Western painting (artist unknown) of the Guangdong Red Flag Gang pirate ship. While not from the same group as Cai Qian and Cai Qian Ma, it gives you an example of the scale of these large pirate vessels that were considerably more powerful than ships from the Qing dynasty navy. In the top left corner is a fictional Chinese pirate flag idea created by a Synthetic-platypus/Reddit.
#formosafiles #podcasts #taiwan #history #formosa
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The Formosa Files podcast is sponsored by the FRANK CHEN FOUNDATION (陳啟川先生文教基金會)
Website: https://www.frank-chen.org.tw/
This top-rated history podcast tells stories from the history of Formosa (Taiwan) from circa 1600 C.E. - 2000 C.E., via interesting, lesser-known short stories presented in a non-chronological order.
HOSTS: John Ross is an author and co-founder of publisher Camphor Press, which specializes in books on Taiwan and China in English, while Eryk Michael Smith has worked as a writer and journalist for multiple media outlets in Taiwan, including the island's only English-language radio station ICRT (FM 100.7). Both Ross and Smith have lived in Taiwan for well over 20 years and call the island home.
