Bits & Pieces - July 2025 - Taiwan’s First Belgian Student, Madame Chiang’s Midlife Canvas, and the Immovable Last Emperor’s Cousin – S5-E21

This Bits and Pieces episode blows from here to there—just like Typhoon Danas, which recently battered John’s beloved Chiayi. It’s a little chaotic, a little wild.

We jump from Belgium to Yemen to 1950s Taipei, where we meet Pierre Ryckmans, a young scholar who arrived in Taiwan on a cargo ship and ended up learning brushwork from the cousin of China’s last emperor—a famously tedious teacher who refused to leave his studio to tutor Madame Chiang Kai-shek after she took up painting at 53.

We wrap things up with the Generalissimo himself, who, despite a full-hour audience, somehow managed to leave absolutely no impression on Ryckmans, a man who would become a giant in the world of sinology.

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