The Taiwan History Podcast: Formosa Files

Two-time Academy Award winning director Ang Lee (李安) is probably the most globally famous person from Taiwan. But this Pingtung-born movie master actually started out wanting to be an actor. And, if it had not been for his wife’s insistence to keep pursuing his filmmaking dreams, Lee would likely have given up and opened a Chinese restaurant instead! Luckily for the world, that didn't happen. Here's the story of one of the greatest modern movie directors, the man behind “The Wedding Banquet,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “Brokeback Mountain,” and “The Life of Pi,”... the Taiwanese-American Ang Lee.

The Korean War would almost certainly have ended much earlier but for the tricky question of what to do with Chinese POWs. The 21,000 Red Chinese soldiers captured were finally given a choice: go home to China...or go to "Free China" on Taiwan, the ROC. The choices made by these captives were not, however, free from influence. Every side in the conflict had an angle that would benefit themselves, and each tried to steer the POWs to making the "right choice." Some of this "steering" involved drastic measures such as forcibly tattooing political slogans -- or, worse, cutting such tattoos off. Here's the somewhat forgotten tale of why Taiwan once annually celebrated "123 Freedom Day."

It's 1950 and a war-weary world is at it again. Communist China pours fuel on the conflict in Korea by sending in a quarter of a million soldiers. ROC President Chiang Kai-shek has, from the start, offered to send his Nationalist troops. MacArthur is now, more than ever, determined to use them. But American president Truman continues to say "No!" and he fires MacArthur over the general's resistance to Washington's policy of containing the war. Taiwan, however, would end up playing a central role in the war. Here's just one example: The UN/US forces can't understand Chinese radio intercepts or interrogate Chinese prisoners. Is there somewhere with Mandarin speakers who have translation and interrogation experience? Yep. Taiwan. Listen to part one of this episode now... and make sure to come back for part two, to hear the tale of how Taiwan indirectly helped the Korean War drag on for close to two extra years.

Kaohsiung Harbor was, in the late twentieth century, one of the world's busiest ports, but back during the time of the Opium Wars, it was still a rather secluded and hard-to-find place. Based on the somewhat embellished "A Cruise in an Opium Clipper," this is the story of how a British merchant ship carrying chests of opium found its way to Takao -- modern-day Kaohsiung. Today, of course, opium is mostly illegal, but as you'll hear... back then it was quite popular, and considered by many to be no worse than alcohol. So, trim the mainsail, hard to starboard... and another barrel of grog! We're sailing to 'Ta-ku'!

After the Americans introduced baseball to Japan in the late 19th century, Japan took the game John Ross might call "a corruption of cricket" to their new colonial possession, where it became a hit. Surviving -- somewhat surprisingly -- the arrival of the Nationalists in 1949, baseball was officially ignored for the most part, which helped usher in a "Golden Age'' for the game and its rise to the status of "national game." But harnessed for political and material gain, baseball would be tarnished by a series of scandals that left fans unhappy and out of the stands. In the 2020s, however, there are signs of a revival... Could the "Guo Qiu" be making a comeback?

Taiwan's only English radio station, International Community Radio Taipei (ICRT) has been a part of millions of Taiwanese -- and many an expat in Taiwan's -- lives since it took over from the US military in 1979. Tim Berge, a 30+ year Taiwan resident, has spent most of his years here working for ICRT, and is today the station's GM. In this new Formosa Files interview feature, Tim Berge talks to Eryk about where ICRT came from, waxes nostalgic over the 'golden era' of the 1980s-90s, give info on how ICRT is funded, tells a few lesser-known stories and answers questions about common misconceptions.  (Full disclosure: Eryk Michael Smith has, since 2007, worked for or with ICRT as a writer, news broadcaster, and 'stringer' reporter from south Taiwan)   

Taiwan lies at the heart of what's called the "first island chain," a boring name for a long line of amazing islands that stretches from Borneo to Russia’s Kuril Islands. The main island of Taiwan's closest neighbor is Yonaguni Island, part of what is today Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. Formerly it was part of the Ryukyu Kingdom, itself a vassal state of first Ming China, and then Japan after a 1609 invasion from Kyushu. In 1879, Japan officially annexed the islands into its empire, and then turned their gaze to nearby Taiwan. The connections between Okinawa (the Ryukyus) and Taiwan are not well-documented, but there were many, both in the distant and recent past. Here are a few of those stories. ​

After unifying Japan’s warring states, supreme feudal lord Hideyoshi launched a massive invasion of Korea. In 1593, a year into this Imjin War of 1592-1598, he sent an envoy to Taiwan on a doomed mission to establish formal diplomatic and trade relations.  In 1609 and 1616, the Japanese Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, hoping to establish indirect trading links with China, sent two larger missions to Taiwan.  They were led and manned by Christian samurai from the island of Kyushu, which in the late 1500s had seen amazing success by Portuguese and Spanish missionaries in converting the population.  Both expeditions to Taiwan were failures to the point of farce, but the many misunderstandings and missteps make for fantastic stories.  Get ready for some katana-flavored diplomacy, with generous servings of piracy, abducted envoys, and a lot of seppuku.

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 kidnappings, killings, rapes, police manhunts and shoot-outs. The climax comes in November when Chen Chin-hsing (陳進興), the sole survivor of the trio, takes foreign hostages; South African military attaché to the ROC, McGill Alexander and his family are held at gunpoint at their Taipei home for twenty nightmarish hours.

The high number of deaths during the 1996 Mt. Everest climbing season supplied a tragic plotline for books, movies, and documentaries. Taiwanese climbers did not come out of these accounts looking competent -- to say the least -- but the record may need to be corrected. Here's the story of Makalu Gao, who survived a death sentence: an overnight stay at the top of the world -- without food or oxygen -- as well as the tale of numerous heroes who helped save Gao, and others, over those deadly days in May 1996.