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Next week we’ll kick off Season Five of Formosa Files! A huge thank you to the Frank C. Chen Foundation for its continued support of the program; without it, this podcast would not exist. In S4 we talked a lot about the 1624-2024 anniversary of the arrival of the Dutch, the new historical novel “A …
如果要舉一位臺灣或華語流行音樂史上最有影響力，也最令人感到惋惜的歌手，相信很多人的選擇都是鄧麗君。這位在東亞有巨大影響力的歌手，在臺灣因為積極投入勞軍活動，也曾是許多男性的「軍中情人」。這集的Formosa Files中文版，就由兩位主持人來與大家聊聊鄧麗君，Teresa Teng，這位臺灣永遠的歌姬。
He’s a rockstar in Taiwan; swarmed by the media as he grabs a snack at a local night market while wearing his trademark leather jacket – there’s almost no chance you’ve never heard of him: Jensen Huang 黃仁勳, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia is now probably the most famous person of Taiwanese heritage in…
在一些原住民流傳至今的故事與神話中，可以窺見雲豹一直都在某些原住民族群的文化與歷史中占有非常重要的角色。而直到今日，雖然臺灣雲豹已經在研究報告中被認為滅絕，但仍然持續有零星而難以確認的目擊報告。到底這種美麗而善於隱蔽的掠食者，是否還生存在臺灣的深山老林裡呢？這集 Formosa Files 中文版 Podcast 就由兩位主持人來跟大家聊聊臺灣雲豹的一些歷史小故事。
你知道嗎？臺灣的梅花鹿其實野外的族群已經滅絕。現在在墾丁看到的梅花鹿，都是後來復育的成果。然而臺灣還遺留有非常多以「鹿」命名的地方，間接展現臺灣過去應該是一個遍地鹿群的地方。究竟臺灣是怎麼從鹿群的天堂，變得需要復育梅花鹿呢？復育的成果又如何呢？這集 Formosa Files 中文版 Podcast 就由兩位主持人來跟大家聊聊，臺灣梅花鹿的一些故事。
400 Years: Dutch Formosa - part two:Roughly 80% of Dutch (or other European) men settling in Taiwan as part of the Dutch East India Company's (VOC) presence on Taiwan married Indigenous Taiwanese women! Learn more about Dutch-era Taiwan through the eyes of women as a remarkable woman, Nation…
在國內外發生重大災害的時候，總是會有一群人出現在災區，發放物資或為災民及救災人員準備餐點。臺灣人或許對他們並不陌生：臺灣佛教慈濟基金會，或是以前的慈濟功德會。雖然難免有若干爭議，但不可否認的，走出國際的慈濟已經成為臺灣歷史上非常重要的一個組織。這集 Formosa Files 中文版 Podcast 就由兩位主持人來跟大家聊聊，慈濟基金會的一些故事。
說到臺灣人早期學習英文的機會，ICRT大概是其中一個大家最熟悉的媒介。ICRT這個廣播電台的歷史從1957年的美軍電台開始，到1979年因為中美斷交而將設備象徵性的「賣」給中華民國政府，並在同年催生了「ICRT」，台北國際社區廣播電台（International Community Radio Taipei）至今，已經用ICRT這個名字在臺灣播送了45年。由於是臺灣歷史上唯一的英語廣播電台，又容易收聽，自然成為臺灣人學習英文與接觸外國文化的重要來源。這回的 Formosa Files 中文版 Podcast，就由主持人 Eryk Michael Smith 來專訪ICRT的總經理 Tim B…
In the first few decades after retreating from the mainland, the Republic of China on Taiwan needed to shine as brightly as possible in foreign spotlights to keep alive the idea (or some might say fantasy) that the government on Taiwan really did represent all of China, the most populous nation on …
![S4 - [ENCORE] - Taiwanese-American Director Ang Lee Wins Again](https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/redwood-labs/showpage/uploads/images/5fe4634d-57bf-4684-aab3-6db04128fe71.jpg "S4 - [ENCORE] - Taiwanese-American Director Ang Lee Wins Again")
To celebrate Oscar-winning director Ang Lee (李安) being named the winner for theater/film of the 2024 Praemium Imperiale, a global arts prize awarded annually by the Japan Art Association, we thought we'd reprise our Ang Lee bio episode from Formosa Files Season 2. Enjoy!
Lonely Planet travel guidebooks provided some of best info on a new destination in the pre-internet era, and the late Robert Storey (1954-2017) wrote quite a few of them... including the first four editions for Taiwan. Robert Storey’s Lonely Planet Taiwan editions are funny, sarcastic, and insightf…
提到臺灣的野生動物園，大家都會想到六福村。一部分聽眾朋友可能還會有記憶，以前甚至可以直接開車入園，直接在車上看動物。雖然六福村在1990年代起就逐漸不再允許開車入園，但2024年又重新少量開放，蔚為一波話題。這集的 Formosa Files 中文版 Podcast，就讓兩位主持人來跟大家聊聊印象中的六福村與其它臺灣的動物園。
The incredible story of Amis Taiwanese Olympic decathlete Maysang Kalimud, better known as CK Yang (楊傳廣), was one of the first stories featured in the first season of Formosa Files (December 2021).At that time, John and Eryk bemoaned how little-known this amazing Indigenous Taiwanese athlete is…
John chats with veteran Hong Kong-based journalist and author of The Island (2024) Mark O'Neill, who tells us what Taiwan was like in the early 1980s, when he first came to study Chinese. Despite a mysterious knife attack and various authoritarian elements (such as “mail boxes” for reporting spies …
A horrific murder of an American teenager by two other American teenagers in 1985 led to some serious soul-searching: How could the international community in Taiwan (some of whom don't speak Chinese well enough to get help from local sources) aid those going through mental health crises, are in ne…
John talks with Chris Bates about one of Taiwan’s greatest ever martial artists, Hong Yixiang 洪懿祥 (1925–1993). He was Taiwan’s foremost master of the Chinese internal martial arts (which consist of baguazhang 八卦掌, xingyiquan 形意拳 and taijiquan 太極拳.) The Hong family learnt these fighting forms from e…
During the Mao Zedong years, China was off-limits to Western researchers. Some came to Taiwan as a substitute, among them American anthropologist Frank Bessac. John chats with Michael Aldrich, author of “Old Lhasa: A Biography,” about Bessac’s work in Taiwan. They also recount his adventures in Chi…
China-born architect Yang Cho-cheng 楊卓成 (1914-2006) left his magnificent mark on Taiwan with the CKS Memorial Hall, and the National Theater and Concert Hall (NTCH) among his greatest masterpieces. This week, we’ve got part one of the story of how a classical Chinese-style trilogy of buildings came…
In the summer of 1973, a young Mike Chinoy finagled his way onto one of the earliest trips of civilian Americans to “Red China.” He would later become CNN’s China correspondent – moving to the PRC in 1987 – and became famous as he reported live on the infamous events that transpired in and around T…
Linda Arrigo has been in Taiwan for many years, working as a human rights activist, as an important member of the early team of fighters who risked life and limb for a democratic Taiwan, and more recently, worked with the Taiwan Green Party on environmental issues such as stopping NPP4. She's also …
Shih Ming-teh 施明德 died on the morning of his 83rd birthday, January 15th, 2024. This Taiwan democracy champion spent a combined 25.5 years in Taiwanese prisons for “sedition;” what the one-party state called his activism. Shih would live to see Taiwan blossom into a free society, and received recog…
National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) PhD candidate Angel B. Menéndez came to Taiwan from his native Guatemala on a full scholarship provided by the Taiwan government. For Taiwan, this was a wise financial choice as Menéndez first studied mechanical engineering, then Mandarin, and then became invol…
In the 1960s and 1970s, many tens of thousands of Taiwanese went into self-exile; most of them headed to the United States. The people who became Taiwanese-Americans did so for a variety of reasons, but it's probably fair to say most were seeking opportunities more readily available in a democratic…
Frank C. Chen was the mayor of Kaohsiung from 1960 to 1968. The foundation that bears his name is the reason we have Formosa Files. Paul Chen is one of Frank Chen's sons (b. 1944), and in 1979, he established the Kaohsiung Wild Bird Society. Why? Well, he and his dad were once avid hunters, and Pau…