Travel Account Episodes

We’ve got a new “snack” for you on Sunday, but today we’re revisiting an episode from 2022. Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s two expeditions of 1852–1854 pried open Japan. Less well known is that one of the American ships visited Keelung in northeastern Taiwan to investigate the harbor and its coal resources. And completely forgotten is another American project, the North Pacific Exploring and Surveying Expedition of 1853 to 1856, which saw two visits to Taiwan. At that time, the United States was one of several Western powers that had an eye on establishing a foothold on Formosa’s wild East Coast. The mysterious region lay outside of Chinese control and promised all sorts of possible utility, whether as a coaling station or a penal colony. In today’s podcast, we’re aboard the John Hancock in the company of Lt. Alexander Habersham, who wrote an account of the expedition.

In the final episode, the pace picks up as we follow Austrian traveler Adolf Fischer on his 1898 journey through Japanese-ruled Taiwan. He heads into the dangerous hill country of central Taiwan and later gives us some memorably morose lines about gray, cholera-scarred Penghu. Fischer treks from Takao (Kaohsiung) across the southern mountains to the East Coast. Along the way, he has encounters with the Paiwan indigenous people involving fermented maize liquor and canned meat diplomacy, and yodeling. Eryk and John enjoy his often spicy opinions, sometimes agreeing (his observations on Buddhist missionaries) and at other times shaking their heads (he was so very wrong about Kaohsiung). We wrap up by looking at Fischer’s ultimate verdict on Japan’s colonial experiment, and what happened to him and to his remarkable museum legacy in Germany.

In Part 2, we continue in the footsteps of the cultured Austrian traveler Adolf Fischer on his 1898 journey in Japanese-ruled Taiwan. From the commercial enclave of Tōa-tiū-tiâⁿ (Dadaocheng), we cruise downriver to Tamsui (Danshui), meet the famed missionary George Mackay, hear warnings about rebels in the nearby hills, and solve a crocodile mystery. After overcoming Japanese suspicions that he might be a spy for the German Kaiser, Fischer heads south to Shinchiku (Hsinchu). Drawing on his 1900 book, “Wanderings Through Formosa,” we get sharp, sometimes surprising observations about the early years of Japanese rule. (The book was specially translated from into English for Formosa Files, and we enjoyed it so much that we had to make it a three-parter).

The first in a special three-part series, this is a Taiwan travel account never before told in English. Formosa Files has had Streifzüge durch Formosa (1900) translated into English. This travelogue, Wanderings Through Formosa, describes a journey through Japanese-ruled Taiwan in the spring of 1898 by Adolf Fischer, a cultured, sharp-tongued Austrian traveler. It offers a vivid outsider’s view of the island less than three years after Japan took control. What he found here was quite different from the standard glossy images we usually associate with the Japanese colonial period. And we throw in a bonus mystery (plus solution) about the vanishing German consulate in Dadaocheng.