TAIWAN HISTORY - Formosa Files Episodes

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.

How do you get a famous, one-armed democracy activist -- who is under house arrest and being watched 24/7 by the authorities -- off of a well-guarded, militarized island? Hint: A team of brave supporters, some forgery, and a whole lot of chutzpah. Hear the conclusion of the tale of the amazing life of the late Dr. Peng Ming-min.

Dr. Peng Ming-min (彭明敏) was a Taiwanese pro-independence/pro-democracy activist who lived an exceptional life - losing an arm in a WWII US air raid, witnessing the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, and being arrested for sedition after returning to Taiwan -- to name just a few of the amazing parts of his life story. In part one of this tale, we delve into his background and take you up to the day of his arrest in Taipei in 1964. ----------- UPDATE: Shortly after recording this episode, it was announced that Dr. Peng had passed away in the early morning hours of April 8th, 2022, at the age of 98. We offer our heartfelt condolences to his family - and may he rest in peace. Whether one agrees with all his political views or not, it's undeniable that Dr. Peng Ming-min was a powerful advocate for and champion of Taiwanese democracy -- the freedoms we enjoy in Taiwan today were fought for by people such as Dr. Peng, for which we are sincerely grateful.

Two-thirds of this island is mountainous, and climbing the mountains -- or even just driving across them -- is an awesome experience. But, woe be to those that are unprepared... or, sadly, just unlucky. With many peaks over 3,000 meters, when things go wrong up there, they can go very wrong.

Western-style adoption (as in a couple taking a baby home from an orphanage) has not been and is still not very common in Taiwan. But there are plenty of local ways kids find new homes here, including a now-abandoned, rather shocking "brother-sister/husband-wife" arrangement! And -- for a time -- quite a few girls, in particular, were adopted by American, Australian and European parents, who raised the children back in their home countries. Several of these foreign-raised Taiwan-born girls would become local media sensations when they returned to the island in search of their "mother-land."

In 1622 and then again in 1631, crew members (including foraging parties and shipwreck survivors) from Dutch ships were killed by the aboriginal people on Lamey Island, what is today’s Pingtung County’s Xiao Liuqiu (小琉球). The Dutch East India Company’s regional headquarters in Batavia (Jakarta) sent orders to the Dutch commanders on Taiwan to: “Completely depopulate the island... as a warning to others!” And this, sadly, was done. The Lamey islanders were killed or deported, mostly to Taiwan but some ended up as far afield as Japan, Southeast Asia, and Europe. A grisly tale, but one that deserves to be more widely known.

It's 1895 and Formosa has officially become part of the Japanese Empire. Not everyone on the island is super happy about this, and bursts of violent resistance are put down by imperial troops as they march for the rebel capital of the self-declared Republic of Formosa, Tainan. Japan's General Nogi is losing patience. If Tainan doesn't surrender, he might just level the city with artillery. But a group of locals and foreign missionaries embark on a brave quest that would lead to the oldest city in Taiwan not being turned into a heap of rubble.

After the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, nations around the world began thinking about acquiring nuclear weapons of their own. Among them was China, then ruled by supreme leader Chiang Kai-shek. The Nationalists' retreat to Taiwan interrupted those early ambitions, but when the PRC successfully detonated a nuclear device in 1964, CKS stepped up efforts to develop nukes. This secret program continued after the death of Chiang Kai-shek in 1975 and came surprisingly close to success. Taiwan, however, would not end up joining the Atomic Club. Here's the story of how that happened:

When did people first get to Taiwan? Was there a land bridge? Plus... a few interesting legends. A short phone call that's a fun intro to Taiwan’s prehistory.

The Dutch were expelled from southwestern Taiwan by a pirate warlord and Ming loyalist Koxinga in 1662. Their relatively brief stay of 38 years was marked by impressive achievements and lasting impacts. But why they were there in the first place? What did they want? Who did they trade with? How did they get along with the locals? Enjoy a mini "deep dive" in this bonus episode exploring Dutch Formosa.

In 1933, on a winter’s night in the Russian town of Yekaterinburg, Faina Vakhreva -- then 17 years old -- was walking home and became the unwanted subject of attention of a Russian man who began harassing her. A 23-year-old Chinese man also walking home at the time, saw what was happening and chased away the harasser. The Chinese man was future Taiwan (ROC) president Chiang Ching-kuo. Faina and CCK would be a couple for 55 years.

In the mid-1990s Taiwanese politicians got together, and, after much wrangling, settled on a national health insurance system that today is the envy of many countries around the world. Here's the story of how we got to a single-payer, government-subsidized, mandatory program that provides more than decent care at incredibly decent rates. While not without faults, overall, it's pretty darn awesome.

In the 1980s, Japan's, South Korea's, and Taiwan’s massive fishing fleets gained notoriety for their destructive driftnet fishing. The use of giant driftnets, sometimes tens of kilometers long, threatened to turn the oceans into deserts. In 1989 the United States launched a high-seas sting operation, which culminated in a US coastguard cutter chasing a Taiwanese fishing boat carrying illegally-caught salmon for 2,700 miles across the Pacific. This operation would help bring an end to these “walls of death.”

Despite the failed attempt to create a myth of a Pacific Ocean "Bermuda Triangle" near Taiwan, the seas around this island are indeed cruel... ships sometimes disappear without a trace. It's little wonder the majority of temples here are devoted to Mazu, Goddess of the Sea, who watches over fishermen. We tell of shipping and transport vessels encountering tragedy, but two of this episode's most surprising stories involve unlikely victims: a dashing French baron crossing the Taiwan Strait, and sightseers on a lake cruise.

The word "stalemate" defined relations between Taiwan and China in the 1970s and early 1980s. Neither side wanted to legitimize the other with "official" talks so ideas such as postal and travel links, as well as the most important - family reunions - went nowhere. But everything would change in 1986 when 王錫爵, a former ROC Airforce U2 spy plane pilot did the unthinkable - hijacking his China Airlines cargo plane and flying it to Guangzhou.

Maysang Kalimud, better known by his Chinese name C.K. Yang (楊傳廣), is arguably the greatest Taiwanese athlete of all time. In 1960, this native Taiwanese from the Amis tribe came within an inch of winning the Olympic decathlon competition held in Rome. He took silver, but C.K. Yang's friendship with the man who won gold in that event in '60, American Rafer Johnson, is the stuff of sportsmanship legend. Here's the story of C.K. Yang  (1933-2007) ... a Taiwanese athlete like no other.

War in northern Vietnam spills over into Taiwan, with French troops occupying several ports. This wake-up call for the Qing prompts an upgrading of their neglected frontier prefecture; Taiwan becomes a province, and the authorities finally start to develop and strengthen the island. It's too little too late, however, and Peking's weak commitment to Taiwan is shown in 1895, when it cedes Taiwan and the Pescadores "in perpetuity" to Japan. After 212 years, Qing rule over Taiwan comes to an end. But before Japanese colonial rule begins, there will be a short-lived Republic of Formosa.

After native people in the far south of Formosa kill survivors from the wrecked US merchant vessel The Rover in 1867, the Americans send a punitive expedition. A few years later, the survivors of a Japanese (Ryukyuan) shipwreck are also killed, near Pingtung's Mudan. The Qing authorities' weak response to the incidents will sow the seeds for Japanese colonization of the island.

The Second Opium War (1856-1860) lead to the opening of Danshui, near Taipei, and Anping (Tainan) as treaty ports. Soon after, the Qing authorities opened Takao (Kaohsiung) and Keelung to foreign ships. First came the foreign traders, then the missionaries... one of the latter would become a household name on the island: George Leslie Mackay, a man who used his dentistry skills -- and a pair of pliers -- to help spread the word.

As the Empire secretly prepared for a coming war with the aim of dominating Asia, visitors to and foreign residents on Japanese Formosa fell under suspicion. Spies lurked everywhere in the 1930s!! --in the fevered imaginations of the local authorities, that is.

Determined to prove that they were just as fit to be imperialists as the great Western powers, the Japanese were keen to show off the "model colony" of Taiwan. The most ambitious attempt to do this was at the Japan-British Exhibition, held in London in 1910, which included a small Formosan village with real native Taiwanese on display! Here's a lesser-known story of a small group of Paiwanese aborigines from Pingtung who traveled across the world and back as a kind of "zoo" exhibit... but that didn't stop them from making friends and the best of a unique experience.

Tzu Chi is unique in relying on mostly laypersons instead of clergy, focusing on real-world problems instead of only the spiritual, and having an extremely open-minded attitude towards other faiths – this Buddhist group built Catholic and Protestant churches for native Taiwanese people who lost their villages in Typhoon Morakot! The story begins with a remarkable woman – then called Jun Yun – who would become Master Cheng Yen, the founder of the largest charity group in Taiwan.