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We step into the strange Cold War world of The Chairman, a forgotten 1969 spy thriller starring Hollywood great Gregory Peck. The movie, which was partly filmed in Taiwan, is about a scientist sent behind the Bamboo Curtain to steal a miracle agricultural formula. The plot is outlandish, but behind…
It’s 1965, and Henry (27) and Margaret (26) Lee have moved to the USA. She’s working as a schoolteacher, and he’s trying to make ends meet however he can, including by washing dishes at a Chinese restaurant and teaching kung fu. After some hard years — and a long stint in school — Henry Lee secures…
To mark the recent passing of Henry C. Lee (李昌鈺), one of the world’s most famous forensic scientists, we examine his extraordinary life. In Part 1, we’re in impoverished postwar Taiwan. Lee is the eleventh of thirteen children. That, and his father dying on “China’s Titanic,” means it’s a childhood…
John talks with Professor Dafydd Fell of SOAS University about "The Twilight Years of Taiwan’s Sugar Railways", his new book co-written with Wang Xiang, a researcher who has spent years documenting the remains and memories of this once vast railway network. Fell’s own fascination with the sugar rai…
In 1904, colonial Taiwan tried to impress America with oolong tea at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Just five years later, two American spies disguised as South African zoologists were secretly roaming Japanese Formosa – but they weren’t investigating tea. They were on a U.S. Army mission to gather mi…
That little green blob of spicy paste beside your sushi and sashimi has an amazing backstory. The notoriously fussy plant is grown in the mountains of Taiwan (special shoutout to Chiayi County). It arrived in Alishan with the Japanese colonists and their forest railway and flourished in the cool mo…
Huang Chin-tao (黃金島) was never a household name, but his life story is the story of modern Taiwan. In this concluding episode, we follow Huang from the 2.28 uprising in 1947 as he joins a resistance group led by a rare combination: a Taiwanese woman communist guerrilla commander, Xie Xuehong, whom …
This is part one of the extraordinary life story of Huang Chin-tao (黃金島 Huáng Jīndǎo). In fact, he seemed to live not one life but many; he was a Japanese naval recruit, a combat soldier, a survivor of typhoons and pirates, an armed rebel during the 2-28 Incident of 1947, a man on the run, a prison…
What do Taiwan, China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam have in common? Chopsticks. In the second Formosa Files Snack, Eryk and John explore the cultural story behind one of East Asia’s most iconic everyday objects. Why did chopsticks replace spoons in China? What role did noodles, rice, and Confucian phi…
Horses have never played a big role in Taiwan’s history – or have they? Eryk and John start Season Six of Formosa Files and celebrate the Year of the Fire Horse by uncovering a series of surprising equine stories. We have prehistoric horses, Dutch cavalry, and Indigenous riders hunting wild cattle …