NOTE: This is our first episode to be labeled “explicit,” not due to bad language, but because it includes reasonably direct anatomical references. It may be best not to play this aloud when minors are present.

We start with the relatively unknown story of Taiwanese boys condemned to become eunuchs in Emperor Qianlong’s imperial palace, their fate sealed simply because they were the young sons of rebels. We then turn to the first gender affirmation surgery (as it might be called today) performed in Taiwan, way back in the early 1950s, with the remarkable case of soldier Hsieh Chien-shun (謝尖順), the so-called "Chinese Christine."

In 1953, the discovery of Hsieh's medical condition and the ensuing series of operations became front-page news across Taiwan, with newspapers turning a deeply personal matter into a national spectacle. We explore the ethics of the case. Hsieh was reluctant to transition to female and only agreed after considerable pressure, making it much less of an “affirmation.”

Despite the sensational journalism and Cold War nationalism surrounding one of the most unusual episodes in Taiwan's modern history, Hsieh’s ordeal may have foreshadowed the island's later development as one of Asia's most progressive societies on issues of gender and sexuality.

TC Brown returns to Formosa Files – and to Taiwan – after 53 years away. A former U.S. Air Force security policeman stationed at CCK Air Base in Taichung for most of 1968-73, TC reflects on his recent trip back to the island, the Taiwan he remembers from the Vietnam War era, and the Taiwan he found today. John talks with TC about his memoir Made in Taiwan and town patrol in Taichung’s “Dirty Dozen” bar district. We also visit Hualien through Wang Chen-ho’s bawdy novel Rose, Rose, I Love You, one of the few works of fiction to touch on Taiwan’s role in Vietnam War R&R.

In the early hours of morning, Eryk and John head to a market in Taichung. Actually, they let Lin Kai-lun do that and all the other hard work. Lin is a third-generation fish seller, whose Chinese-language memoir A Guide to Fake Fishmongering tells a story of family debt, backbreaking labor, and the culture of Taiwan’s wet markets. It’s a moving story (the family brought low by gambling) and funny too (there’s some questionable medical advice). So, gather around the “urine tree” for a work-time break and fish-scented chat.

Cover image via What 3.0

Does a “triangular head” mean danger? Did the wartime Japanese release experimental snakes on Yangmingshan? Do you really collapse after a hundred steps if a hundred-pacer bites you? Herpetologist Gerrut Norval joins John Ross to talk snakes. They focus on Taiwan’s six important venomous species: the green bamboo viper, Chinese cobra, many-banded krait, Russell’s viper, Taiwan habu, and the famous hundred-pacer. The biggest surprise for John was learning about the wild population of Burmese pythons on Kinmen. Be sure to visit the Formosa Files website for pictures and names of the snakes mentioned.

To celebrate the new Yaima Maru ferry service connecting Keelung with the Yaeyama Islands, Taiwan’s nearest neighbors, we uncover stories of Taiwanese migrants there in the Japanese colonial era. On jungle-clad Iriomote Island, some suffered brutal conditions in the coal mines. On nearby Ishigaki, Taiwanese settlers helped transform the island’s agriculture. They developed its pineapple industry and also introduced water buffalo, whose descendants can be seen today pulling tourist carts.

Looking for the true story behind the Dragon Boat Festival (Duanwu Jie)? There’s much more to it than dragon boat races and sticky rice dumplings (zongzi).

Many know the standard origin story of the patriotic poet Qu Yuan, but Formosa Files uncovers the less-tidy roots of the holiday. The Dragon Boat Festival date falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month; once feared as the dangerous "Month of a Hundred Poisons." Discover how people responded with temple rituals, protective herbs, and even arsenic-laced wine.

John Ross and Eryk Michael Smith also chat about what marks the arrival of summer in modern Taiwan, from peak mango season to the blooming of the yellow golden shower and red flame trees right around when schools celebrate graduations. Plus, Eryk shares ancient wisdom from Ben-Hur ("Row well, and live" – 1959) as he recounts his own dragon boat racing glory.

As we head into the 2026 World Cup, we take a look at Taiwan’s surprisingly rich football heritage. Although a minor sport today, there have been periods of intense popularity and success. The soccer story starts more than a century ago with British Presbyterian missionary Edward Band, who introduced the sport to students in Tainan. We follow the growth of football during the Japanese colonial era, the White Terror crackdown, and then the unusual “Hong Kong Legs” era when the ROC national team used “football mercenaries.” The country’s greatest international success, however, came with the Mulan women’s football team.

The disaster was so terrible, so deadly that shocking reports of it reached as far away as Europe; they claimed that in 1782, Taiwan had been devastated by a colossal tsunami. Some accounts said the island had almost disappeared beneath the sea and that 40,000 people had died. Yet strangely, Chinese records seemed to say almost nothing about it. In this snack episode, Eryk and John put on their white coats and get scientific; or, in other words, they use some recent groundbreaking academic papers to explain one of the greatest mysteries in Taiwan’s history. Was there really a massive tsunami on Taiwan’s southwest coast in the 1780s? Listen and learn.

Who owns Taiwan’s time? Taipei-based political commentator and author of Formosa Review substack Sasha B. Chhabra helps us wind back the history of Taiwan’s clocks, from local rhythms before what we now call “standard time,” to Japanese colonial rule, wartime Tokyo time, and ROC “Central Plains Time.” Then we move forward to more recent debates over sovereignty and identity. “What time is it?” seems like a simple question, but this episode delightfully complicates it with stories of daylight, empire, modernization, authoritarianism, and Taiwan’s right to define its own place in the world.

Who owns Taiwan’s time? Taipei-based political commentator and author of Formosa Review substack Sasha B. Chhabra helps us wind back the history of Taiwan’s clocks, from local rhythms before what we now call “standard time,” to Japanese colonial rule, wartime Tokyo time, and ROC “Central Plains Time.” Then we move forward to more recent debates over sovereignty and identity. “What time is it?” seems like a simple question, but this episode delightfully complicates it with stories of daylight, empire, modernization, authoritarianism, and Taiwan’s right to define its own place in the world.

In the mid-1600s, Caspar Schmalkalden left war-ravaged Europe to work as a soldier and surveyor for the Dutch. After spending time in Brazil, he sailed to Batavia and finally to Formosa, where he lived among Dutch colonists, Chinese settlers, and Indigenous communities for several years.

Back home in Germany, Schmalkalden wrote a richly illustrated account of his travels. It remained unpublished for more than 300 years and has still never appeared in a complete English translation. 

For the first time, we tell the story of this observant German traveler and the seventeenth-century Taiwan he encountered: a land of colorful feasts, deer hunts, strange tropical illnesses, herds of wild horses, and a mysterious creature he called the “Tayouan Devil.”