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Freddy Lim, Taiwan’s new envoy to Finland

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Source: NYT (5/21/25)
He’s a Heavy Metal Musician, and Taiwan’s New Envoy to Finland
阅读简体中文版 | 閱讀繁體中文版
Freddy Lim, the founder and lead singer of Chthonic, is well known in Finland, a heavy metal capital of the world.
By Ephrat Livni

A man wearing all black, with black marks painted on his face, is standing on a stage, holding a microphone above his head and screaming.

Freddy Lim, who was appointed as Taiwan’s envoy to Finland on Monday, performing with his band, Chthonic, in Tokyo in 2019. Credit…Nicolas Datiche/LightRocket, via Getty Images

Diplomatic appointments do not usually excite the world’s metalheads. But when Taiwan on Monday named the frontman for a band known as “the Black Sabbath of Asia” as its envoy to the heavy metal mecca of Finland, rockers on multiple continents rejoiced.

“Because if you’re gonna be an ambassador to any Scandinavian country, you better be in a metal band,” the Brooklyn-based publication Metal Injection wrote.

The choice of Freddy Lim, founder and lead singer of Chthonic, by President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan appears apt: Finland has the most metal bands per capita, with about 80 for every 100,000 citizens — a data point often cited by metal fans. And Mr. Lim already has an affinity for the country, where his band has played in major cities and performed with Finnish musicians.

“Working with my partners in the Finnish music industry for a long time has made me have a special feeling for this country,” Mr. Lim said in a social media post on Monday, noting that his band had released four albums with the Finnish-founded label Spinefarm Records.

His selection as Taiwan’s envoy is not based on musical fame alone. Taiwan’s foreign minister, Lin Chia-lung, said on Monday that Mr. Lim was chosen for his human rights work and international exchange experience: He served as a national legislator from 2016 to 2024 and was chairman of Amnesty International in Taiwan from 2010 to 2014.

Mr. Lim, 49, formed Chthonic (pronounced THON-ik) around 1995, creating a heavy metal mythology for the band using elements of Taiwan’s local lore instead of the pagan and satanic imagery of some Western bands. The band’s 2005 album, “Seediq Bale” (Real Person), which was released in the United States in 2006 and worldwide the next year, brought the band international attention. It got Chthonic a spot in Ozzfest — on a tour founded and headlined by the British heavy metal legend Ozzy Osbourne — playing 24 major American cities. The band also toured Europe that year. Continue reading Freddy Lim, Taiwan’s new envoy to Finland →

The terrible secrets of Taiwan’s Stasi files

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Source: The Economist (5/1/25)
The terrible secrets of Taiwan’s Stasi files
Researchers have unearthed the surveillance records of Taiwan’s former dictatorship. But the revelations inside could tear society apart
By Alice Su

PHOTOGRAPHS: An Rong Xu

During the 1980s a young intellectual called Yang Bi-chuan used to give illicit history lectures in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. Charismatic and fearless, with a frizz of unruly hair, Yang was only in his 30s, but had already served seven years in prison for angering the authoritarian government that ruled the island. A voracious reader and self-taught historian, he referred to himself as the Taiwanese Trotsky.

At that time, nobody was teaching the Taiwanese their own history. The lush, sub-tropical island, which sits 130km off the coast of China, was run by the exiled Chinese Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang (KMT). When Taiwan was mentioned in KMT-run schools and universities, it was merely as a footnote in the glorious 5,000-year-long history of China. Students at the National Taiwan University invited Yang to come to their classrooms after the day’s official lessons were over to fill in the gaps.

Taiwaneseness is a complicated concept. Some islanders are from indigenous ethnic groups, but most are descended from Han Chinese immigrants from the province of Fujian, who first arrived in the 16th century. The island has been colonised by various empires: the Dutch, the Spanish, the Qing dynasty, the Japanese. Yang talked about the distinctly Taiwanese sense of identity that was forged by enduring and resisting these waves of occupation. Dozens of students would gather to listen. Continue reading The terrible secrets of Taiwan’s Stasi files →

Lung’s call for reconciliation draws fierce backlash

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Source: Taipei Times (4/4/25)
Lung Ying-tai’s call for reconciliation with China draws fierce backlash
By Kuo Yen-hui, Huang Chi-hao, Tsai Pai-ling and Sam Garcia / Staff writers

Former minister of culture Lung Ying-tai is pictured in an undated photograph. Photo: Taipei Times

It is time for Taiwan to “reconcile with China,” former minister of culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) said in a New York Times op-ed this week, criticizing the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and President William Lai (賴清德) for antagonizing China and stirring fear among Taiwan’s public.

Titled “The Clock is Ticking for Taiwan” and published on Tuesday, Lung said in her article that with US President Donald Trump “casting aside democratic values and America’s friends, Taiwan must begin an immediate, serious national conversation about how to secure peace with China.”

Lai’s “provocative labeling of China as an enemy … [is] threatening peace and the progress Taiwan has made in building an open, democratic society,” she said.

Lung said that relations with China were the best under former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), when “reconciliation seemed possible.”

Lung served as Taiwan’s first minister of culture from 2012-2014 under the KMT and is a prominent writer and cultural critic. Continue reading Lung’s call for reconciliation draws fierce backlash →

The Clock Is Ticking for Taiwan

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Source: NYT (4/1/25)
The Clock Is Ticking for Taiwan
阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版
By Yingtai Lung (Ms. Lung, a former culture minister of Taiwan, wrote from Taitung, Taiwan).

President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan and a group of soldiers holding up clenched fists and shouting in unison.

Credit…Ann Wang/Reuters

Taiwan’s cabdrivers are famously chatty, and after I settled into the back seat of a taxi in the island’s south recently, my cabby turned to me and cheerfully asked how my day was going, before abruptly declaring, “Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow.”

He was voicing a concern shared across Taiwan since President Trump pulled back on America’s strong support for Ukraine and added insult to injury by humiliating its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, at the White House in late February. Now people in Taiwan are wondering: If the United States could do that to Ukraine to cozy up to Russia, will it do the same to us to cozy up to China?

For decades, Taiwan’s leaders have framed our standoff with China — which claims Taiwan as its own territory and vows to take it, by force if necessary — as a defense of freedom and democracy, underpinned by the expectation that the United States would back us up if China were to invade. This created a false sense of security, allowing Taiwan’s politicians and people to delay a national reckoning over the best way for us to deal with China in order to ensure the long-term survival of our democracy. Continue reading The Clock Is Ticking for Taiwan →

Lai Ching-te’s security guards sentenced as Chinese spies

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Source: The Telegraph (3/27/25)
Taiwanese president’s security guards discovered to be Chinese spies
Our Foreign Staff

Lai Ching-te inspects the troops taking part in the Rapid Response Exercise

Three of the soldiers convicted worked as part of Lai Ching-te’s security detail – I-Hwa Cheng/Getty Images

Four Taiwanese soldiers have been sentenced to prison for leaking confidential information to China.

Three soldiers in charge of security for the presidential office and another in the defence ministry’s information and telecommunications command were convicted for violating national security law, the Taipei district court said on Wednesday.

The number of people prosecuted for spying for Beijing has risen sharply in recent years, with retired and serving members of the military targeted by Chinese infiltration efforts, official figures show.

“Their acts betrayed the country and endangered national security,” the court said in a statement.

It comes after Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s president, announced in March his plans to reinstate military judges to hear Chinese espionage cases and other offences involving Taiwanese service members.

The soldiers received sentences ranging from five years and 10 months to seven years. Continue reading Lai Ching-te’s security guards sentenced as Chinese spies →

Taiwanese Science Fiction–cfp

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Call for Abstracts: Taiwanese Science Fiction
Journal: Taiwan Lit and the Global Sinosphere
Guest Editors: Wen-chi Li and Michael O’Krent
Expected Publication Year: 2027

Over the last 10 years, science fiction has increasingly been recognized as a significant cultural force in Chinese-speaking societies. However, scholars have yet to explore science fiction in Taiwan in depth, with existing scholarship largely prioritizing authors writing in mainland China. For this special issue, we invite submissions on the cultural, social, political, linguistic and historical contexts of Taiwanese science fiction. With this special issue, we hope to create an outline of the history and significance of Taiwanese science fiction. What are the major texts and themes of Taiwanese science fiction? What is unique about science fiction in Taiwan, and in what ways is Taiwanese science fiction connected to science fiction beyond Taiwan, including mainland China, Japan, and the West? How can Taiwanese science fiction contribute to our understanding of Taiwan and other Sinophone societies? How does science fiction position itself relative to other genres in Taiwan? Proposals on science fiction in literature, film, television, comics, games, and other media are welcome, as are proposals on any time period and Taiwanese authors working outside of Taiwan.

We are looking for discussions of writers such as Wu Ming-yi (吳明益) and Chi Ta-wei (紀大偉), as well as authors who have garnered significant attention in Taiwan but remain underexplored in the English-speaking world, such as Huang Fan (黃凡), Chang Hsi-kuo (張系國), Andrew Yeh (葉言都), Egoyan Zheng (伊格言), Lin Hsin-hui (林新惠), Hung Ling (洪凌), Kao Yi-feng (高翊峰), Ho Ching-pin (賀景濱), Liu Chih-yü (劉芷妤), Chang Ta-chun (張大春), and Huang Hai (黃海). We are also interested in poetic sci-fi, as exemplified in the works of Lin Yao-te (林燿德) and Ko-hua Chen (陳克華).

This special issue will only accept articles written in English. Submissions should be 6,000–7,000 words in length. For footnotes and bibliography, please use MLA style. Additionally, please include an abstract of approximately 200 words. Recognizing the importance of translation in the circulation of Taiwanese literature and for non-native readers, we will also accept English translations of works of Taiwanese science fiction, with a maximum length of 10,000 words.

  • April 2025: Call for abstracts
  • September 1, 2025: Abstract submission deadline
  • November 1, 2025: Notification of acceptances
  • January 31, 2027: Full article submission
  • Spring and Summer, 2027: Peer review and copyediting
  • Fall, 2027: Publication

Please send your abstracts, articles, or translations to Wen-chi Li (oskiey@gmail.com) and Michael O’Krent (mdokrent@gmail.com).

Taiwan Democracy and the Chinese Humanistic Tradition

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“Taiwan Democracy and the Chinese Humanistic Tradition”
Capstone lecture by Professor Josephine Chiu-Duke 丘慧芬, on the occasion of her retirement

Details and registration: https://asia.ubc.ca/events/event/taiwan-democracy-and-the-chinese-humanistic-tradition/

Thursday, March 6, 2025
3:00-5:00pm reception and lecture
Asian Centre Auditorium
The University of British Columbia
UBC Asian Centre, 1871 West Mall, Vancouver, BC

2025 Capstone Lecture by Dr. Josephine Chiu-Duke

Taiwan’s peaceful transformation from authoritarian rule to a liberal democracy in the early 1990s has been praised as a remarkable political achievement. This achievement, despite the many challenges it has faced and still confronts, has been thriving in the face of China’s claim of sovereignty over the island and its constant threats of serious coercion. To be sure, Taiwan’s production of the world’s most sought for semiconductor chips has already made Taiwan a pivotal link in the world supply chain.

What should be noted is that Taiwan today is also the only place where Chinese culture, especially with regard to the values embedded in the Confucian humanistic tradition, has been best preserved since 1949 without being deliberately destroyed as it was during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

In her talk, Dr. Chiu-Duke will discuss why Taiwan’s successful search for liberty and democracy has yet to bring about a consensus on Taiwan’s dealing with China. She will also discuss how Confucius’ innovative re-interpretation of the doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven laid the foundation for the Chinese humanistic tradition. This tradition was the key reason for China being identified as one of the “Axial civilizations.” However, it has never being able to make an institutional breakthrough in its pursuit of the Confucian ideal of a humane government, not even during the 1915 May Fourth New Culture movement when liberal democracy and science were advocated as the necessary goals for China’s path to modernity. Continue reading Taiwan Democracy and the Chinese Humanistic Tradition →

Taiwan Studies +

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Symposium: Taiwan Studies +

Description:
In light of heightened global attention toward Taiwan in recent years, how should scholars approach the study of Taiwan’s history, culture, politics, and the environment? And how might a ‘Taiwan perspective’ contribute to broader discussions of regional and global interest? This emerging scholars symposium seeks to address these critical issues through a multi-method and multi-scalar approach, in order to expand the scope of Taiwan Studies beyond traditional disciplinary and geopolitical boundaries.

Time:
9:30AM-5PM, February 21, 2025

Location:
Plimpton Room 133, Barker Center
12 Quincy Street, Cambridge

Organizers:
Kevin Luo (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)
David Der-wei Wang (Harvard University)

Speakers:

Continue reading Taiwan Studies + →

Interview with Kenneth Pai Hsien-yung

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of “Behind the Scenes with the White Peony: An Interview with Kenneth Pai Hsien-yung,” interviewed and translated by Ursula Friedman. Too long to post in its entirety, find a teaser below. For the full interview, go to its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/friedman/.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Behind the Scenes with the White Peony:
An Interview with Kenneth Pai Hsien-yung

Interviewed and translated by Ursula Friedman

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright January 2025)

Figure 1: Pai Hsien-yung. National Taiwan University, 2014. Photo by Yang Chenhao for Life Magazine.

[*Note: The interview was conducted in Santa Barbara on February 25, 2023. Passages in blue were originally spoken in Mandarin Chinese; those in black in English.]

Ursula Friedman (UF):  You were isolated for five years as a child due to a contagious strain of tuberculosis. How did this period of isolation influence your creative writing and shape your personality?

Kenneth Pai (KP):  My grandmother originally lived in the countryside in Guilin, Guangxi province. Later, my father invited her into our home, and I lived next door to her. She was very kind to me. We would cook special meals for her, like chicken soup, and she would share with me. We didn’t know that she had tuberculosis (TB). I caught it from her when I was seven or eight years old. Then, when the Japanese arrived, we fled to Chongqing, and I ran a mild fever every day. After an X-ray screening, they found that a large area on my left lung had been infected, leaving a gaping hole. Second-stage TB. I remember that after seeing the X-ray, my father’s face fell. He was very anxious. That was during the Sino-Japanese War, when many people caught the disease, and there was no special cure. Many people died of lung disease, it was almost a fatal diagnosis. I was very lucky, because our family could afford to drink milk and eat chicken, keep up good nutrition, and then I got calcium injections every day to calcify my lungs. I was quarantined for four, almost five years, until I was 14. Why? Because there were so many children in our family.

TB was a highly contagious disease at the time. So I lost my childhood years. I didn’t have a childhood. I saw children playing outside, but I was locked in a small room all by myself. I remember that little room in Chongqing. Chongqing is a mountainous place—have you ever been to the mainland? Chongqing has changed a lot recently. When I was in Chongqing, it was all muddy, yellow soil, but now it has been transformed into a modern city. We lived halfway up a mountain. And my little room, separated off from the others, was nestled on the foot of the mountain. I watched the activities down below from above—my brothers, my cousins—the children all playing down below. Anyway, I felt that I was deserted, abandoned. So I became very—I wasn’t like that before! My mother used to say that I was a very active child! I was even overbearing. Lung disease changed my entire being, and I became very sensitive. People were all afraid of approaching me, because I was sick, they were afraid of getting too close. My brothers and sisters all gave me a wide birth. Second, I became very sensitive to other people’s pain. Since I was sick myself, it was easy to understand the pain in other people’s hearts and develop empathy for them. . . [click here for full text]

Contemporary Taiwanese Art — cfp

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Call for Papers: A Blast of Lyricism: Contemporary Taiwanese Art and Its Global Connections (University of Edinburgh, 4-5 November 2025)

Deadline for submission to Professor Chia-Ling Yang (cyang@ed.ac.uk): 28 February 2025

The international conference A Blast of Lyricism: Contemporary Taiwanese Art and Its Global Connections invites scholars, artists and museum curators to submit papers that explore the global significance and impact of contemporary art across regions and mediums. The conference will engage with diverse interdisciplinary approaches across art, design, fashion, and new media, aiming to challenge dominant narratives and amplify underrepresented voices from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other politically and culturally marginalised regions.

As part of our broader vision, we plan to propose an edited volume of selected conference papers to a leading international publisher in January 2026.

We invite submissions on, but are not limited to, the following tentative themed panels: Continue reading Contemporary Taiwanese Art — cfp →

2025-26 Hou Family Fellowships in Taiwan Studies

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2025-26 Hou Family Fellowships in Taiwan Studies

The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University is pleased to announce the 2025-26 competition for the Hou Family Fellowships in Taiwan Studies.

The Hou Family Fellowships in Taiwan Studies sponsors one Postdoctoral Fellow and one Pre-doctoral Fellow to join the Fairbank Center to pursue Taiwan-focused research in the humanities or social sciences for six to twelve months between August 1, 2025, and July 31, 2026. Affiliation for the full academic year is encouraged.

Hou Family Fellows are expected to reside in the Greater Boston area for the duration of the fellowship. Fellows will have the opportunity to engage with the Fairbank Center’s interdisciplinary community of scholars and will have access to Harvard’s world-class libraries and other resources.

In addition to maintaining their own research agenda, the Hou Family Fellows will contribute to the Fairbank Center community in ways that could include the following: Continue reading 2025-26 Hou Family Fellowships in Taiwan Studies →

NATSA 2025–cfp

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The North American Taiwan Studies Association will hold its in-person conference at Stanford University from June 30 to July 2, 2025. We are pleased to announce that our latest Call for Proposals, themed “Toward an Otherwise in Taiwan and Beyond,” has been released. The submission deadline is January 15, 2025. For more details, please visit the Call for Proposals: https://www.na-tsa.org/2025-call-for-proposals.

Center For Taiwan Studies
The University of Texas at Austin | cts@austin.utexas.edu

Qiong Yao dies in apparent suicide

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Source: BBC News (12/4/24)
Top Chinese language novelist dies in apparent suicide
By Fan Wang, BBC News

Getty Images Chiung Yao attends a press conference on July 10, 2007 in Taipei.

Getty Images

Chiung Yao [瓊瑤], arguably the world’s most popular Chinese language romance novelist, has died in an apparent suicide.

The 86-year-old’s body was found in her home in New Taipei City on Wednesday, local media report. Emergency services said she took her own life, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency.

Chiung Yao started writing at 18 and published more than 60 novels, many of which were adapted into movies and TV series and remained popular for decades.

She was also a successful screenwriter and producer. One of her most famous works was the TV drama My Fair Princess, which launched the careers of big name stars.

She was born Chen Che in Sichuan, China in 1938. Chiung Yao is her pen name.

A post on her Facebook account on Wednesday read: “Goodbye, my loved ones. I feel lucky that I have met and known you in this life”. It was not immediately clear if the post was published before or after her body was found. Continue reading Qiong Yao dies in apparent suicide →

Revolutionary Taiwan

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Revolutionary Taiwan: Making Nationhood in a Changing World Order
by Catherine Lila Chou and Mark Harrison
Hardcover ISBN 9781638571957  •  Paperback ISBN 9781638573227 • 222pp.
Use coupon code SAVE15 for 15% off print editions at http://cambriapress.com/RevolutionaryTaiwan (Ends October 10, 2024, at midnight EST)

In the early 1990s, the people of Taiwan gained the right to vote for their executive and legislature. In building a democratic society, they transformed how they saw themselves and their homeland. The outcome of democratization was nothing less than revolutionary, producing a new, de facto nation and people that can be justly called “Taiwanese.”

Yet this revolution remains unfinished and incomplete. In an era of increasing US-China rivalry, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) claims sovereignty over Taiwan and insists that “reunification” is the historic mission of all peoples on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. The PRC threatens war with and over the island, inviting a crisis that would engulf the region and beyond.

Common ideas about Taiwan—that it “split with China in 1949” or “sees itself as the true China”—fail to explain why the Taiwanese withstand pressure from the PRC to relinquish their democratic self-governance.

Revolutionary Taiwan: Making Nationhood in a Changing World Order  sheds light on this. Each chapter shows how democratization in Taiwan constituted a revolution, changing not just the form of government but also how Taiwanese people conceptualized the island, coming to see it a complete nation unto itself. At the same time, however, Beijing has blocked the “normal” endpoint of this revolution: an open declaration of statehood and welcome into the global community. Continue reading Revolutionary Taiwan →

‘Zero Day’ raises tough questions about China invasion

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Source: NYT (8/25/24)
What if China Invades? For Taiwan, a TV Show Raises Tough Questions.
Some think the drama, “Zero Day,” helps Taiwan confront an increasingly plausible scenario. Others say the show is alarmist and a tool of the government.
By Chris Buckley and Amy Chang Chien, Reporting from Taipei, Taiwan

A man walks past a barricade placed across a wide road. A large brick building with a tall tower is behind him.

Members of the film crew for the drama series “Zero Day” preparing for a protest scene to be shot on location in front of the presidential palace on Saturday in Taipei, Taiwan. Credit…Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

On the boulevard in front of the presidential palace in Taipei this weekend, Taiwan’s worst nightmare was unfolding in front of film crews. A crowd of actors and extras portrayed one kind of chaos that might come with a Chinese invasion: a protest descending into violence and bloodshed.

The scene being shot was for “Zero Day,” a new Taiwanese television drama series that depicts an effort by China to take over the democratically governed island. Beijing has long claimed Taiwan as its territory and urged it to peacefully accept China’s sovereignty. The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, has said he would not rule out using force to absorb it.

“Zero Day” will not air until next year, but it has already set off heated debates in Taiwan, after the release of a trailer. Supporters of the series say it could encourage a much-needed conversation about the threat that China poses. Critics have denounced it as scaremongering.

Cheng Hsin-mei, the producer of “Zero Day,” said she wanted to jolt Taiwanese people out of what she sees as widespread complacency and reticence about the possibility of war.

“How everyone would really face up to a war, how you would confront that possibility — nobody’s actually talking about that,” Ms. Cheng, who is also a main scriptwriter for the series, said in an interview. “I want to talk about it, because I think it’s the biggest fear in each Taiwanese person’s heart.” Continue reading ‘Zero Day’ raises tough questions about China invasion →