u/Low-External-3116

So many expats in Taiwan tell me that they were traveling throughout Asia in the 80 and 90s and didn't think much of Taiwan. However, usually a fellow traveler told them to visit. when they arrived in Taiwan, there was something sticky about it. They ended up staying. What is so attractive to expats in Taiwan? Please share your stories.

Monkey Michael Huffman from Kyoto University Had a Fascinating Career Studying Monkeys

I'd be very interested to hear from people who remember this in the news or, heaven forbid, if you were at Kent State that week.

Former FBI Agent Frank Figluzzi wrote a book called Long Haul which states that violent people are attracted to the trucking business because they get to spend long hours alone, always crossing state lines, and many vulnerable women hang out at truck stops. Have any of you read this book?

Two decades after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, popular narratives often boil down to a few simple tropes: "Bush was a puppet of Cheney," "it was all about oil," or "they deliberately fabricated intelligence." In his book Confronting Saddam Hussein: George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq, eminent diplomatic historian Melvyn P. Leffler re-examines declassified records and extensive interviews with top decision-makers to present a far more complex—and troubling—reckoning.

Leffler’s analysis dismantles several widespread assumptions:

• Bush Driven by Fear, Not Manipulated: Leffler refutes the idea that George W. Bush was a passive chief executive easily manipulated by advisers. Bush drove the policy himself, haunted by the trauma of 9/11 and terrified of a secondary mass-casualty attack involving weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
• Coercive Diplomacy Gone Wrong: The administration did not start with an explicit, predetermined timetable to invade immediately after 9/11. Instead, they built up military force as "coercive diplomacy" to intimidate Saddam into compliance. However, Bush never clearly separated the goal of coercion from actual regime change, allowing the buildup to snowball into an unstoppable war momentum.
• Fatal Miscalculations on Both Sides: Bush's team genuinely believed Saddam possessed active WMD programs due to intelligence groupthink and historical bias. Meanwhile, Saddam calculated that Washington was bluffing; he maintained an illusion of strength and opacity primarily to deter his regional enemy, Iran, unaware that the U.S. was genuinely preparing for a full-scale ground invasion.
• The Failure to Ask Basic Questions: The core disaster stemmed from process failure. Bush never held a systematic meeting asking his advisers, "Is invading Iraq actually a good idea?" nor did he weigh whether war was safer than containment. He embraced the invasion without probing post-war governance risks or questioning the underlying intelligence.

Ultimately, Leffler concludes that the war was a monumental, avoidable tragedy—not born of a sinister conspiracy, but of genuine panic, dangerous overconfidence, and a total breakdown of strategic scrutiny.

In the early 1980s, mainstream commercial radio was completely dominated by corporate arena rock, disco holdovers, and slick synth-pop. If you were an underground guitar band playing jangle-pop with mumbled vocals, commercial program directors wouldn't give you the time of day.

Instead of waiting for a major label buyout, R.E.M. (out of Athens, Georgia) bypassed commercial radio entirely and built a massive nationwide fanbase through a brand-new engine: student-run college radio.

Here is how R.E.M. and college radio created a mutualistic relationship that redefined American rock music:

• The Grassroots College Circuit: In the early '80s, non-commercial college stations were popping up across North America, run by student DJs who had complete freedom over what they played. R.E.M. relentlessly toured college towns in an old blue van, specifically stopping by campus stations in every town to hand-deliver vinyl records, do live interviews, and play acoustic sets.
• Treating Student DJs Like A-Listers: Major labels treated college radio like an afterthought, but R.E.M. treated student DJs with the same respect as major music journalists. Band members like Peter Buck and Mike Mills would spend hours hanging out in station lobbies, trading obscure record recommendations with 19-year-old college station managers.
• Dominating the CMJ Charts: When R.E.M. released their debut EP Chronic Town (1982) and full-length album Murmur (1983), college stations added them to heavy rotation. They routinely topped the College Media Journal (CMJ) charts, proving there was a massive, untapped demographic of young listeners hungry for non-corporate music.
• The "College Rock" Phenomenon: R.E.M.’s college radio takeover was so impactful that music executives and magazines literally coined a new genre name for it: "College Rock." This subgenre served as the direct precursor to what the world would call "Alternative Rock" in the 1990s.
• Toppling Thriller: Fueled by the groundswell of college radio buzz and non-stop touring, Rolling Stone named R.E.M.'s Murmur the Best Album of 1983—beating out Michael Jackson’s Thriller and The Police’s Synchronicity.

By the time commercial radio finally gave in and played "The One I Love" in 1987, R.E.M. was already selling out arenas—all without ever playing the traditional radio industry game.

When you watch The Blues Brothers (1980), the iconic bond between Jake and Elwood Blues feels entirely real because it was rooted in one of the tightest, most protective friendships in comedy history.

Long before the film hit theaters, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi forged an unbreakable connection that changed both of their lives—and brought classic American music back into the spotlight.

• The Musical Awakening: When the two met in the early 1970s, Belushi was primarily a fan of heavy rock and punk. Aykroyd—a devoted blues fanatic—spent endless nights playing old records for Belushi, introducing him to legends like Howlin' Wolf, Junior Wells, and the Downchild Blues Band. Belushi fell in love with the genre instantly.
• Respecting the Genre: The Blues Brothers started as an SNL warm-up act, but Aykroyd and Belushi refused to treat it as a novelty parody. They hired top-tier musicians—including Stax Records legends Steve Cropper and Donald "Duck" Dunn—releasing a live album (Briefcase Full of Blues) that went triple platinum.
• A Mission to Save the Legends: Aykroyd and Belushi used their massive Hollywood leverage to force the studio to hire legendary Black artists who had been largely overlooked by mainstream pop radio at the time. The film revived the careers of Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Ray Charles, Cab Calloway, and John Lee Hooker.
• Protective Brotherhood: During the notoriously chaotic, drug-fueled shoot of the movie, Aykroyd was one of the few people who could calm Belushi down and keep him grounded. Aykroyd often referred to Belushi as his "blood brother," and he personally looked after him through the darkest moments of production.
• Carrying the Memory: When Belushi tragically passed away in 1982 at age 33, Aykroyd was devastated. He dedicated much of his later life to preserving Belushi’s legacy, co-founding the House of Blues venue chain partly to keep their shared musical mission alive.

Rather than a studio cash-grab, the movie stands as a monument to two best friends using their peak fame to honor the music and each other.

I recently came across the book Taiwanese Feet: My Walk Around Taiwan by Canadian expat John Groot. Between 2006 and 2014, Groot spent 83 walking days over an eight-year span hiking clockwise around the entire coastline of Taiwan, starting from Tamsui and tackling the perimeter section by section.

It got me wondering about the broader culture of Huan Dao (環島—circumnavigating the island):

• Sectional Trekking vs. Continuous Push: While Groot completed his coastal journey in weekend/day stages using local trains and buses to bridge his start/end points, I've heard of both locals and travelers attempting huandao on foot in a single, continuous 30-to-40-day trek.
• How Common Is Walking It?: Cycling around Taiwan (or riding around on a scooter) is a famous rite of passage, but walking the full perimeter seems like a completely different beast—navigating narrow tunnels, highway shoulders, tropical heat, and treacherous coastal roads.
• Historical Precedents: Has anyone else fully documented a complete walking circumnavigation of Taiwan? Are there older historical accounts of locals or indigenous travelers doing the entire coastline on foot before modern highways existed?

For anyone living in or familiar with Taiwan: How rare is a full foot-based huandao, and do you know of other people who have walked all the way around the island?

While diplomats like Kissinger and Nixon made high-profile visits to Beijing in the early 1970s, ordinary Westerners were almost entirely barred from seeing daily life inside the People's Republic of China. Orville Schell—then a young Chinese history scholar from UC Berkeley—was among a tiny, pioneering group of Americans granted entry in 1974 during the final years of the Cultural Revolution.

Instead of staying exclusively in foreign-designated hotels on brief guided tours, Schell secured permission to do something virtually no American had done since 1949: live, eat, and work alongside everyday Chinese citizens.

• Working the Factory Floor: In Shanghai, Schell worked regular shifts at the Shanghai Electrical Machinery Factory, operating equipment, wearing standard worker tunics, and sitting in on daily political study sessions with his Chinese co-workers.
• Laboring on the Commune: He spent weeks working at a rural agricultural commune, rising at dawn to farm the land, eating in communal mess halls, and experiencing the intense collective lifestyle of Mao’s agrarian revolution firsthand.
• Documenting a Locked Society: Because China was still deeply isolated from the West, Schell kept meticulous notes on daily routines, social dynamics, peer pressure, and pervasive political slogans. He published his observations in his landmark 1977 book, In the People's Republic, giving the Western public one of its very first candid, ground-level views behind the Bamboo Curtain.
• A Lifetime Witness: That early immersion launched Schell’s career as one of America's foremost China scholars and journalists. Over the next five decades, he would track and report on China’s dramatic evolution from late-Maoist austerity to the hyper-capitalist economic boom of the 1980s and beyond.

Long before YouTube tutorials or Food Network existed, Fu Pei-mei (傅培梅) was the indisputable authority on Chinese cuisine across Taiwan and the global diaspora. Often dubbed the "Julia Child of Taiwan," her story is remarkably unique—mostly because when she first got married, she didn't even know how to cook.

After her husband’s friends criticized her early attempts at dinner parties, she took a drastic step: she spent her savings to hire top chefs from leading regional restaurants across Taiwan to come to her home and teach her their master recipes step-by-step.

Her determination transformed her into a legendary culinary pioneer:

• Standardizing the Unstandardized: Traditional Chinese cooking relies heavily on shao xu (a little bit) or kan zhe ban (eyeball it). Fu Pei-mei was one of the first to meticulously measure ingredients into tablespoons, grams, and exact cooking times, making complex regional dishes accessible to everyday home cooks.
• 40 Years on Live Television: Starting in 1962 on TTV, she hosted Fu Pei-mei Time for four decades, producing over 1,400 episodes. She cooked live on air without second takes—handling spatters, hot oil, and timing down to the second.
• The "Overseas Student" Essential: For decades, Taiwanese students moving abroad to Europe or the US packed two mandatory items in their suitcases: a Tatung rice cooker and a copy of Fu Pei-mei’s bilingual Three Volume Cookbook. Her books brought home-style Chinese cooking to kitchens around the world.
• Preserving Regional Diversity: Because chefs from all over mainland China settled in Taiwan during the mid-20th century, Fu Pei-mei documented and preserved an incredible variety of regional styles—from Shandong braised dishes to Sichuan spicy staples and Cantonese dim sum—all in one standardized canon.

Today, her recipes are still the baseline benchmark for classic Chinese home cooking across generations.

Historian Sheila Fitzpatrick reflects on one of the deepest, yet often unspoken, legacies of World War II in the Soviet Union. In this powerful clip, she explains how the absence—or ghostly presence—of fathers shaped a generation of postwar Soviet citizens.

Dr. Erica Komisar explains the increase in adolescent mental health issues far predates the rise of social media. Social media just came along and made it a lot worse. She advocates getting down to the root of it all, which is forming healthy attachments between mother and child, and being there both emotionally and physically. As a society we need to prioritize motherhood, and as Dr. Komisar states, mothers need to prioritize their child.

President of the Aristotle Foundation, Mark Milke, explains why those who try to cancel Canadian history and destroy the reputation of people from the past are Utopian. They apply a utopian outlook to the past and blame people for not being perfect.
Mark Milke is the editor of the 1867 Project: Why Canada should be Cherished - Not Cancelled.

In this powerful clip, Kaleb Dahlgren shares a life-changing mindset: you can’t control other people — but you can control how you respond. That choice defines your strength, your peace, and your path forward.

About Kaleb Dahlgren: Kaleb is a #1 bestselling author and motivational speaker who turned immense adversity into purpose. A survivor of the tragic Humboldt Broncos bus crash, he’s also a lifelong Type 1 Diabetes advocate and community leader dedicated to uplifting others with resilience and gratitude. He founded Dahlgren’s Diabeauties to support youth living with diabetes and continues to inspire audiences globally with his story and message of perseverance.

Message: You choose your response. Choose strength.
Learn more: Crossroads — Kaleb’s memoir about resilience and hope.

台灣的認同如何在短短幾十年內發生如此劇烈的轉變？

在這段影片中，艾瑞克·麥可·史密斯（Eryk Michael Smith）解釋了在 1990 年代初期，許多台灣人主要認同自己是中國人；而如今，有近九成的人認同自己是台灣人。

史密斯主張，台灣應該自信地擁抱「台灣人」的身份認同，同時也不忘其源自中國的文化與語言根源。他也指出，台灣代表著一種強大的力量：一個華人民主社會，向中國證明了威權體制同樣能夠演進為民主制度。

這是一個關於認同、歷史與台灣未來的精彩觀點。

I read Roland Allen's excellent history of the notebook. My favorite part of the book was his argument that the Renaissance began flowered after artists began using sketchbooks.