photo by beggs, courtesy of Flickr creative commons
Formosa = Taiwan. Taiwan = Formosa. So why not just use the term Taiwan, or better yet, ROC (Republic of China), as the Nationalists dubbed their stronghold of Taiwan in 1947, when they lost control of mainland China to Mao Zedong’s Communist Party, who renamed China as “The People’s Republic of China”?
Both China and Taiwan have been known by so many terms over the last 100 years, it can be hard to keep track! (Especially if you are American, and received as comprehensive a world history education as I did– i.e. not comprehensive at all.)
So, I have decided to call this blog Girl Meets Formosa, not Girl Meets Taiwan, because the term Formosa had an important connotation for my grandfather Thomas Liao (廖文毅). Formosa is the Taiwanese cultural name for Taiwan. Continue reading
Girl Meets Formosa 