The Peripatetic Historian
May 2025, Vol. 4, no. 12.
Hello and welcome to the May issue of the Peripatetic Historian. I’m your host, Richard J. Goodrich, and once again we assemble to weave history, travel, and photography into a coat of many colors.
This Month:
A Visit to Green Island
Then and Now: The Perils of Autocracy
Ready? Let’s dive in:
Peripatetic Field Report: A Visit to Green Island
When I think of southern Taiwan, sticky heat is the first thing that springs to mind. Tucked below the Tropic of Cancer, this region endures endless sunshine and hydroscope-busting levels of humidity. If you are a person of northern heritage like myself, southern Taiwan stands a few paces short of Signore Dante’s Inferno—a place of punishment, heat stroke, perpetual damp, and torrential sweat.
My armpits clench just thinking about it. Only April’s special expedition would have enticed me away from the (relatively) cooler northern end of Taiwan.
Nineteen miles off Taiwan's southeastern coast, Lüdao—Green Island—floats like a dusky emerald in the blue Pacific Ocean. Constructed on a base of lava and ancient coral, human life is concentrated on the north and west side of a mountainous jungle core. The steep interior and the typhoon-vulnerable eastern side remains wild and virtually uninhabited.
Scuba diving is the island’s main cash crop. Lüdao boasts white coral beaches, stunning reefs, and at least a hundred dive shops. Ranks of parked motor-scooters fill the gaps between the Scuba outfitters. During the summer, thousands of scooters must turn the single road through town into a heaving, howling hell worse than what we encountered in Xiaoliuqiu (see Peripatetic Historian 4.6 if you’ve forgotten that horror).
Fortunately, our visit coincided with the off-season. Most of the motor scooters remained parked in long lines and there was never a problem securing a restaurant table. The counterbalance to these positives was the weather, which tended to the stormy during our three day visit. We spent a delightful hour in the ocean on our first afternoon, but a howling gale, first from the south and then reversing into the north, whipped the sea into a froth our final two days.
Restricted to land pursuits, we visited the island’s notorious prison (see below) and, despite my reservations, rented electric motor-scooters on our final day to circumnavigate the island on a 19 km ring road.
I know.
After my history of raillery against two-wheeled transport, I could be charged with hypocrisy. But had I not compromised my ideals it would have been near impossible to visit island wonders like the Guanyin Cave, where a solitary white stalagmite stands, bearing a vague resemblance to the many statues of the Buddhist deity one finds across Taiwan.
I also would have missed the Little Great Wall, an East Coast staircase that offers a vague resemblance to the (Big) Great Wall on the mainland.
It is a place where all the sights resemble miniature versions of something I’ve seen elsewhere. The green rounded bluffs of Fanchuanbi, trailing off into the sea at the southern end, reminded me of Ireland. The massive, wind-pushed waves smashing ashore to break against the untamed northern coast reminded me of my home waters in Oregon. And, just like there, I spent far more time than was reasonable attempting to capture a perfect saltwater explosion.
The visit felt both novel and nostalgic. I can’t envision myself returning during the high heat, humidity, and scooter traffic of summer, but I did enjoy my April visit.
Book News
A brief reminder that information about my recent books—Comet Madness and L.A. Birdmen—can be found on my website: https://richardjgoodrich.com/Books.html.
Then and Now
Despite the colorful brochures that now decorate Taiwanese Tourist Information outlets, during the second half of the twentieth century, no one would have associated Green Island with vacation pleasure. Green Island hosted Taiwan’s most notorious political prison, a place of confinement for those deemed enemies of the Kuomintang, Taiwan’s ruling political party.
This prison is intimately connected to Taiwan’s “White Terror.” Originally a campaign to identify and eliminate Communist spies, agitators, and sympathizers, the program quickly expanded to include anyone who dared speak against the policies of the ruling KMT. It spawned a political witch hunt, rife with informers, torture, and secret treason trials.
Green Island was Taiwan’s Gulag, a place of internment for the State’s enemies.
The prison’s limited capacity meant that each cell hosted up to fifteen victims. They endured summer heat and the winter cold in concrete cell blocks that lacked heating or air conditioning.
A popular uprising compelled Taiwan’s leaders to end martial law and the White Terror in 1987. During the campaign’s twenty-seven year run, more than 140,000 people were convicted of anti-government activities; 3-4,000 were executed; more than 2,000 served sentences at Green Island.
Today the prison is a Human Rights Memorial Park, a reminder of the horrors facing any society that cedes power to a single group, abandoning the protections afforded by democracy and the rule of law. It attests to the dangers of dictatorship and the concentration of power in the hands of a few.
Plum Rains
Taiwan has entered the seasonal period known as the “Plum Rains.” Days of downpours are interspersed with short blasts of sunshine which remind us that summer’s heat is imminent. Although once attributed to ripening Yangtze River plums—believed to release excess moisture into the atmosphere—meteorologists now offer a more prosaic explanation for the phenomenon: a shoving match between the air rising from the warming Pacific Ocean and the cold air flowing off the continent creates a stationary battle line that stretches from Taiwan to Japan and Korea. Heavy rains are produced where the two systems meet. Eventually the Pacific system prevails and high pressure ends the Plum Rains in June.
We’ll see if I am still whistling the same tune next month, but at the moment I am enjoying the half inch or so of rain that falls on our wet days. Bring it on. Far better than sunshine and heat.
Be safe, be sensible, and I will see you next month.
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I just found your monthly letter in spam. My 'updated' Yahoo has caused many comforts to disappear. Anyway, Jen visited Green island when she visited Taiwan a few years ago. She didn't mention the prison. I hope our current administration is stopped before America has an extended period of dictatorship. Hello to Mary.