Echopedia

The Island's Story: Taiwan's 400-Year Journey

2 min read

The Island’s Story: Taiwan’s 400-Year Journey

Identity Snapshot

  • Era: 2025–2026
  • Geography: Taiwanese America (San Diego–based production; community screenings SoCal)
  • Core roles: historical work (documentary series; band B — self-published creator site)
  • Creator: Jay Liao · IMDb tt41634897
  • Original: https://www.jliaoart.com/the-islands-story

Record

Ten-part documentary series tracing Taiwan’s story across four centuries — Indigenous peoples through successive waves of migration, colonization, conflict, and democratization. Created/written/directed by Jay Liao; editing Jay Liao + Sam Martin. YouTube trailer/watch anchor: youtube.com/watch?v=cZXYh0X48fU.

Episode guide (site synopses, archived)

  1. Austronesian origins — earliest inhabitants, migration patterns, social structures, cultural foundations before sustained external contact
  2. European contest, 17th c. — Dutch and Spanish footholds, trade, missionaries, Indigenous resistance
  3. 1661 — Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga) — siege of Fort Zeelandia, end of Dutch rule, new regime
  4. Qing frontier, late 17th c.–1895 — migration settlement, land disputes, Indigenous resistance, periodic unrest
  5. Japanese colony 1895–1945 — modernization alongside policing, assimilation, local resistance
  6. White Terror, late 1940s–1980s — martial law, arrests, military tribunals, surveillance of civil society
  7. 1949 — two governments — ROC in Taiwan vs PRC mainland; Chiang Kai-shek to Chiang Ching-kuo
  8. Democratization, late 1980s onward — end of martial law, opposition movements, expanding civil participation
  9. The Silicon Shield — semiconductor centrality in global supply chains and its strategic weight
  10. Present day — supply chains, regional security, geopolitical tension, debates over political status and identity

Screenings & presentations (on-site, as listed)

  • 2026-05-31 · House of Taiwan, Balboa Park (San Diego)
  • 2026-08-16 · House of Taiwan, Balboa Park
  • 2026-08-22 · San Diego Taiwan Festival, NTC Park at Liberty Station
  • 2026-09-06 · Passport to Diplomacy, Balboa Park
  • 2026-09-25–27 · Taiwan Carnival, Anaheim GardenWalk

Significance for the record

The episode spine (Austronesian-first, colonial-sequence, White Terror, democratization, Silicon Shield) is a community-produced articulation of exactly the layered stack maintained at Political Status of Taiwan — the same argument made as film. Its screening circuit (House of Taiwan → Taiwan Festival → Passport to Diplomacy) documents the institutional texture of San Diego’s Taiwanese-American community, 2026.

Subjects

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