Heaven Does Not Block All Roads: A History of Taiwan through the Life of Huang Chin-tao tells the story of Taiwan's past century through the life of one extraordinary individual. Huang was born in 1926, when Taiwan was still part of the Japanese empire.  By the time he died in 2019, Taiwan was a bustling, high-tech democracy -- and Huang had lived through every twist and turn along the way.  He fought in World War II as a Japanese soldier in China; joined an armed uprising against Taiwan's Chinese Nationalist post-war government; spent twenty-four years imprisoned during the island's decades of martial law, and finally emerged to help lead Taiwan's pro-democracy movement.  His story vividly reflects contemporary Taiwanese history, and illuminates experiences shared by countries everywhere: of colonization and its aftermath, and the ongoing struggle to be free.

This talks is co-sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies and the Taiwan project at Hoover.

This event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP here. 

About the speaker

Anna Beth Keim is  freelance journalist who has been reporting on Taiwan since 2015.  Heaven Does Not Block All Roads, which has been called "a first-class introduction to Taiwan" (Professor O.A. Westad, Yale University), and "a riveting, well-paced story...cinematic" (Los Angeles Review of Books), is her first book.