Formosa
About Formosa
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa, lies between the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south. It has an area of 35,808 square kilometres, with mountain ranges dominating the eastern two-thirds and plains in the western third, where its highly urbanized population is concentrated. The combined territories under ROC control consist of 168 islands in total covering 36,193 square kilometres. The largest metropolitan area is formed by Taipei, New Taipei City, and Keelung. With around 23.9 million inhabitants, Taiwan is among the most densely populated countries.
On the show — 18 mentions total
At the time in Formosa, there was a lot of Jesuits, Catholic missionaries, and they knew everything that was happening there. Weirdly, because no one trusted Catholics at the time, they all trusted this one guy over all the Jesuits who were saying, no, this is bullshit.
from No Such Thing As A Chocolate Train, 2019-03-22 at 00:22:34 · read transcript
Other times Formosa came up
They went, oh, okay, great. That was the thing that Sal Manazar claimed. He claimed that he said he was divorced and that he was a reformed cannibal, because in Formosa, husbands were allowed to eat their wives. If there was adultery that had happened, if their wives had committed adultery, you were allowed to just... There was always a lot of cannibalism going on in these stories, weren't there?
261: No Such Thing As A Chocolate Train, 2019-03-22 · listen
Great. That was the thing that Salmanazar claimed. He claimed that he said he was divorced and that he was a reformed cannibal because in Formosa, husbands were allowed to eat their wives if there was adultery that had happened. If their wives were committed adultery, there was always a lot of cannibalism going on in these stories, weren't there? It was like the idea of weird foreigners would eat humans.
No Such Thing As A Chocolate Train, 2019-03-22 · listen
That's something but we should emphasise that this was a big deal this book he wasn't just a weirdo with a pamphlet this was a book that was so believed that he lectured who was invited to lecture on Formosan culture and language at Oxford University so he invented the entire language alphabet and all completely new alphabet, a linguists studied it to see how consistent it was and agreed it was definitely a language to the extent that it remained in lots of language books until the mid-19th century and people were still saying this is... People weren't doing GCSE Formosa, were they? Can I tell you quickly just something amazing about Formosa itself? Formosa, now Taiwan.
No Such Thing As A Chocolate Train, 2019-03-22 · listen
Coordinates: 24.0000, 121.0000