Cultural History Group Lecture

Speaker:
ShiPu Wang (Professor, University of California, Merced)

Topic:
Taiwan Picture in Hot Water: The Carnal Infrastructure of the Transpacific Cold War

Host:
Wei-chi Chen (Assistant Research Fellow, Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica)

Discussant:
Chih-Ming Wang (Research Fellow, Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica)

Date and Time:
Tuesday, September 15, 2026. 14:00-16:00

Place:
Room 802 at ITH

Language:
English

Registration:
Click Here to Register (redirecting to Chinese version)

This lecture is co-organized by the Cultural History Group and Colonial History Group of Instutitue of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica and Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica.

Abstract:
Time’s 1967 Christmas issue ran a photograph of an American soldier bathing with two Taiwanese women at a Beitou (北投) hot spring, and the scandal it ignited exposes sex as a constitutive condition of Cold War geopolitics. Drawing on Republic of China (ROC) government and press archives, this talk reads the image as a window onto the carnal infrastructure of U.S.-led anti-communism: sexual labor and Asian female bodies as material resources for the American military’s Rest and Recuperation (R&R) network and alliance-building across Asia. Declassified records reveal a striking double game—sex tourism served as a covert instrument of the ROC’s geopolitical leverage, even as the government staged public outrage to disavow it once Time made it visible.