Squadron commander Fan Yuanyan 范園焱 was one of the eighteen prominent defectors 反共義士 from China during the period 1960-1989. He was 41 and flew a Shenyang F-6, the Chinese version of the Soviet MIG-19, to Taiwan. He was made a lieutenant colonel in Taiwan’s air force and received $600,000 in gold as a reward for his defection. Fan, though, came to feel uneasy about life in Taiwan.
This video is also available on the USCI YouTube Channel.
Andrew Morris is Professor of History at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. He is author of Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China (2004) and Colonial Project, National Game: A History of Baseball in Taiwan (2010), and editor of Japanese Taiwan: Colonial Rule and Its Contested Legacy (2015).
This event was co-sponsored by the East Asia Studies Center and the Department of History.
