On July 31, 1968, the Broadcasting Corporation of China officially launched its FM broadcasting system — the first FM radio network in the Republic of China (now BCC’s Pop Radio). Breaking through the previous AM-only format, it ushered Taiwan’s broadcasting into a new era of FM stereo sound.
The folk song collection movement began modestly in January 1966 before expanding and reaching its peak in August 1967. The term first appeared in Shih Wei-liang’s 1968 report ‘Survey and Research on Taiwan Mountain Folk Songs.’
Fresh, open, and idealistic, Prairie was Taiwan’s first magazine explicitly dedicated to nativist literature and art. Though it ran for only a year, it documented a generation of young people’s pursuit of literary ideals. Three issues were published between 1967 and 1968.
The Sunshine Vocal Group originated in Tainan, introduced to American military club circuits by music enthusiast Li Chia-lin. After establishing its reputation in Taipei, the saying spread: ‘Reymont in the north, Sunshine in the south.’
On November 12, 1966, President Chiang Kai-shek delivered a speech at the inauguration of Zhongshan Hall on Yangmingshan, launching the Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement. Prompted by the Cultural Revolution in the PRC, the ROC invoked cultural revival as a symbol of its claim to legitimate Chinese civilization.
On May 16, 1966, an enlarged session of the CCP Central Political Bureau passed the ‘May 16 Notification,’ asserting that bourgeois elements had infiltrated the Party and calling on all members to raise the banner of the proletarian cultural revolution and criticize academic authorities.
On September 3 and 4, 1965, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot was performed in Chinese translation for the first time in Taiwan, at the Kuangchi Program Service in Taipei’s Roosevelt Road, Section 3.
In 1965, the United States escalated its full military involvement in Vietnam, and Taiwan became a rest-and-recreation hub for U.S. troops. Bars and entertainment venues proliferated, Western music followed, and American cultural influence began reshaping Taiwan in earnest.
Theatre magazine launched in Taipei on January 1, 1965, dedicated to contemporary avant-garde film and drama. It translated and introduced major Western theatrical and cinematic currents, featured substantial criticism of modernist drama, and occasionally reported on local arts events. It ran for nine issues.
Robert Moog founded the Moog company in 1953 and built theremins alongside his father. In 1964, after meeting Herbert Deutsch, the two developed the landmark Moog analog synthesizer.