How Kaiser Kuo became a leading player in China podcasting and kept on rocking
- In 2010, Chinese-American Kaiser Kuo launched the Sinica current affairs podcast with Jeremy Goldkorn – 10 years later it is still going
- He played in one of China’s first metal bands, Tang Dynasty, and more recently in Spring & Autumn
Political pedigree: My folks, Jenkai and Mary Kuo, were from fairly prominent political families affiliated with the Kuomintang. As the Communist victory loomed, they left the mainland for Taiwan.
They met in Columbus, Ohio, in 1957 as students. After my father finished his PhD in California he went to work at IBM, in Endicott, in upstate New York. They bought a house across the Susquehanna River, in Apalachin. I was born there in 1966 and raised along with my two brothers (one older, one younger) and a younger sister.
History lessons: My parents were determined to connect us to a history we could take pride in. We learned stories of China’s bygone greatness and of its miseries. They managed to imbue me with a personal sense of a stake in China’s future. This was also an era when the United States felt extraordinarily secure and comfortable in its power.
I believed I was, with no effort on my part, the legitimate heir to two great civilisational traditions, one that began in ancient Greece and one that began on the Yellow River floodplain. It was an enormous and accidental privilege.
Being the second son, I was always trying to find a way to stand out, and I had figured out the great weakness of my otherwise flawless brothers was that they were “China whiners”
Yes, please: When I was 12, my dad transferred to Tucson, Arizona. I later learned it was out of concern for my mother’s deepening involvement in pro-PRC (People’s Republic of China) groups and accusations that they were communists.