Abstract
Top athletes have been portrayed as national heroes since early times. This production process includes their own stories, as well as the historical context of the countries they live in and represent. C. K. Yang, known as the iron man of Asia, is a national hero of Taiwan, born from the confrontation between the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China after the second Taiwan Strait crisis in 1958. This article, through analyzing the process of C.K. Yang’s transformation from a sports star to a national hero, examines the production of sport champions in Taiwan, and how Chiang’s family used elite sport performance for nation building and for the reinforcing of the legitimacy of their political regime. The account focuses on three main points. They are the ‘rise of a star’, ‘the celebration of the hero’, and ‘keeping the legend alive’. The article documents how the historical emergence of a sports hero who competed under the banner of the Republic of China, or under the banner of Formosa complements the existing literature.
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