Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson,

the past brought to life by those who were there. This week revolutions with a floral theme

from Taiwan's sunflower movement to the Rose Revolution in Georgia. Some people bring the food from the houses and share each other. There was

high sense of solidarity. I remember that these days were really exciting for us.

Plus the harrowing story of an Afghan refugee who fled his home country alone at the age of just 15.

The instructions were, get ready tomorrow, you're flying all my life. I had been on

donkeys and horses so for a moment I was absolutely excited and it covered the dangers of

what might happen. Also merchant merchant ships trapped in the Suez Canal for eight years

and the birth of a British Afro-Hare institution.

What it did was it made that longer look, made the hair look healthy, silky and with movement.

That's all to come later in the podcast, but we begin in a part of the world which is the focus of much attention right now. Tensions between China and Taiwan

have simmered for decades and has been a marked uptick in recent months. So we're going back to Taiwan in 2014 and to the events which became known as the Sunflower

movement. That was when students protested against closer ties with China. It was one of the

largest social movements in Taiwanese history.

Rachel Naylor has spoken to an activist who, 10 years ago, occupied two government buildings.

Is the evening of the 18th of March 2014, a university student Brian Hugh is eating

dinner in Taipei, Taiwan's capital, while scrolling social media.

He stops what he's doing. He sees that his friends are storming Taiwan's

parliament. I just got a taxi cab and went over and ran to my friends almost

immediately. When I got there is around 11 PM they were shaking on the gate outside of a legislature and eventually we all kind of clambered over,

pushing up against the police and gone to the parking lot.

That was a point in time in which an initial wave of students had already gotten into the legislature and then mountain occupation and we were kind of outside trying to push our way in to join them.

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