Coming home - Part 4

[Above: Fu-Ling Tample in LuKang鹿港福靈宮]

Were there Taiwanese in Penang in the late 1700s? It appears so. Fung-yin provided one fairly prominent example:

"。。。居同安白礁（今属龙海县，早属泉州，清末民初属厦门）。元朝至正年间（公元1341年），十九世孙辜志明由白礁迁泉州打锡巷。志明九世孙辜旺于明崇祯（1628年）由泉州迁惠安洋埔，是为惠安辜氏一世公。旺之六世孙邦变（洋埔三房）于清乾隆初年移居惠安上坂（昔称象坂）东村，蕃衍生息：长子水英、次子尚、三子宗。辜宗于乾隆四十年（公元1775年）趁开海禁携眷赴台谋生，择居鹿港。辜宗四子之一辜礼欢又赴马来西亚槟榔屿拓展，为英属马来西亚首任甲必丹（地方首领）。辜礼欢生八子三女，其子之一辜安平自小送回国内读书。中进士后，为林则徐幕僚，后调任台湾并定居鹿港。安平之孙辜显荣为台湾巨富，被誉为“百年昌盛家族”。辜显荣即是辜振甫之父。安平胞兄弟龙池之孙为辜鸿铭，故辜振甫称辜鸿铭为“鸿铭伯”。上坂辜氏，历经坎坷， 以小手艺谋生，又属小姓，旧时怕受欺凌，曾一度恢复林姓。1952年又复辜姓。"

In short, a Gu family member, 辜宗, migrated to Taiwan in 1775 and settled in LuKang. One of 辜宗's four sons, 辜礼欢 then moved south to Penang to seek and in fact found more fortune. He became the first Kapitan of the British Malaya and raised a large family with 8 sons and 3 daughters. One of them 辜安平 was sent back to China to study who eventually returned to LuKang. And in 1895, one of his grandsons 辜顯榮 (1866－1937) invited the Japanese invading force to enter Taipei to keep peace as Taipei was then being looted by the retreating Qing soldiers. In return, the Japanese rewarded him with various trading rights. Gu became immensely wealthy as a result. And this branch continues on, active in Taiwan banking and commerce to this day. It is, however, unclear as to the fate of the branch in Penang, most likely as wealthy and influential as the Taiwan branch. In stark contrast, those who stayed behind in China did not fare so well.

It should be noted that LuKang was the stronghold of 洪門天地會Hong-Men Heaven and Earth Society rebels led by Lin Shuang-Wen林爽文 (1756-1788). The 福靈宮 (pictured above) honors one of Lin's generals, Wang Shun平海大將軍“王勳”.

The activities of 洪門天地會 in Penang, reported by the British Admin in 1799, now appears a matter of course.

Coming home - Part 3

It is a time-honored tradition that when a temple is built, the names of the donors are literally etched in stone and stone tablets are erected on temple grounds in perpetual memory.  In fact, there are such tablets inside the Khye-Sian-Ong temple in Penang; although, curiously, the first one was dated 1864. The only memorial going back to the year 1820 is again the foundation stone:

A close examination of the inscription in Chinese reveals  something intriguing. Normally, any mention of the names of the Chinese emperors, strict rules known as 避諱 must be followed. In written documents, for example, an emperor's name wherever encountered must begin at the top of the page and the characters must not be in a complete form, usually one stroke less. These are to show the utmost respect to the emperor. Violate these rules, the consequences can be quite dire.

And yet, in this founding stone, the emperor's name was carved in a complete traditional character followed by a simplified character 嘉庆. Notice the 庆, instead of 大, has a 犬 inside the character. This is not a common form, and 犬 means dog, a lowly animal. In other words, this was a deliberate insult aimed at the Qing Emperor 嘉慶. The multiple mention of the year referring to 1820 also suggests a reluctance in accepting the Qing imperial calendar.

Who would have been so brazen as to create this ultimate anti-Qing expression? In that era, the Heaven and Earth secret society readily stood out.

Indeed, it is known that "早在1799年，英属槟榔屿政府就发现天地会活动的记载, i.e., as early as 1799, the British Penang Admin had discovered and recorded the activities of the Heaven and Earth Society". This statement is of immense importance. It provides the crucial extension from the past, since the 洪門天地会 or the Hong-Men branch of the 天地会 Heaven and Earth Society was linked directly to Koxinga.

Koxinga was honored as 萬雲龍 or 萬大哥 [Chief Big Brother Wan] of the society and Chen Yong-Hua [陳永華, 1634-1680 - Koxiga's political consultant and later the Prime Minister under Koxinga's son 鄭經Cheng Jing] further expanded the operation under the pseudonym 陳近南. These aliases were adopted later by the secret society to avoid detection of its anti-Qing restore-Ming activities by the Qing government and the consequential prosecution with severe punishments.

This may explain the reason why the original donors of the Jelutong temple had chosen to remain anonymous.

The Hong-Men itself was first started by Yin Hong-Seng 殷洪盛 during the rule of the last Ming Emperor of China 崇祯 Chung-zhen. After the fall of the Ming Dynasty, the fight of the Han people against the Qing invaders continued. Yin was eventually killed in action, and his son 洪旭Hong-Xu together with the remaining generals then joined Koxinga's force. And the character Hong洪 became a code word used by the members to greet one another.

To this day, branches of this now semi-secret society can still be found in Chinatowns all over the world.

Coming home - Part 2

開山 Kai-Shan or mountain-opening means trail-blazing, not unlike the first Europeans settling in the Midwest and the West Coast in the US, two centuries ago. In the Chinese tradition, ancestors are often memorialized in family temples. Sometimes, a prosperous enough clan may choose to build a large temple to worship the very first ancestor, elevated to the deity status through Taoism. For example, in Penang, Malaysia, the Chen clan worships 開漳聖王 who was the first ancestor to settle in 漳州Zhang-zhou in Hokkien. The sage-kingship was an honorary title in Taoism.

Sometimes, however, the use of  開山 in the temple title deviates from the norm. An example is the Khai-San Temple located in Bukit Merah in Singapore:

This one honors Jie Zi Tui (介子推, ?-636BC), born in the Spring-Autumn Period (春秋時代), in now 山西介休. His story is one of loyalty and piety. He sliced off a piece of his own flesh and prepared it into soup to serve his starving master, then escaping from the enemies. When his master finally became the King of 晉 Nation, Jie Zi Tui resigned quietly from his high post to be with his aging mother, and both of them then resided in 綿山Mian Mountain. The King's summons for Jie Zi Tui to return to his court to be honored went unheeded. In a half-brained attempt to force Jie out from hiding, the mountain was torched only to find both Jie and his mother died in the fire, huddled together under a tree. Jie was honored posthumously by the king and the populace. The term Khai-San of the temple in Singapore, however, is only a tangential link to the Mian "Mountain". It has nothing to do with any pioneering activities.

Unlike Southeast Asia where Hokkinese en masse had also migrated to, in Taiwan, 開山 has retained its original meaning and 開山王 is still a true, not a Taoist, kingship title in reference to the one and only Koxinga. The only other temple that has 開山 in its name is the 開山宮Kai-Shan Palace in Tainan. It was erected by the Ming-Cheng Kingdom to honor 陳稜Chen Ling.

In 台灣通史 vol 22  (published in 1920), 連橫 wrote that, "開山宮： 在府治內新街。鄭氏時建，祀隋虎賁中郎將陳稜。乾隆五年修。而舊志以為吳真人，且謂臺多漳泉人，以其神醫，建廟獨盛。夫吳真人一醫者爾，何得當此開山之號？鄭氏之時，追溯往哲，以稜有開臺之功，故建此廟。而今又誤為開仙宮，更屬不通。" It is possible that, not realizing who Chen really was, other deities had been invited by the overseers to increase the temple attendance. A physician-deity, Dr Wu, would fit the bill well for those seeking medical miracles.

陳稜 (? - 619AD) was a general of the 隋Sui Dynasty (581-618AD). Records show that he had sailed from 潮州Tiochew to conquer 流求Liu-qiu in 610AD. Some, including the Ming-Cheng officials, argued that Liu-qiu was actually Taiwan while others thought it was Okinawa. This is still in debate even now; although this deed has already been cited by some in China as the historical evidence of Chinese ownership of Taiwan (or Ryukyu, for that matter).

Back to 開山王. Inside the Khye-Sian-Ong-Tua-Pek-Kong temple in Jelutong日落洞 in Penang檳榔嶼, these plaques, dating back to when the temple was built, are found:

Clearly a temple that honors Koxinga, the 開山王, at least in the Taiwanese definition. To our knowledge, this is also the only one in SE Asia. But who had built it, back in 1820?

Coming home - Part 1

Visitors to the Khye-Sian-Ong-Tua-Pek-Kong Temple in Jelutong, Penang, are often intrigued by a memorial stone. The inscription has both English and Chinese parts. The English part reads:

“This ground was given to the Chinese community to erect a temple by Ichik Jemal, The late penghulu of this district on Nov 1820” 

And the Chinese part (above, highlighted with water-soluble dyes), a mention of the year 1820 in multiple calendar forms:


嘉庆二十五年一八二０
庚辰1820年 龍年

In other words, this temple has a long history and in fact has just celebrated the 192nd anniversary of its founding.

Khye-Sian-Ong is the Hokkien pronunciation of 開山王, a title that refers specifically to Koxinga.  And this is also where the story begins.

How to govern Taiwan

藍鼎元 (Lan Ding-Yuan, 1680-1733)

All students of Taiwan history know this phrase "三年一小反，五年一大反", a description of the difficulty in governing this beautiful island, "an uprising every 3 years, a revolt every 5 years". This is not a Taiwan proverb as commonly believed. It was coined by 道臺Tao-tai, Xu Zhong-gan徐宗幹 (1796-1866, as Taiwan Tao-tai in 1848), originally "三年小反, 五年大反" published in the 治臺必告錄 [The Essential of Governing Taiwan, edited by Xu] and his personal journal 斯未信齋文集.

Indeed, from 1696 to 1892, there had been 138 anti-Qing incidents in all, involving mostly the Han people and in some cases, the Aborigines. Was Taiwan a land of lawlessness full of ruffians, pirates, criminals, and murderers? Or was it the common Taiwanese folks simply trying to send a message? Why did the rebellions and uprisings take place at all and so frequently too?

We'll now provide some explanation:

Needless to say, people move to another land to seek a better life. This has always been true throughout the ages in Taiwan. The Hokkienese and others migrated to Taiwan, starting in the Dutch rule, through the Ming-Cheng era, indeed to leave behind a life of extreme hardship in China. Despite the ban during the early Qing rule, this migration continued unabated.

After the sacking of the Ming-Cheng Kingdom by Shi Lang in 1683, the Qing regarded Taiwan merely as a piece of conquered land, to be stripped of its wealth and riches and the spoils to be shipped back to China. In essence, a colonial governance was imposed. The ruling principles therefore did not include economic development of the land or the construction of defendable cities/towns. Instead, the Qing expanded the taxation system based on that from the Dutch and Ming-Cheng periods, i.e., the land and head taxes, while at the same time, levied an additional mind-boggling number of new taxes. As a small example, not only land farming, all manners of fish farming were also taxed. Plus, exorbitant licensing fees were charged to all commercial and fishing ships, even tiny ferry boats. Where applicable, the tax rates were much higher, from 10% to 3 times more, than those back in Mainland China.

These days, one can e-file income tax and pay land taxes at 7-11 without ever seeing the face of a taxman. Not so during the Qing rule. The extortionary taxation implemented by a corrupt officialdom was aided and abetted by thuggish enforcer-taxmen and soldier-turned loan sharks. In other words, the encounters were quite personal: either pay up or risk bodily harm, imprisonment, confiscation of properties, and loss of family members.

The officials posted to Taiwan were often of questionable character. Their sole mission was to get rich by extracting as much as possible from the populace whose welfare be damned. Worse, each official was assisted by a contingent of law enforcers known as Li吏. The Li's were in fact Mafia enforcers on steroid (no offense). This was a well-recognized festering sore of the Qing rule (more below). Then there were the soldiers of the garrison force or loan sharks from hell, who often lent money, gained from illegitimate means, to a good number of Taiwanese who could not afford to pay off the taxes. The rate was quite high, for example, at 0.5% compounded daily. Missing one payment and the paid interest was nullified only to start all over again. This was known as the 五虎利 [five-tiger interest]. "Tiger" was mentioned together with the gov't in the Confucius fable of 苛政猛於虎 [living under a despotic gov't is worse than living with a (man-eating) tiger]. Five tigers was an euphemism which does not even begin to tell what the Taiwanese had to endure.

The presence of the thuggish enforcers persisted to the end of Qing rule of Taiwan. The Royal Commissioner to Taiwan 沈葆楨 (Shen Bao-zen, 1820-1879) in his report to the Qing Court "請移駐巡撫摺" opined that "始由官以吏胥為爪牙, 吏胥以民為魚肉 (the officials enable the Li as their claws and teeth abusing and extorting the common people)". This was during the Mu-Dan-She Incident in 1874.

Lured by the rumor 台灣錢淹腳目 [Taiwan is ankle-deep in money], the migrants continued to come. However, realizing that life was no better or even worse than the one they had left behind, the suppressed got organized, again and again, and attacked the suppressors in the vain hope of gaining self-rule or independence. This was the history of the 213 years of Qing rule of Taiwan. It is fair to say that a residual visceral distrust of the central government continues to this day - a sentiment apparently still unknown to the Chinese of today.

Had the problem been addressed before? Yes. And this brings up the story of 藍鼎元 (Lan Ding-Yuan, see photo above). Lan followed his older cousin to Taiwan, the latter was charged with putting down the large-scale revolt of 朱一貴 (1721) and the subsequent popular unrests. Lan was a learned scholar who offered these observations, "臺民喜亂,如撲燈之蛾.死者在前,投者不已 (The Taiwanese love to rebel, just like moths attracted to the flames, dying one after another)" and "方慶削平,又圖復起 (Just getting ready to celebrate a mission completed, the insurgence starts up again)" - kind of blaming the victims. Although, Lan did study everything Taiwan, including its society, politics, economy, military, and the geography, custom, religion, and education. He then proposed the 19 rules of how to govern Taiwan. In his 平台紀略說 [A Synopsis of Governing Taiwan, 1731] they were, "信賞罰 (institute believable reward and punishment), 懲訟師 (penalize the lawyers), 除草竊 (weed out petty thefts), 治客民 (reign in the Hakka), 禁惡欲 (ban evil greed), 儆吏胥[punish the Li], 革規例 (reduce regulations), 崇節儉 (encourage thrift and savings), 正婚嫁 (normalize marriages), 興學校 (build schools), 修武備 (re-build military), 嚴守御 (restrict the garrison), 教樹畜 (teach husbandry), 寬租賦 [cut taxes], 行墾日 (till undeveloped land), 復官庄 (restore official fields), 恤澎民 (help the people of Peng-hu), 撫士番 (compensate the Aborigines), 招生番 (civilize the Aborigines)". Did any of these work or even implemented in the first place? From the number of armed revolts after 1731, a no across the board. In fact, even if only two [high-lighted in red] had been instituted, Taiwan would have become a much different place, possibly even the proverbial jewel on the Qing crown. Instead, Taiwan was handled as a hot potato, to be tossed at the first opportunity. That became true in 1895.

Lan also had succeeded in petitioning the Qing Court to relax the ban on the officials' bringing family members to Taiwan. The Lan family and followers stayed in Taiwan and settled in 阿里港 in Pintung [now 屏東縣里港鄉] where their descendants still reside.

Lost Colony - a new book by Tonio Andrade (Part 2)

Prof Andrade's "Lost Colony" will not be translated into Chinese and published in China - unless it is revised/abridged. He writes:

"...My erstwhile publisher asked whether I would acquiesce to omitting some “sensitive material” and changing some wording. It sounded like an innocuous request until I got to the details. Since Koxinga is considered a “positive figure in China,” my publisher informed me that the text would have to omit any discussion of torture by him and his soldiers. (Descriptions of Dutch atrocities were acceptable, though.) The book couldn’t refer to Koxinga as a “conqueror” or a “warlord,” and his “restoration of Taiwan” couldn’t be referred to as an invasion or an attack. Similarly, any mention of resistance by Taiwan’s aboriginal peoples (who, historical sources make clear, rose up and killed thousands of his soldiers), would also have to be excised, on the grounds that such episodes hint of “some sort of consciousness of Taiwanese independence.” The Chinese publisher said that if I refused to make such changes, the translation wouldn’t proceed. “Abridgement,” I was told, “is unavoidable.”

And so I set aside my dreams of renown and royalties and said no."

The entire article is here.

Members of the Cheng Clan have no problems as far as how Koxinga was portrayed in Prof Andrade's book. It should be published in Taiwan in the first place.

Celebrating the 192nd Anniversary of Koxinga Temple in Penang

The 開山王廟 [Koxinga Temple] in 日落洞Jelutong, Penang, Malaysia, is celebrating the 192nd anniversary of its founding this week.

Penang has kept the legacy of Koxinga going, 329 years after the fall of Ming-Cheng Kingdom. And the temple trustees have finally reconstructed the rich history of this venerable house of Koxinga so far away from Taiwan. We are very glad to be of some assistance in this endeavor.

We wish the people of Penang the best of luck. And hope for a safe return of the original Koxinga statue which was on loan and then disappeared in 1910-20.