Yan Siqi Kaitai Cultural Park in Qingjiao Village, Haicang District, Xiamen City
The exploration of Taiwan by the ancient Chinese dynasty dates back to the Three Kingdoms period, according to Shen Ying's "Linhai Tuzhi" record: In 230 AD, King Sun Quan of Wu sent the generals Wei Wen and Zhuge Zhi to lead 10,000 officers and soldiers on an expedition to Yizhou, which is the first time that Chinese troops arrived in Taiwan. But because of the water and soil dissatisfaction, it was quickly withdrawn. The Sui Dynasty Sui Emperor also sent people to Taiwan. In the Yuan Dynasty, the "Penghu Inspection Department" was established, and its main responsibility was to combat smuggling. But until the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the Han regime never carried out large-scale development of Taiwan until the emergence of a single person.
In the late Ming Dynasty, the number of overseas Chinese surged due to the prosperity of foreign trade. Among these overseas Chinese, there is a legendary hero who has established an immortal feat. He had gathered troops in Japan to plot to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate; he was a pioneer in the development of Taiwan, known as the "Kaitai Shengzu"; he was the leader of the largest pirate group in the late Ming Dynasty, and his successor was Zheng Zhilong, the father of national hero Zheng Chenggong. His life is full of magical colors! He is Yan Siqi.
Yan Siqi Exhibition Hall in Qingjiao Village Kaitai Cultural Park
Yan Siqi (1586 – September 1625), a native of Haicheng County, Fujian Province (present-day Qingjiao Village, Haicang District, Xiamen, Fujian Province), was a descendant of Confucius's disciple Yan Hui. Yan Siqi was tall and strong in martial arts, and in his early years, because he was bullied by the local magnates, he killed haoqiang's servants in a rage, and was wanted by the government, so he fled to Nagasaki, Japan, to open a tailor shop, and after a few years, he gradually became rich. He has a bold personality, is righteous and looses money, has a wide range of friends, and gradually gained fame in the local Chinese circle.
Yan Siqi Exhibition Hall
Because Yan Siqi was acquainted with Li Dan, the largest Wakou maritime merchant who was active between Japan and Daming, another scholar believed that according to the historical data of the Dutch East India Company, Yan Siqi may have been Li Dan's second-in-command, responsible for Li Dan's activities in Taiwan and the actual operation of the maritime armed group. (Li Dan, a native of Quanzhou Prefecture, Fujian Province, and another said to be from Tong'an District, Xiamen City).
Among the Chinese merchants in Nagasaki at that time, Yang Tiansheng and Yan Siqi, jinjiang people from Quanzhou, Fujian Province, who were engaged in the shipping industry, were the best. Later, because of the corruption of the Japanese shogunate regime, Yan Siqi gathered 26 people, including Chen Zhengji, Yang Tiansheng, and Zheng Zhilong, in the ancient way of Liangshan's good Han Juyi, to form an alliance and help each other. Among the 26 people, Yan Siqi was the oldest and Zheng Zhilong was the youngest. At a secret rally, Yang Tiansheng put forward the idea of armed occupation of Japan, but he did not expect that this proposal would immediately receive unanimous support from everyone. As the eldest brother, Yan Siqi was promoted to the position of grand chief, and the time of the uprising was set for the Mid-Autumn Festival in 1624 (said to be 1621).
The area of activity of the Yan Siqi Maritime Armed Group
However, just two days before the Mid-Autumn Festival (August 13), the news of the uprising leaked, the shogunate sent troops to suppress it, and Yan Siqi and the brothers urgently retreated to the sea. The next day, Yan Siqi and 26 other brothers, as well as their minions, jumped on 13 ships and fled Japan. At that time, Zheng Zhilong's son had just reached the full moon, and the mother and son were left in Hirado, Japan, and the son who had just reached the full moon was the national hero Zheng Chenggong, who later became famous all over the world.
The sea is vast, where is it going? Chen Zhengji's proposal to go to Taiwan was recognized by everyone, and after eight days and nights of sea voyages, Yan Siqi's fleet sailed into Bengang (now Beigang, Yunlin County) on the west coast of Taiwan, which was 40 miles from Penghu Island and across the sea.
For this group of people who are accustomed to fighting and killing at sea, when they arrive at a wild place, the first thing to do is to settle down and survive. Soon, Yan Siqi showed his excellent leadership skills. The first thing he did was to manage his relationship with the local aborigines. In addition to the 26 brothers, yan siqi was followed by hundreds of minions, who were well armed, and it was not impossible to expel the natives by force. But Yan Siqi has a long-term vision, he knows that if he wants to gain a permanent foothold in Taiwan, he must get along with the local indigenous people. So he took the initiative to meet the leaders of the indigenous people, demarcated their respective territories, and lived in harmony.
Immediately after, the opening hero began to try to open up the stupid port. He set up ten Liaozhai villages (namely: main village, front village, back village, left village, right village, haiphong village, grain and grass village, sentinel boat village, Fufan village, north village). Due to the abundant sunshine, abundant rainfall and fertile soil in Bengang, it is very suitable for farming. However, at that time, their labor force was obviously insufficient, so Yan Siqi sent his brother Yang Tiansheng to secretly return to Fujian, and recruited more than 3,000 laborers in Zhangzhou and Quanzhou to come to Bengang to strengthen their own strength, which was also the beginning of the large-scale migration of Han Chinese from the mainland to Taiwan.
Yan Siqi Memorial Hall in Yancuoliao, Shuilin Township, Yunlin County, located in the first village of Yan Siqi Kaitai.
In addition to land development and grain self-sufficiency, the old business of maritime merchants naturally cannot be put down. In the Ming Dynasty, maritime merchants and pirates were often merged into one, which was a characteristic of maritime trade in that era. This is true not only of Chinese maritime merchants, but also of foreign maritime merchants. This was the case with Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, etc. merchants. While profiting from trade, he robbed merchant ships at sea. Since robbery at sea is a costless business, the profits are high. In Peng Sunyi's "JingHai Zhi", there is a record of Zheng Zhilong's robbery at sea: "Four ships of cargo were robbed, all from Siam (present-day Thailand)."
An image drawn by cartoonist Du Fu'an is used as an indication of the entrance to Yancuoliao in the first village of Kaitai.
Just when Yan Siqi led everyone to break new ground and survive and develop in Taiwan, bad luck came early! In the ninth month of the lunar calendar in 1625 (the 5th year of the ming Dynasty), Yan Siqi took people to the Pig Luo Mountain (now Zhuluo Mountain in Chiayi) to hunt, sleep in the jungle at night, drink and celebrate, he unfortunately fell into a miasma, died, at this time only one year after he entered Taiwan, only 37 years old. Yang Tiansheng and other brothers buried him in General Mountain (now the Army's Southern Survey Center Camp) in Jiaoli, Baihe District, Tainan City.
At the time of Yan Siqi's death, the maritime armed group he had established already had more than a hundred ships and was the most powerful maritime armed force in China in the late Next Dynasty.
After Yan Siqi's death, the young and talented Zheng Zhilong was elected leader, and in only two years, he developed the pirate army into an armed group with 1,000 ships and 70,000 people. Across the sea, it colonized on the west coast of Taiwan, and sometimes disturbed the Fujian and Guangdong areas, but it was not allowed to abduct women and burn houses, which was very different from other pirate groups.
The only Yan Siqi temple in Taiwan is located in Yancuoliao, Shuilin Township, Yunlin County, where Yan Siqi landed.
In 1628, Zheng Zhilong surrendered to Daming, and later led the Daming navy reorganized by the pirate army to defeat the Dutch navy in the Battle of Zhiluo Bay, winning the first major victory at sea with western powers in Chinese history. After the Manchu Qing entered the customs, Zheng Zhilong surrendered to Qing, and his son Zheng Chenggong was unwilling to surrender, so he gathered his father's old department and created glory again, pushing the naval strength to a new peak. In 1661, Zheng successfully crossed the sea and marched eastwards, expelled dutch colonists, recovered Taiwan, and established an independent kingdom.
The temple is dedicated to Yan Siqi, the general of the Capital Army
History always has cause and effect. It is precisely because of Yan Siqi's difficult foundation that there are the fruits of Zheng Zhilong, Zheng Chenggong father and son crossing the sea. In this sense, his career did not disappear because of his death, but was inherited and carried forward by Zheng Zhilong and Zheng Chenggong.
In the center of the street in today's North Port, Taiwan, there is a "Monument to Mr. Yan Siqi's Pioneering Taiwan Landing", and in Chiayi New Port, there is "Siqi Pavilion" and a walled map. This pioneering hero has also been crowned with the reputation of "Kaitai King" and "Kaitai Saint Ancestor".
Yan Siqi in the center of Beigang Subdistrict, Taiwan, landed at the Taiwan Monument
Yan Siqi is a hero with a great vision of the times, and in the context of the whole of China being indifferent to the arrival of the great navigation era, he took the overseas cause as his responsibility, colonized Taiwan, and became one of the important figures in the history of Taiwan's development, which also embodied the adventurous spirit of the Fujian people who dared to break through and dare to fight.
Lian Heng (Lien Chan's father), a famous historian of the Republic of China, spoke highly of Yan Siqi in the "General History of Taiwan": "Westerners have words, Chinese have no intention of taking risks and making progress." Uh-huh! Isn't he a very unruly man? If you become a king and lose, you will be a man."
Unfortunately, the Chinese people know very little about this legendary hero of the late Ming Dynasty, I and Yan Siqi are fellow countrymen, even in Xiamen or Zhangzhou, Quanzhou, there are very few people who know Yan Siqi, hoping that with the development of the times, more people can understand this forgotten hero Haojie.
(June 13, 2021)