Taiwan in Time: June 13 to June 19
Every year on the morning of the Dragon Boat Festival, a crowd gathers at a well on Tiechan Mountain (鐵砧山) in Taichung’s Dajia District (大甲), waiting to retrieve water at exactly noon.
Despite being only 3m wide and 1m deep, Sword Well (劍井) has quite a legend behind it. It is said that around the time of the Dragon Boat Festival in 1662, an army led by Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功), the Ming Dynasty loyalist known for driving the Dutch out of Taiwan, was trapped on the mountain by hostile Aborigines.
Photo: Chang Hsuen-che, Taipei Times
With no water sources nearby, Cheng prayed to the heavens and stabbed his treasured sword into the ground — and water started gushing out, saving his army. It is said that the sword remains in the well and resurfaces every year on Dragon Boat Festival, and water obtained at noon that day can cure all kinds of illnesses and will stay fresh for a whole year.
Up until its renaming in 1953, it was referred to as the Well of the Imperial Surname (國姓井) as Cheng was granted use of the Ming royal surname of Chu (朱) by Chinese Emperor Longwu (隆武).
The history of this legend is detailed in a study, Discussion on the Changing of Sword Lake Legend (論劍潭傳說的流變) by Lee Yi-ching (李宜靜), assistant professor at Tainan’s University of Kang Ning (康寧大學).
Photo: Chang Hsuen-che, Taipei Times
Lee examines several late-Qing Dynasty accounts of the legend, noting that they all contain different details. The earliest version, from 1871, was the simplest: it stated that Cheng acted because the water in the area was undrinkable and mentions no Aborigines.
A subsequent version has Cheng being trapped on the mountain with no water source, but a 1892 account cites “lack of water” and contains an additional scene where the sword remains in the well and shines brightly at night.
More additions were made later, such as the river snail who regenerated in the water and the man who tried to retrieve the sword to no avail.
It is not clear if government officials simply ignored the existence of Aborigines and at what point they became part of the tale, but they are clearly mentioned in a 1975 biography of Cheng.
Interestingly, the book Legends of Xiamen (廈門的傳說) contains the exact same story, except that it took place on Gulangyu Island (鼓浪嶼) off the coast of Xiamen in China’s Fujian Province.
HISTORICAL ACCURACY
As far as the historicity of the legend goes, the location and timing do make sense, but at closer examination, there are several questionable issues.
After a failed invasion of the fallen Ming capital of Nanjing, and with Qing troops closing in on the last Ming stronghold of Fujian, Cheng turned his eyes toward Dutch-controlled Taiwan as a base to regroup.
Setting sail with 400 ships and 25,000 troops, Cheng landed in today’s Tainan in April 1661, capturing Fort Provintia in a few days and laying siege to the multiple-walled Fort Zeelandia (安平古堡, also known as Anping Fort). Nine months later, the Dutch surrendered and evacuated in February 1662.
They say Cheng conquered Taiwan, but in fact, his kingdom, even at its height under his son, is only said to encompass an area roughly between today’s Changhua County and northern Pingtung County as well as the outlying island of Penghu. The Sword Well is located well north of this territory.
Facing a lack of food during and after the siege, Cheng ordered his troops to move beyond the kingdom’s borders to clear new land for farming — an act that would inevitably put them in conflict with Aborigines.
Historian Chen Chieh-hsien (陳捷先) writes in his book, Not Shaving Hair and the Two States Theory (不剃頭與兩國論) that the scope of this endeavor was broad. The troops spread out from Tainan and established a scattered network of farms that reached the southern border of today’s New Taipei City. This is probably when Cheng’s troops encountered the Aborigines in Dajia, located just north of the tribal alliance or kingdom of Middag (大肚王國).
Up to this point, the legend is still accurate if you do not question whether Cheng, in his position, would personally participate in these development activities. All accounts examined state that he “sent” or “ordered” troops to do so. Some versions of the legend address this, stating that he was visiting the area to raise the morale of his troops before they were trapped on the mountain.
But here’s where it gets hairy: Dragon Boat Festival took place on June 20 in 1662, and Cheng is known to have died on June 23.
At least five accounts on Cheng’s life state that he suddenly fell ill (the ailment varies) at the beginning of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, which roughly corresponds to June 15, and died in Tainan. So he simply could not have been in Taichung around June 20.
Case closed?
Taiwan in Time, a column about Taiwan’s history that is published every Sunday, spotlights important or interesting events around the nation that have anniversaries this week.
The low voter turnout for the referendum on Aug. 23 shows that many Taiwanese are apathetic about nuclear energy, but there are long-term energy stakes involved that the public needs to grasp Taiwan faces an energy trilemma: soaring AI-driven demand, pressure to cut carbon and reliance on fragile fuel imports. But the nuclear referendum on Aug. 23 showed how little this registered with voters, many of whom neither see the long game nor grasp the stakes. Volunteer referendum worker Vivian Chen (陳薇安) put it bluntly: “I’ve seen many people asking what they’re voting for when they arrive to vote. They cast their vote without even doing any research.” Imagine Taiwanese voters invited to a poker table. The bet looked simple — yes or no — yet most never showed. More than two-thirds of those
Cheng Ching-hsiang (鄭青祥) turned a small triangle of concrete jammed between two old shops into a cool little bar called 9dimension. In front of the shop, a steampunk-like structure was welded by himself to serve as a booth where he prepares cocktails. “Yancheng used to be just old people,” he says, “but now young people are coming and creating the New Yancheng.” Around the corner, Yu Hsiu-jao (饒毓琇), opened Tiny Cafe. True to its name, it is the size of a cupboard and serves cold-brewed coffee. “Small shops are so special and have personality,” she says, “people come to Yancheng to find such treasures.” She
In the run-up to the referendum on re-opening Pingtung County’s Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant last month, the media inundated us with explainers. A favorite factoid of the international media, endlessly recycled, was that Taiwan has no energy reserves for a blockade, thus necessitating re-opening the nuclear plants. As presented by the Chinese-language CommonWealth Magazine, it runs: “According to the US Department of Commerce International Trade Administration, 97.73 percent of Taiwan’s energy is imported, and estimates are that Taiwan has only 11 days of reserves available in the event of a blockade.” This factoid is not an outright lie — that
Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu’s (洪秀柱) attendance at the Chinese Communist Party’s (CPP) “Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War” parade in Beijing is infuriating, embarrassing and insulting to nearly everyone in Taiwan, and Taiwan’s friends and allies. She is also ripping off bandages and pouring salt into old wounds. In the process she managed to tie both the KMT and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) into uncomfortable knots. The KMT continues to honor their heroic fighters, who defended China against the invading Japanese Empire, which inflicted unimaginable horrors on the
RSS