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Tainan to build replica of Koxinga-era armed ship

The Tainan City Government will build a replica of a Ming Dynasty armed merchant vessel of the kind believed to have been crucial to Koxinga’s incursion across the Taiwan Strait from China 400 years ago.

Historians at National Cheng Kung University in Tainan City believe that Koxinga, or Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功)used armed merchant ships to chase Dutch colonists from Taiwan in 1662, after moving his troops from Xiamen, China, to Taiwan a year earlier.

The academics said Cheng’s father, Cheng Chih-lung (鄭芝龍), laid a solid foundation for his son by building a fleet of armed ships equipped with sails to shuttle across the Taiwan Strait, navigate the South China Sea and travel as far abroad as the colonial territories of the European powers of Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands.

The Chengs were considered “merchants, pirates and officials” from China by Westerners in the 17th century, the historians said.

Koxinga’s fleet was called “Tayouan boats” by the Japanese and “sailing junks” by the Dutch colonists.

Hsu Keng-hsiu (許耿修), director of the Tainan City Government Tourism and Cultural Affairs Bureau, said the city would rebuild a “Tayouan boat” after retrieving invaluable archival information about the Chengs’ ships last year.

The city government of Hirado, Japan — where Koxinga was born in 1624 to a Japanese mother — has an original painting of a “Tayouan boat.”

To reconstruct such a ship, Tainan city officials traveled to Japan last year to obtain a copy of the painting and other historical documents about Tainan.

Based on the 1706 painting, the city hopes to complete a 29.5m-long and 7.26m-wide replica in two years. The replica will be capable of carrying some 200 people.

Two local shipbuilders are likely to bid for the project, which is expected to receive NT$80 million (US$2.5 million) in funding from the Council for Cultural Affairs, Hsu said.

Construction is scheduled to begin next month, he said.

Tainan has taken other steps since last year to honor Koxinga, including establishing a monument at the location of a battle in Tainan to commemorate the nine-month war fought by Koxinga to end 38 years of Dutch rule.

There are several temples in Tainan dedicated to Koxinga and his mother. He is seen by many as a national hero and respected because of the loyalty he showed to the Ming emperor after the dynasty collapsed.

Koxinga died at the age of 38, probably of malaria.
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