Out of China: A History of Seventeenth-Century Taiwan.

Out of China or Yu Yonghe's Tales of Formosa: A History of 17th Century Taiwan. Taipei: SMC,2003?
Out of China: A History of Seventeenth-Century Taiwan.

The following passages are excerpted from Out of China, or Yu Yonghe's Tales of Formosa: A History of 17th-Century Taiwan, by Macabe Keliher and published in March by SMC Publishing. The author, an independent historian and journalist based in Taipei, has translated the diaries of Yu Yonghe, who was dispatched to Taiwan in 1697 to search for sulfur, and added extensive commentaries on the history of the era. The following passages include commentary from the author and entries from Yu Yonghe's Small Sea Travel Diaries .

The imperial gunpowder stores have exploded. When the ensuing fire stops burning not a trace of the sulfur-nitrate remains. Over five hundred thousand pounds of it has gone up in flames, the dry earth consuming it all, leaving behind not even ash.

It is Fuzhou, China. It is the winter of 1696.

A drought has already afflicted five of Fujian province's eight counties, including the capital, Fuzhou. Just months before the gunpowder store fire, officials duly noted, "tax revenues will be down this year." Now they have another problem: how to replace the lost gunpowder? Local officials must take full responsibility, and the cost to replenish the stores must come from their own purse.

The officials have heard that the recently occupied island of Taiwan, just 150 km off the coast of Fujian, has rich sulfur stores. More than half a century ago, a young subject of the previous dynasty wrote a short work on "How to Extract Sulfur from the Taiwan Dirt." He obtained his expertise from aborigines who were selling sulfur to Chinese pirates in amounts of up to five hundred thousand pounds a year. The natives in the area had long mined the mineral and traded it to other tribes for use in primitive fireworks.

With such a large trade, the Spanish were keen to get into the market, and made the northern sulfur stores one of their prime arguments for building a fort on the island. As early as 1632, Fr. Jacinto Esquivel noted in a letter to the Spanish King that "sulfur is abundant along the Tamsui (Danshui) River, in the village of Quipatao (Beitou)." Some ten years later, thanks to Spanish incentive, a vibrant sulfur trade flourished between the colonizers and the aborigines. The Dutch, eager to get into the trade, drove out the Spanish in the 1640s and took to mining the mineral in quantities of one hundred thousand pounds a year.

By 1696, both the Spanish and Dutch have long retired from the island--in part due to the sulfur trade's lack of profits --and although the Qing Dynasty officially added Taiwan to its map in 1684, neither the central, nor any of the local governments, have attempted to exploit the rich sulfur resources. Now the Fuzhou gunpowder store explosion has caused an immediate need and both governments are curious to see if the new Taiwan territory, far off at sea, has any practical potential to provide the resource in replenishing imperial stores.

Fuzhou officials plan to organize a party to travel to the north of Taiwan, to mine the mineral and bring it back to use in the manufacturing of gunpowder. They have another problem, though: who will lead the party? There are few volunteers to make a trip across a strait that sucks many who try to a salty death at the bottom of the sea. Or to venture through territory home to aborigines known for their headhunting practices. And few want to live for months on end, perhaps even years, in a wild place devoid of people while they extract sulfur every day. Furthermore, there will be little reward for someone who does. No official rank, no promotion, no audience with the emperor. The Fuzhou officials might as well give up their plan.

Yu Yonghe is already in Fujian. He has traveled from his home in neighboring Zhejiang province to come explore the mountains and rivers. Yu thrives on adventure and wallows in danger. He climbs mountains of towering cliffs and floats down rivers in bamboo rafts. He wants to go everywhere and to see everything. He wants to climb every peak and explore every forest. In this regard, Yu is a unique official, if he is an official at all. Yu never says as much, nor refers to himself as a holder of rank--nor does anyone else in referring to him throughout history. But his close relations with the provincial government, his writings and his frequent poems indicate that he is a man of some stature; perhaps a well-to-do literati, spending his days composing verse and mountain climbing. Yet even for this social class, Yu's activities are extraordinary. Scholars of the time were most wont to spend their time in study, memorization and learning, and officials were often bogged down by managing their administrative affairs. Neither took to travel and exploration, and only high officials would tour neighboring provinces.

Yet by the fall of 1696, Yu has been through six of Fujian's eight counties. Traveling on his own, he has seen the coast and ventured through Zhangzhou and Quanzhou, the two port cities closest to Taiwan. It is here that Yu hears the first tales of the island at sea just over the horizon. Around 80 percent of the Chinese immigrating to Taiwan come from one of these two cities. About 45 percent of the population in Taiwan comes from Quanzhou, and 35 percent from Zhangzhou. Early bans on travel as a direct result of the imperial navy admiral's prejudice against Guangdong residents kept numbers from the port city Chaozhou relatively low, at around 16 percent. By the 20th century these figures have played themselves out to a definite conclusion, whereby in 1926, of 3.75 million Taiwanese, 3.1 million will be able to trace their roots back to Fujian and only 580,000 to Guangdong.

The merchants and farmers that Yu meets in Zhangzhou and Quanzhou have traveled to Taiwan and seen its shores. They have touched the rugged wilderness and gazed up at the peaks that tower over 3,000 meters into the clouds. They have fought with the aborigines and seen their brothers' heads carried off by them. The tales excite Yu who responds to their warnings with, "I like adventure; I will not avoid danger." As he completes his tour of Fujian, bringing the last two counties into his travel repertoire, he remarks, "I have been through all of Fujian's eight prefectures. Now Taiwan has become the ninth but I still do not know what it looks like."

His yearning is innocent and apolitical, but Taiwan has already caused countless headaches for China's rulers. It had only come under Qing rule recently. As the Manchus swept the Chinese countryside in the mid-17th century, the last of the remaining Ming Dynasty defenders, under the command of Zheng Chenggong (better known to the west as Koxinga), fled to the island in 1661 and set up a Chinese colony. As the Chinese population on Taiwan doubled to over one hundred thousand, the Qing Dynasty, under continuous coastal threat and fearing future challenges to its sovereignty, fought a stalemated war for over two decades against the Zheng family. In 1683, the Zheng forces had exhausted themselves and capitulated. Emperor Kangxi, at the urging of his Naval commander in chief, opted to send civilian officials and a military garrison to Taiwan, "bringing it into our territory."

Yet even after the imperial edict was sent out across China, few knew of the island. The only work written on Taiwan for the Chinese speaking world was at the turn of the 16th century. A Chinese literati, Chen Di, accompanied the Ming Navy on a punitive expedition that took them to Taiwan in search of pirates. Upon their return, Chen composed a slim pamphlet entitled "Records of the Eastern Savages" in which he offered some of the first records of the island and the aborigine tribes. Since then, the Dutch, the Spanish and the Zheng family have all presided over Taiwan, but those in China knew little about their regimes, if anything at all. They knew even less about the island's geography, the diversity of the aborigine tribes, or even the Chinese immigrants who have recently settled there. Yu says he wants to travel to Taiwan not just for the adventure but to bring back word about the island. He proposes to keep a diary of his experiences and observations so that "the rest of the world will know."

His friends say that is grand, but they also know the island is not at peace under Qing rule. From the time the Qing established administrative structures on the island, settler backlash against oppressive officials and heavy taxes have rocked the frontier. In 1684, the first year the dynasty brought Taiwan under its control, two major uprisings exploded against the new government. The Qing showed no mercy to the rebels, killing over 1,000 of them in the second rebellion alone. But many escaped and hid in the mountains, never to be caught.

Yu's family and friends plead with him not to go.

February 15, 1697 (24th day of the first month in the 36th year of the Kangxi reign)

Fuzhou

Yu Yonghe has won the honor of leading the expedition party to Taiwan. Few, however, would call it an honor given the great dangers waiting--the strait crossing, the hostile aborigines, the diseases, possibly even death. It is not an assignment that brings great esteem, nor will it lead to promotion. In fact, no one else has volunteered and Fuzhou city authorities are happy to find someone eager for the job. Yu must travel south, down the coast of China to Xiamen, where he will have to hire a captain to take him across the Taiwan Strait to the county seat at Taiwan Fu.

If he makes it safely across the strait, he must find laborers and buy supplies for a journey of over 300 kilometers to the north of the island where he will mine sulfur in an unsettled and hostile environment.

To the average official it may sound like a punishment, perhaps even banishment, but not to Yu. Yu is adventurous, energetic and rambunctious. He delights in exploring new lands and meeting new peoples. He has scaled all of the peaks in Fujian and rafted down most of the province's rivers. Once, when confronted by a friend for what he considered reckless acts, Yu told him that he always chooses the more daring route over the safe and unexciting one. "I was born and I will die," Yu said, "The Creator will decide, so what can water and earth do to me!" Taiwan is not a punishment for Yu. Not at all. Taiwan is a calling.

After traveling down the coast from Fuzhou, Yu arrives in Xiamen and prepares for the journey across the Strait to Taiwan.

February 23

Xiamen

Yu asks around for a ship and captain to take them across the strait to Taiwan via Penghu. A man from Yu's home province of Zhejiang helps him secure a respectable captain to make the four-day journey to Taiwan.

Yu must also obtain permission from the port authorities to make the trip. Not everyone can travel to Taiwan. In fact, the Qing have tried to keep the island relatively unpopulated in order to minimize administrative costs and lessen the chances of rebellion. In an attempt to create a migratory population, the government did not allow women or families to cross. They hoped that the men would travel to Taiwan during the spring planting and then return to their families after the fall harvest. In this way the population in early Qing Taiwan became that of male laborers dependent on the government for access to their families on the mainland. The government holds the families of these migrant laborers responsible for any crimes the Taiwan traveler happens to commit.

Even under such a system, official permission to cross is not easy to obtain. The would-be traveler must apply for travel papers at the office in their native locality, which must also be approved by maritime authorities on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. These papers could carry heavy costs and perhaps require bribes if the official in charge is not agreeable or finds some fault in the application.

Yu has no trouble obtaining permission. He has official papers from the Fuzhou city government, the highest administrative unit in Fujian. The Xiamen maritime office quickly issues him permission to cross to Taiwan and undertake his mission in search of sulfur.

March 11

Dadan Island

The wind has stopped blowing and the sea is now calm. Yu rests peacefully, but Yu's friend Dong cannot get used to the movement of the boat. He falls to his knees and throws up in violent heaves.

March 12

Dadan Island

"There is no wind and we cannot move," Yu writes. They are anchored at Dadan Island, just 10 kilometers out of Xiamen. It is a safe place to stop before heading into the tempestuous open waters of the Taiwan Strait. Twelve other ships are also anchored here waiting for the wind so that they might hoist their sails and move out to sea and across the strait.

March 13

Taiwan Strait

At dawn Yu awakens to the beating of drums and banging of the gong. The breeze has finally picked up and the sailors on Yu's ship are the first to feel it. In order to alert the sailors on the other ships anchored nearby that it is time to sail, they begin to beat the drum and sound the gong.

On the whole of the China coast, the Taiwan Strait is the only place to see such a practice. Here the wind will blow in such overwhelming gusts that ships cannot sail, or the wind will not blow at all, becalming them for days or weeks at a time. Sailors have learned to pass the time, to sleep and hide themselves in the lower cabins until the breeze comes. As they wait, other ships hoping to make the passage from Fujian to Taiwan, or Taiwan to Fujian, also wait. Unlike the small number of ships going to the Ryukyu Islands in the north, or to the Philippines in the south, every day many ships set sail for Taiwan. When the wind does come, the sailors rush to put up the sails and alert the other ships anchored nearby by banging the drums and sounding the gong.

When Yu climbs on deck they have already sailed out of the Dadan Island bay.

By evening Yu can see Jinmen Island. The wind hardly blows.

"I am afraid of the wind," Yu reflects. "But I am more afraid of no wind." The ship cannot rely on oars on the open sea and the strange fact that one must rely on only a large piece of cloth to sail thousands of miles becomes disturbingly evident to the once landlocked passengers.

March 17

Chikan, Taiwan Fu

It took a day and a half to sail from Xiamen to Taiwan, just under a day from Xiamen to Penghu, and half a day from Penghu to Taiwan. But the wind was favorable for Yu and his party. If the wind did not blow it could take 10 days just to move the distance that usually takes just an hour. Or worse, sometimes the east wind is too strong and ships can't enter Lu-er-men, forcing them back to Penghu. If it is a dark night and the captain can't find the harbor at Penghu, his ship can be stranded or forced to return all the way to Xiamen.

Yu asks about the other 12 ships that had set out with them from Xiamen. He is told that only half have arrived. In the subsequent days, Yu will make the journey to shore many times to inquire at the harbor patrol office about the other ships. It will be another eight days before 11 of the 12 ships arrive, and over 10 days before the last one comes in safely.

Such a disparity in time perplexes Yu. He pesters an official to explain this phenomenon. "The wind," the official answers.

"But we all left on the same day and took the same route. Why will others come in so much later?" presses Yu.

"The wind on the sea is uncertain. Two ships will never have the same experience, just a small difference between them and the two ships will be miles apart. It is not good luck or bad luck, but rather as if the gods control the outcome. We cannot assign linear values to the speed of the ships," the official responds.

In order to get to the shore and back to make his calls, Yu has bought a landing craft. However, the landing craft can only take him halfway to dry land before the sandy bottom rises to within a few inches of the water's surface and the boat cannot pass. In order to make the rest of the journey to shore without getting wet Yu rides in an ox pulled cart. Like rickshaw boys waiting on the dock, the oxcart drivers line the shore and come out to meet the landing crafts from the ships. They pull their passengers over the shallow water to whatever point on the coastline they wish.

Even after the new experience of the ox cart and arriving on land, Yu cannot shake his seasickness. "Now, I lie on the bed or lean against a chair but I still feel I am at sea." His head is splitting apart, and he remembers being on the ship and getting "thrown about all day as if it were an earthquake."

After two days he feels better and goes out to make calls on local officials. He meets with the Taiwan Fu magistrate, the military general in charge of the Taiwan garrisons, the Zhuluo magistrate, and the Fengshan magistrate. He also runs into an old friend who thinks that Yu has just dropped from the sky. Together they tour Fort Provintia, the second of the two Dutch forts built in Taiwan Fu.

After spending two months in Taiwan Fu, Yu set out on his journey, walking up the Taiwan coast to Beitou, where he sets up camp. Once Yu's camp is set up the Danshui magistrate brings local aborigines to barter with Yu for sulfur.

June 23

Yu's camp, Beitou

The chiefs of 23 aborigine villages come to see Yu. These villages are all prefectures of the main Danshui village. Yu intoxicates them with diluted wine and spoils them with pure sugar. He gives them rolls of cloth and they leave happily.

Yu figures he can trade cloth for sulfur. Seven pieces of cloth can get him one pound of sulfur-rich dirt. Yu estimates he has enough cloth to bring in some 278 catties worth of sulfur.

Gunpowder

Yu's method of extracting amorphous sulfur is a bit more advanced than that described by his forerunner Lu Zhiyi. In his work in the 1630's on "How to Extract Sulfur from the Taiwan Dirt," Lu writes: "Take the dirt from the hill and spread it in the sun. Mix it with milk letting the dirt wash away and leaving behind a juice. Dry it out and the result is sulfur."

Still, Lu was not the first. The Chinese have been extracting sulfur for centuries. The earliest uses of the mineral were by Daoist alchemists attempting to melt gold or to concoct immortality elixirs. The result of combining sulfur with saltpeter produced neither. "If you mix together sulfur, realgar, and saltpeter then ignite them, fire will spurt forth burning your hands, face, and even your house!" warned the Daoist book of chemical formulas dated somewhere around 850 AD.

The book went on to list 35 dangerous elixirs, the concocting of which, it warned, could produce devastating results. Three of them involve the main ingredients of gunpowder. However, some 700 years later the alchemists did take to treating the amalgam as a drug, as one 16th century Daoist priest testified: "Gunpowder has a bitter-sour sapidity, and is slightly toxic. It can be used to treat sores and ringworm, it kills worms and insects, and it dispels damp and hot epidemic fevers."

A most curious elixir, considering the highly toxic properties of sulfur. What the early wizards were after, it seems, was a method to refine the saltpeter which had supposedly given immense longevity to a second-century adept who ingested a quantity of it, or some other mineral of similar nature. This is an odd phenomenon as saltpeter is potassium nitrate, quantities of which will make someone ghastly sick in the same manner as ingesting salt water.

The Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) certainly knew this and made laws in the beginning of the first century AD against extracting the mineral as well as mixing it with any other substances. "From the day of the summer solstice onwards strong fires are forbidden, as well as the smelting of metals with charcoal. The purification of saltpeter has to cease altogether, until the beginning of autumn..." read the Han legal code. The function of sulfur in gunpowder acts to lower saltpeter's ignition temperature to 250 degrees centigrade, and on combustion to increase the speed of fusion and raise the temperature to 335 degrees. Boom! Such a wonderful combination that John Bate commented, "the Saltpeter is the Soule, the Sulphur the Life, and the Coales the Body."

This splendiferous Daoist invention found its way into the annuls of military institutions changing, as Roger Bacon reflected in 1620, "the whole face and state of things throughout the world." In the 10th century the Chinese began packing the minerals into a bamboo tube giving birth to the first flame thrower, crude albeit, but it did appositely burn the hands and face, and even the houses, of the enemy. By the end of that century Chinese inventors were making small bombs and grenades by stuffing the gunpowder into clay or wooden spheres. Given such practices the Chinese appropriately called the substance huo yao, or "fire medicine," in respect to its Daoist history.

The Yuan Dynasty successfully put the fire medicine to practical use, expanding their kingdom throughout central Asia. Under Yuan occupation, the Arabs picked up on the secret substance and produced a complete text on gunpowder which they used to assault the Europeans in the 14th century wars. Hostilities aside, the Arabs sent two cannons to the French king in 1345 along with 200 cannonballs and eight pounds of gunpowder. That same year the English, afraid that their continental counterparts were making threatening advances in military science, commissioned the development of rocket propelled grenades. These splendid inventions, Bacon noted, "disturb the hearing to such a degree that if they are set off suddenly at night with sufficient skill neither cities nor armies can endure them. No thunderclap can compare with such terrifying noises; nor lightning playing among the clouds with such frightening flashes..."

Yu also knows that China can now thunder and lightning. He knows that wars between the swarming and ever present European traders will erupt. He understands the importance of his sulfur extracting mission.