Intro:
Son - Zheng - 鄭成功 (1624—1662)
Father - 鄭芝龍 (1604—1661)

(From Crazy)
- Zheng Chenggong(鄭成功) once
controled the area around
Tainan (1661-1662).
- The so-called first regime
established by "Han Chinese"
in Taiwan's history (1661-1683).

- Zheng, half Japanese, was
born in Japan (as 田川福松).
His father 鄭芝龍 served a
Japanese feudal lord (田川七左衛門)
and later married the boss's daughter.
His brother, raised as Japanese
and a successful businessman,
financed his political ambition.

- Zheng was famous for "ousting"
the Dutches from Taiwan.
Refs:
1 Verwaerloosde Formosa
(Neglected Formosa)
by C.E.S. pub. in 1675
Wow the typography
and the engravings!
2 The Diary of Philippus Daniel Meij
van Meijensteen (1661-1662)

- Zheng's name 成功 means "success".
Yes he died young. Too young.
Next year after setting up a
kingdom in Tainan. But boy
wasn't he successful!?

- First bestowed the family name of
the emperor of Ming (in exile).
Then, several decades after his
death, a slew of prestige and
accolades from the emperors of Qing.
Ming and Qing were supposed to be
nemesis of each other.

- As time went by, we see no
matter who's the king in Taiwan,
from Japan to KMT, he remained
revered like a god
(和藤內 わとうない の 逆襲).
Japan and KMT were supposed to
be arch rival of each other.

- From 祠(temple) to 神社(shrine)
and back to 祠.
From 牌坊(arch) to 鳥居(torii)
and back to 牌坊.
Seamlessly.


Silk Road of Sea
.
海賊王に俺はなる
.
Zheng's father, a handsome man*, could
speak fluent Japanese, Portuguese,
Spanish, Dutch, Hokkien and Mandarin.
.
Zheng senior became a Catholic
in Macao (Macau). Olá Senhor.
Nicholas Iquan Gaspard!
Macao was a Portuguese colony
and one of the strongholds of
the Jesuit Order back then.
.
Zheng family belonged to a
privileged class. While ordinary
Chinese toiled as peasant slaves
generation after generation.
They got to live a life of
adrenaline rush and big bucks.
With movement and religious
freedom even?
.
So the class was composed of
the descendants of the people who
controlled the Silk Road caravans
for the past thousands of years.
They had moved to the southeast
coast of China (e.g. Fujian's
Quanzhou 泉州) to manage the (new)
Silk Road of Sea for at least hundreds
of years already before Zheng's time.
.
They were the people with
colored eyes (色目人).
The international traders.
.
When it came to the crunch...
Little Ice Age 🙀
Yes some of them.
Pirates.
.
Pirate ． Private ． Parrot
.
Perhaps not very different from
some of their ancestors to face
the same choice standing amid
the infinite horizon of sand
dunes and mirages shimmering
oh no... blazing in a haze...
.
p.s.
- Little Ice Age:
"While not a true global ice age,
it featured several coldest intervals,
with the most severe conditions
occurring during the 17th century."
- The "Golden Age of Piracy"
(1650s ~ 1730s) happened to
coincide with Little Ice Age
(with a reasonable period of lag).
.
There is a significant stigma attached
to businessman or doing business(商)
in the traditional Chinese culture.
商人 was the perpetual squatter on
the bottom rung of the social ladder
(士農工商 according to Confucianism).
.
Why?
Because slaves can never be rich.
Slaves can never be adventurous.
Slaves can never move around and
see the world.
.
Related:
路引 (To bind people to a specific
piece of land. Make them live a life
of endless toil. To the bone. In a
permanent vegetative state of mind.)
.
p.s.
Of course there were still merchants
in ancient China. But no matter
how loaded they were, they had to
grovel (not only to jump through hoops...
grovel) before power, i.e. government
officials, even of the lowest rank.
Deemed as threat by emperors, some of
the most successful ones often ended
up miserably in prison with all
belongings and properties confiscated,
all family members sold like cattle
if not worse.
.
This collective sentiment of discrimination
against merchants and commerce could
potentially facilitate to propagate a
collective numbness to disassociate from
considering and conducting oneself
as an agent with agency, i.e.
rights and accountability alike.
  .
Related:
Contract
Agency - Mojo (yeah baby!) -
Life Force (linked to the
"Consciousness", spirituality...)
.
Commercial behavior requires a Party
A and a Party B. Subconsciously speaking,
this kind of behavior could help,
consciously or unconsciously, cultivate
and foster a sense of boundary for
a partaker that no slave masters
would be willing to see.
A sense of boundary, according to
Google AI, is "essential for safety,
empathy, and healthy relationships".
.
In China, Rule of law always kowtowed
(not just bowed down... kowtowed)
before Rule of man.
.
"Chinese" emperors ran a gigantic
slave camp to produce silk, tea, china
(all labor intensive products)...
with an iron fist.
.
That place gave silk -
Ok. Call it Serica.
That place gave china -
Ok. Call it China?
.
The emperors never shared the
profit, the unbelievable profit,
with their slaves.
Instead
with those international traders.
.
Yet in my humble opinion,
saying "share" is an understatement.
(Thousands of years.
Hundreds of emperors.
Dozens of dynasties.
The "Show" must go on.)
.
They made the call (price).
They were the "messenger".
They were the "solution".
.
Somehow obscured from history.
They were the hidden powers.
.
Let alone the hidden hidden
powers behind them.
.
And the hidden hidden hidden...
.
Related:
K9
🦊 🫦
Silk
Sea
.
It was them who possessed
those lost ancient maps.
Them who were familiar with
the secret knowledge about
navigation skills (Astrology*
included), weapons and
shipbuilding technology.

p.s.
* A handsome man:
鄭成功 is famous in Taiwan.
We have known his story
(the official version*)
since childhood (as a
"national" hero). But even
history books, uptight and
reserved usually, specifically
mention his father was handsome.
I dunno. This could mean
something... 😂 Let's keep
the info (as a puzzle and
a code to crack)!
* Official version
("Pirate" being a taboo.
That we understand. But...)
conveniently left out
all the details that could
trace back to Zheng's
maternal lineage (hey the
man's mother was Japanese)!
* Silk Road of Sea
With the intoxicating aroma!
Spice Road of Sea?
- Spices
- Smell
.
"The Spice Route, or Maritime
Silk Road, was a vast, ancient
network of sea lanes connecting
the East with the West for
over 4,000 years*." 🙀
"Southeast Asia and India were
historically the world's
primary source of spices."
~ Google AI
.
"Silk has been found in the
Valley of the Kings in Egypt,
in the tomb of a mummy
dating to 1070 BC."
~ Wiki
4,000 years?
Obviously I was wrong about the
time. "...at least hundreds of
                        years already before Zheng's
time." in one of the paragraphs
above. Not hundreds of years.
Thousands of years...
.
Spice Road of Sea
= Silk Road of Sea
= China Road of Sea
.
Those delicate, fragile and
substantial porcelains had to
be sipped by sea and that leads
to the revelation of an ancient
secret...
.
Marco Polo traveled by sea from
Quanzhou (or Zaiton, in today's
China) to Persia, and then finished
the journey overland.
"To escort a Mongol princess to
Persia..."
* 4,000 years:
This could help break the conventional
notion that "Chinese" culture
originated in the north. All
the narratives about the north
being civilized and the south
primitive and barbaric.
.
Related:
蜀, the birthplace of silk (蜀錦),
is located in the southwest China.
Ivory from South Asia and clam
shells from the Indian Ocean were
found in the archeology sites there
(Sanxingdui, 三星堆, 1700 - 1150 BC).
.
蜀 had endured several rounds of
systematic ethnic cleansing
throughout history. It is like
the canary. "天下未亂蜀先亂"
.
The authority used to force peasants
from the neighboring provinces
to relocate to and repopulate this,
suddenly practically empty, place.
But every time the canary rose like a
phoenix from the ashes of ravages
and carnage. How come? In my
humble opinion, "一方水土養一方人"
(one region's soil and water nurtures
one region's people). Kind of like
the French word "terroir*".
.
蜀 is known for the name 天府之國.
Please see 🌙 for 天 (sky).
Its most famous deity 二郎神,
a local interpretation of Vayu-
Weshparkar (god of the Atmosphere
and the Wind) from Zoroastrianism
may lead to more shocking discoveries.
  .
This could be connected to the reasons
  why 唐"玄"宗 fled to 成都 (蜀) to "seek
protection" (While 慈禧 西安)?
Why the butcher 張獻忠 had to
come from 延安?
.
And the real upbringing of 楊貴妃*
(Yang, whose unparalleled beauty was
eternalized by some of the most
exquisite words from some of the
most flamboyant poets of that time).
Why did she "adopt" 安祿山 (An)?
Why did she run away to Japan
as the rumor has it?
.
And 唐玄宗's (emperor's) retrospectively
foolish decisions to repeatedly
block out all the ominous signs
leading to An's betrayal. He was
waiting for An. As An kept
charging through the barricades.
As everything became blurry.
Um... tears? Oh he was taking a
sauna. This guy loved his sauna...
.
The estimated casualties
of this "betrayal":
13,000,000 – 36,000,000.
Half of the population of
Tang (安史之亂, 755 – 763 AD).
Not to mention an extremely
devastating blow to the
economy, culture and society.
- More info
.
This is why I'd like to believe
that 楊貴妃(Yang) did escape death
and made it to Japan safe and sound.
Imagine the emperor was heading for
蜀 to seek protection. 蜀 was the
birthplace of Yang. Yang, on the
other hand, was the poster girl of
蜀. The sweetheart, the ideal daughter,
the pride of 蜀. Would the emperor
be that stupid to have her killed
before arriving there? And exactly,
in my humble opinion, because of his
leniency, the mysterious power in
蜀 safeguarded him and the empire
under attack. The rule of Tang
lasted for more than 100 years
even after the debacle of that
monumental magnitude.
.
As if planned, uncannily,
the north took most of the hit.
And the south, the new darling
nudged to the center stage,
was about to lose all her memory...
* Terroir:
I watched a cooking show every
week. And learned how many types
of tomatoes (ancienne) could be
found in a farmer's market in
France. When Gazpacho was on
the menu. Respect!
* 楊貴妃(Yang):
What if a little birdie whispers
that 楊貴妃, the so-called most
beautiful woman in the entire history
of ancient "China", the one and only
true love of the emperor 唐玄宗 was
just a substitute who lived her
entire live in the shadow of
another woman?
  .
The story of her and her.
But it's never about her or her.
Or him. (Spoiler)
.
One of my earlier mind-f**ks
that shattered my faith in life.
Oh no... No such thing.
Just kidding :)
.
But it did help kick me off to
a journey of gradually having my
confidence chipped away by pieces
of information here and there that
sporadically incited a sense of
cognitive dissonance from time to
time. My confidence in the history
textbooks we learned in school.
.
The irony is...
Here is Taiwan.
We live in Taiwan.
.
I'd love to know more history
about Taiwan.