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Pirate Warlord Koxinga's successful invasion of Taiwan changed everything. Here's part one of the tale of an epic, nine-month struggle with the Dutch in Anping, modern-day Tainan.
Cover via Wikimedia Commons, which has this to say about the famous warlord:
Zheng Chenggong, Prince of Yanping 鄭成功 (27 August 1624 – 23 June 1662), better known internationally as Koxinga 國姓爺; pinyin: Guóxìngyé, was a Southern Ming general who resisted the Qing conquest of China in the 17th century, fighting them on China's southeastern coast.
In 1661, Koxinga defeathed the Dutch outposts on Taiwan and established a dynasty, the House of Koxinga, which ruled part of the island as the Kingdom of Tungning from 1661 to 1683.
Check our very first episode, the story of a very white man who showed up in London in 1703... and claimed to be from Formosa. Or try a foodie episode from Season 3. Or, for those who want some harder-core history, hear the tale of the Lockheed U-2 pilot Wang Hsi-chueh 王錫爵, who became was famous for defecting to the PRC by hijacking China Airlines Flight 334 on May 3, 1986.
