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( Koxinga)
Koxinga (traditional Chinese ???; pinyin Guóxìngyé; Wade-Giles Kuo-hsing-yeh; Pe?h-oe-ji Kok-sèng-iâ/Kok-sìn-iâ; Lord with the Imperial Surname) is the traditional Western spelling[1] of the popular appellation of Zheng Chenggong (traditional Chinese ???; pinyin Zhèng Chénggong; Wade-Giles Cheng Ch'eng-kung; Pe?h-oe-ji Ten Sêng-kong) (1624 - 1662), who was a military leader at the end of the Chinese Ming Dynasty. He was a prominent leader of the anti-Qing movement opposing the Qing Dynasty, and a general who defeated the Dutch to claim Taiwan in 1662. Koxinga was born to Zheng Zhilong, a Chinese merchant and pirate, and Tagawa Matsu, a Japanese woman, in 1624 in Hirado, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. He was raised there until seven and moved to Quanzhou, in the Fujian province of China. He studied at Nanjing Guozijian (Imperial Nanking University - the main Chinese university of Ming Dynasty) when he was young. He is still known in Japan by the Japanese pronunciation of his birth name as Tei Seiko, or by his popular name as Kokusen'ya. Not long afterwards the Qing army captured Quanzhou, and Koxinga's mother either committed suicide out of loyalty to the Ming Dynasty or was raped and killed by Qing troops (like many other aspects of Koxinga's life the facts seem to have been obscured by conflicting legends). When Koxinga heard this news he led an army to attack Quanzhou, forcing the Qing troops back. After giving his mother a proper burial Koxinga went directly to the Confucian temple outside the city. Legend has it that he then burned his scholarly robes in protest. There he is rumored to have prayed in tears, saying, "In the past I was a good Confucian subject and a good son. Now I am an orphan without an emperor. I have no country and no home. I have sworn that I will fight the Qing army to the end, but my father has surrendered and my only choice is to be an unfilial son. Please forgive me." He left the Confucian temple and proceeded to assemble a group of comrades with the same goal who together swore an allegiance to the Ming in defiance of the Qing.
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