Mandarin Airlines: The Flight Attendant Tricked Me

 

Western Fisher Island, Penghu / Pescadores (澎湖): The Western Fort on Fisher Island dates back to 1681. Built two years before the fall of the Koxinga Dynasty in Taiwan, the battery was meant to defend the country against Shilang, the admiral sent by the Emperor Kangxi to clear the island out of bandits. Kangxi originally meant to defeat Koxinga's . . .

This is as far as I got. I was flying back to Taipei from the Pescadores on Mandarin Airlines. The flight attendant told me to turn off my computer. When I indicated I was in flight mode, she came within an inch of clapping my computer closed. She said: "Using a computer on a domestic flight is against the law in Taiwan." When I asked her why, she showed me the safety card in the pouch of the seat in front of me. I called Information for Foreigners when we landed. They said they did not know about that law and gave me the number for the civil aviation authorites. There is no such law in Taiwan. 

...anyway, I am back a week later to writing this post: Koxinga's grandson, Zheng Keshuang. The Emperor Kangxi wanted to evacuate Taiwan after the Qing Dynasty military defeated Zheng's forces, to remove all the people in Taiwan who seemed Chinese. He said Taiwan was a piece of muddy shit floating in the ocean beyond China. Shilang explained it was necessary to maintain a presence in Taiwan to clamp down on pirates. There was an idea to entice the Dutch East India Co. back, but the Dutch had lost interest in Taiwan. Zheng was taken into tribute captivity and imprisoned in China a couple of years later (1683).

I think the Pescadores were also evacuated in 1425, after the lightning strike and subsequent burning of the temple in Nanjing (I forget the name), which resulted in all people being forced to move inland, away from the ocean. The Chinese Navy was also put in storage at that time.