Zheng Chenggong’s Tomb

Zheng Chenggong’s Tomb

Zheng Chenggong’s Tomb is a national key cultural relics protection unit.

Zheng Chenggong’s Tomb is located on Fuchuan Mountain in Kangdian Village, Shuitou Town, Nanan City. It is 30 kilometers from Quanzhou. Originally buried in Jiaozaiwei, Tainan, Taiwan, Zheng Chenggong was relocated to its current site in the 38th year of the Kangxi reign of the Qing Dynasty (1699 AD).

Zheng Chenggong’s Tomb is a national key cultural relics protection unit. Zheng Chenggong is a great national hero of China, and his most significant achievement was the recovery of Taiwan, the expulsion of Dutch invaders, and the large-scale development of the island. Due to years of warfare and exhaustion on the battlefield, he fell ill and passed away in Taiwan in the 16th year of the Yongli reign (1662) at the age of only 39.

The tomb is constructed as an earthen mound using lime-water bound soil. Both the tomb tablet and the pathway are carved from granite. The tomb tablet is 75 centimeters high and 15.8 centimeters long, shaped like a mountain, and the entire tomb complex covers an area of 997 square meters.

In 1929, Zheng Chenggong’s Tomb was robbed, but two stone epitaphs were promptly salvaged. One is the Olive Mountain Epitaph, erected by Zheng Jing in 1674 when he returned home to renovate the ancestral tomb. The other is the Epitaph of Zheng Kezang’s Return to the Ancestral Tomb, created during the relocation of the burial.

Zheng Chenggong’s coffin had two layers. The inner layer was painted bright vermilion, and the interior was adorned with —, with the skeleton well-preserved. Among the items retrieved were a helmet, a dragon robe, a jade belt encrusted with 17 jade pieces, a pair of boots and shoes, as well as hair, all of which are first-class precious cultural relics now housed in the Zheng Chenggong Memorial Hall in Shijing, Nanan.

Zheng Chenggong, originally named Sen and childhood name Fusong, with the courtesy name Damu and pseudonym Mingyan, was born on July 14, 1624, in Chikan, Nanan, in Hirado, Japan, at Senrigahama. His father was Zheng Zhilong, and his mother was the daughter of the Tagawa family from Hirado, Nagasaki, Japan. In the 3rd year of the Chongzhen reign of the Ming Dynasty (1603), at the age of 7, he returned from Japan to Anping (now Anhai Town, Jinjiang) to study and was given the name Sen.

At the age of 11, Zheng Chenggong once wrote a remarkable sentence in response to his tutor’s topic “Sweeping, Greeting, Advancing, and Retreating”: “The campaigns of Tang and Wu were no more than sweeping; the abdications of Yao and Shun were nothing but advancing and retreating.” Later, he studied the classics, history, and military strategies intensively... More details about Zheng Chenggong++

Shuitou Town: Located in the southeastern part of Nanan, Shuitou Town is a coastal area. It faces Anhai Town, Jinjiang across the Anping Bridge to the east, borders Maxiang Town, Tong’an, separated by hills to the west, connects to Shijing to the south, and adjoins Guanqiao to the north. It holds a strategically important location as a necessary passageway from Zhangzhou–Xiamen to Quanzhou, Jinjiang, and Shishi. Covering an area of 127 square kilometers, the terrain is higher in the west and lower in the east, with a coastline of 11 kilometers. National Highway 324 and the Fuzhou–Xiamen–Zhangzhou Expressway run through the town, and its docks provide direct access to international waters. The town is divided into one community neighborhood committee and 28 administrative villages. The population is predominantly Han Chinese, numbering 108,000, with 45,000 overseas Chinese relatives. Major surnames include Huang, Li, Lü... More details about Shuitou Town++

Further Reading:

· Second Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units