Zheng Chenggong Branch Shrine & Birthstone

Zheng Chenggong Branch Shrine & Birthstone

Zheng Chenggong’s father, Zheng Zhilong, had five wives in his lifetime. In the fourth year of the Tianqi era (1624), which was the first year of the Kan’ei era in Japan, on the 14th day of the seventh lunar month (August 27 in the Gregorian calendar), one of his wives, Lady Tagawa, was gathering shellfish and seaweed on Hirado’s “Senrigahama” beach when she suddenly felt intense abdominal pain. Sensing that she was about to give birth, she hurried to a large rock and soon gave birth to a boy — who would become Zheng Chenggong. Later, people began calling this rock the “Birthstone,” also known as the “Childbirth Stone.” About 200 years later, at the site of Zheng Chenggong’s birth, the Japanese erected a memorial monument inscribed with a 1,500-character epitaph composed by Hayama Gaiken, a Confucian scholar from the Hirado Domain. Admission / Opening Hours

Free

Operating Hours: 8:00–17:15

Nagasaki, Japan

Zheng Chenggong, originally named Sen, childhood name Fusu, courtesy name Damu, pseudonym Mingyan, was a native of Shijing in Nan’an. He was born on July 14 of the fourth year of the Tianqi era in the Ming Dynasty (1624) on the Senrigahama Beach in Hirado City, Japan. His father was Zheng Zhilong, and his mother was the daughter of Lady Tagawa from Hirado City, Nagasaki. In the third year of the Chongzhen era (1630), when Chenggong was seven years old, he returned from Japan to Anping (now Anhai Town in Jinjiang) to study and was given the name Sen.

When Chenggong was 11 years old, he once wrote an essay based on the theme “Sweeping, Greeting, Responding, and Advancing or Retreating,” composing the striking line: “The campaigns of Tang and Wu were no more than sweeping; the abdications of Yao and Shun were merely advancing or retreating.” Afterward, he devoted himself to the intense study of the classics, history, and military strategy.