“So it’s his fault?!”
That was what I heard a Taiwanese visitor say years ago in front of the statue of Koxinga, located in Tainan, Taiwan.
Koxinga was a Ming dynasty general who fled to Taiwan and established an Ming outpost there from 1662 to 1683. The Qing dynasty (which defeated the Ming) later defeated Koxinga’s new kingdom and wrapped Taiwan into the Qing dynasty.
The visitor’s complaint: that without Koxinga there would not be a struggle, going on even today, over the future of Taiwan.
This is a post about founding ceremonies. And today is the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
