[Photos] A tale of two homelands: Fujian and Taiwan [Eye on Fujian series]

(All photos courtesy of Hsu Chung-mao, unless otherwise stated.)

My parents are originally from Gutian county in the Mindong (eastern Fujian) region. They speak the Minbei (northern Fujian) language group, which is very similar to the Fuzhou dialect. 

After Taiwan’s retrocession in 1945, the Fujian Provincial Government recruited young people in Fujian to work in Taiwan. My father joined a three-month training programme in Fuzhou and was then sent to work at the Kaohsiung Grain Bureau in Taiwan. Two years later, he brought my mother and my two older sisters over from Fuzhou, and they have lived in Kaohsiung ever since.

I was born in Kaohsiung, where everyone around me spoke the Minnan (southern Fujian) dialect — what Singaporeans call Hokkien. Because my parents did not speak our hometown dialect at home, I cannot speak Fuzhou dialect, but I can speak Minnan. As a result, I am actually more familiar with the Minnan culture and lifestyle than that of northern Fujian.

During the Cold War, cross-strait exchanges were cut off, and my knowledge of Fujian was limited to what I read. After cross-strait travel resumed in 1987, the first place I visited in Fujian was Xiamen, followed by Quanzhou, where I took many photographs of southern Fujian during the early years of the reform and opening up period. Because of my work, I have travelled to Fuzhou, Quanzhou and Xiamen frequently over the past 20 years, gradually filling in the gaps in my understanding of Fujian. It can be said that I have deep feelings for both the land of Taiwan and the land of Fujian — in a sense, both are my hometowns.

China has two large islands: Taiwan island and Hainan island. Historically, Taiwan was part of Fujian province and only became a separate province in 1885. Hainan island was part of Guangdong province and did not become a province until as late as 1988, when it was designated for development as a special economic zone. Guangdong and Fujian are both key centres of China’s southern maritime culture, playing two important roles. Firstly, they have served as major bases for the outward expansion of China’s maritime culture. Secondly, they have also functioned as strategic front lines in China’s defence against maritime incursions by foreign powers. These two roles are essentially two sides of the same coin, manifesting differently in different historical periods, yet both equally important.

Fujian was where one of the ancient states of Yue used to be, and its people belonged to one of the Baiyue (百越, lit. hundred Yue) groups. Around the 3rd century BCE, the Yue state established the Minyue royal city in Fuzhou, marking the earliest administrative institution set up by the Central Plains dynasties in Fujian. From the Han dynasty onward, Fujian became a stable part of China’s territorial domain.

Following the collapse of the Tang dynasty, the remnant forces under Wang Shenzhi briefly established the Kingdom of Min, making notable contributions to Fujian’s development. Because Fujian faces the sea, Quanzhou Port gradually grew into an international harbour.

During the Yuan dynasty, Quanzhou became the most important port of entry for Arab merchants from the Middle East into China and a key starting point of the Maritime Silk Road. It was also home to tens of thousands of Arab merchants and their families. The Venetian traveller Marco Polo once described Quanzhou and Alexandria in Egypt as the two most prosperous ports in the world at that time.

Around 618 CE, two disciples of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, came to Quanzhou to preach. After their deaths, they were buried at Lingshan, and later generations honoured the Tombs of the Third and Fourth Muslim Saints as holy tombs. The two tombs stand close together, aligned east to west. In addition, Quanzhou has a mosque built in 1009 CE, one of the earliest mosques in China.

Much like Xi’an, the capital of the Tang dynasty that once hosted tens of thousands of Jewish merchants and their families and served as the starting point of the overland Silk Road, Quanzhou was also a place where international merchants gathered. It is worth noting that Jewish and Arab communities that once lived on Chinese soil ultimately assimilated into Chinese society culturally and ethnically — a distinctive feature of Chinese culture.

As Fujian faced the open sea and developed as a trading port, it inevitably became a focal point of armed conflict whenever maritime powers competed for resources and interests. Although the Ming dynasty sent Zheng He on seven voyages to the Western Oceans, the purpose was to project national prestige rather than to secure overseas economic resources through maritime power. Once there was no tangible profit, overseas expeditions ceased. Fundamentally, the Ming dynasty remained a land-based empire centred on traditional agrarian culture.

In its later declining years, Fujian even became a hotbed of piracy. Pirates mostly comprised Japanese maritime raiders, as well as impoverished Fujian coastal residents who disguised themselves as Japanese pirates to carry out raids along the coast. 

At the same time, the West was entering the Age of Discovery. Portuguese and Spanish ships sailed towards India and China, seeking to bypass the Middle Eastern Arab merchants who monopolised overland trade with China, and instead to trade directly with China for goods like porcelain, tea and silk. The Dutch followed, equipped with more advanced ships and weapons. When trade negotiations failed, they resorted to force to compel transactions. Fujian thus became the frontline through which Western powers pried open China’s doors to trade.

In the early 17th century, the Dutch extended their influence to Taiwan and Fujian, while Fujian itself also developed its own maritime forces. Because seaborne trade was highly profitable, local clans privately built large ships, recruited men from their home regions, and organised maritime armed groups. They conducted trade across the seas between Fujian, Kyushu in Japan, and Luzon, and even used force to extract “protection fees”; essentially, they operated as maritime gangs.

At the time, Fujian officials aptly observed: “When trade is permitted, they are merchants; when trade is banned, they become pirates — the merchant and pirate are one and the same.” This was an extremely accurate description. Economic incentives are the greatest driving force; banning maritime trade is as good as encouraging ordinary merchants to transform into armed groups for self-protection and to further engage in illicit trade through the use of force.

In the late Qing dynasty, the most famous Fujian maritime merchant group was led by Zheng Zhilong and his son Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga). The naval power they commanded was strong enough to rival the state. Zheng Zhilong later surrendered to the Qing dynasty, but Zheng Chenggong refused to submit. He fought the Qing forces along the Fujian coast for 17 years, relying entirely on income from maritime trade for economic support. In Chinese history, this was the first resistance movement sustained by sea-based commerce.

In 1661, Zheng Chenggong launched an expedition from Xiamen and Kinmen to attack Taiwan, driving out the Dutch who had occupied the island for 38 years. He established the anti-Qing, pro-Ming overseas base known as the Kingdom of Tungning, which was also the first Han Chinese regime in Taiwan. In 1683, the Qing general Shi Lang led an offensive against Taiwan, first capturing the Penghu Islands. The Zheng regime surrendered, ending its 22-year rule over Taiwan.

With the overseas resistance eliminated, the Kangxi Emperor initially considered abandoning Taiwan. However, Shi Lang strongly objected. He argued that although the overseas rebel forces had been destroyed, the growing strength of Western powers still posed a threat to China. Taiwan therefore retained significant strategic value that should not be relinquished. In the end, the Kangxi Emperor accepted this view. Taiwan was formally incorporated into China’s territory as part of Fujian province. Shi Lang’s insight thus shaped Taiwan’s historical trajectory, and he is regarded as one of the most strategically farsighted military figures in China during the Age of Discovery.

Even so, during the height of the Western industrial revolution and the rapid expansion of overseas colonial empires, the Qing empire — like other ancient empires — faced a decline in industrial technology, commercial management, and political reform. By the time British warships arrived in 1842 to launch the Opium Wars, China lagged behind the West by nearly two centuries and was virtually defenceless. What followed were humiliations such as territorial concessions, massive indemnities, and the legalisation of opium imports into China.

In 1860, during the Second Opium War, Western powers not only extracted enormous reparations but also burned the Old Summer Palace, established embassies in Beijing, and secured imperialist privileges including leased territories in coastal cities, mining rights, inland river navigation rights, and extraterritorial jurisdiction. China was shocked out of its slumber and began reform movements aimed at self-strengthening, introducing Western industrial and military technology. The naval academy and shipyard at Mawei in Fuzhou, Fujian, became the cradle of China’s modern navy and the training ground for its first generation of naval officers.

While the shipyard was completely destroyed by artillery fire during the Sino-French War in 1884, the memory and spirit of modern naval construction endured. This legacy continues to this day — for instance, China’s third aircraft carrier is named the Fujian, symbolising the continuation of the naval spirit and tradition.

The Sino-French War broke out in northern Vietnam as well as in the Taiwan Strait, including Mawei, Penghu, Keelung, and Tamsui. Recognising the urgent need for maritime defence, the Qing dynasty finally decided to establish Taiwan as a separate province. In 1895, during the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan defeated China and seized Taiwan. This demonstrated Japan’s full understanding of Taiwan’s strategic importance, which allowed Japan to extend its imperial reach into Fujian province via Taiwan.

In 1945, Japan was defeated and Taiwan was returned to China. In 1949, after losing the Chinese Civil War, the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan, leading to a long-term standoff with the mainland’s Chinese Communist government that persists to the present day.

Another crucial point must be noted: Deng Xiaoping, the chief architect of China’s reform and opening-up, selected four cities as special economic zones when implementing new policies in 1979 — Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Xiamen. Among them, Xiamen drew on Fujian’s long tradition of maritime trade to rebuild China’s external commercial and people-to-people links, becoming a key stronghold of China’s reform and opening up.

Beyond its strategic significance, Fujian is also one of the ancestral homelands of overseas Chinese. From the late Qing dynasty to the Republican period, coastal populations left in droves to seek opportunities abroad as China suffered from imperialist aggression and frequent civil wars. In Spanish-colonised Philippines and in the British Straits Settlements, colonial economies focused on sugarcane, rubber, tin mining, and other commodities, creating a massive demand for labour. As a result, large numbers of indentured labourers were recruited from Fujian and Guangdong, leading to the formation of sizeable overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia.

Overseas Chinese from Fujian were concentrated in Luzon, Singapore and Penang. They brought with them the religious beliefs, lifestyles, and culinary traditions of their homeland, and remitted their earnings back to their home villages, becoming a major source of economic support for China. Before and during China’s War of Resistance against Japan, overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia made enormous financial and material contributions.

As for Fujian itself, it became the frontline of the Chinese Civil War after 1949. In the 1950s, intense fighting took place between Nationalist and Communist forces on islands off the Fujian coast. Only after the 1958 Quemoy (Kinmen) Artillery Crisis did the two sides enter a prolonged period of peaceful confrontation. However, in 1995, under Lee Teng-hui’s administration, Taiwan began moving towards a separatist policy. Since then, the People’s Liberation Army has conducted periodic military exercises in the Taiwan Strait, leading to a fluctuation between tension and calm that has continued until today.

Because of work commitments, I have frequently travelled between Taiwan and Xiamen over the past ten years. In 2025, work again took me to Fujian three times, and I travelled by high-speed rail from Fuzhou to Quanzhou, and then on to Xiamen. Compared with my first visit to Xiamen nearly 40 years ago, Fujian’s progress has been nothing short of astonishing. I also had the opportunity to explore many historic sites and scenic landmarks in depth.

As of 2023, Fujian province has five UNESCO-registered World Heritage Sites. The first site, Mount Wuyi, is a mixed cultural and natural heritage site, including the Mount Wuyi scenic area and ancient Han city ruins, renowned for its Danxia (red rock) landforms.

The second, Fujian tulou, comprises 46 earthen building complexes in areas such as Zhangzhou and Longyan and showcases distinctive Hakka communal architecture and defensive design.

The third site is Taining Danxia, which is notable for its Danxia landforms and distinctive hydrological and ecological features.

The fourth, Gulangyu island, is a historic international settlement reflecting cultural exchange between China and the West from the 19th to the mid-20th century, blending diverse architectural styles and lifestyles.

The last site, Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan China, encompasses 22 heritage sites that bear witness to Quanzhou’s role as a global maritime trade hub during the Song and Yuan dynasties.

I have visited three of these sites. I am particularly familiar with Gulangyu; in fact, I was involved in the publication work for its successful UNESCO World Heritage nomination in 2017, contributing in my own small way. As for the tulou of Nanjing county in Zhangzhou, I was not only captivated by the beauty of the architecture but also felt a strong sense of connection to the land — a deeply fulfilling and joyful feeling.

These days, I often tell people that I am both Taiwanese and Fujianese.

Related: Fujian merchants: Fearless for gain, faithful for clan [Eye on Fujian series] | A Foochow coffee boy’s journey through Singapore’s kopitiam history