Does Taiwan Have Its Own "Way of Water"? Maritime Historian Chen Kuo-tung Dives Into the Ocean of Memory

The Editor says: Taiwan is surrounded by the sea on all sides, yet for decades martial law kept ordinary people away from the coastline. Only after its lifting did Taiwan begin to truly explore its maritime culture. Chen Kuo-tung, a research fellow at Academia Sinica's Institute of History and Philology, draws on his scholarship in Ming-Qing economic history and East Asian maritime history to share a wealth of ocean stories. He also underscores the importance of memory — both personal and collective — and calls on everyone to protect and share these precious historical memories. Full article reprinted from: Academia Sinica Investigator.

In Avatar: The Way of Water, a line rings out: "The sea is all around you — and within you." "Before birth and after death, the sea is where you belong." These words speak to the inseparable bond between the ocean and humanity. Does Taiwan — an island encircled by the sea — have its own profound maritime stories to tell? Academia Sinica's Investigator sat down with Chen Kuo-tung, a research fellow at the Institute of History and Philology, a man who truly knows "the way of water." His research journey has taken him from the Qing-era Guangdong Maritime Customs and Guangzhou merchant guilds all the way into the broader worlds of vessels, navigation, and islands — ancient and modern alike. Want to discover more of Taiwan's own maritime stories? Dive into the ocean of memory with Chen Kuo-tung!

The Farthest Distance of All: The Ocean

When did you last feel close to the sea? Taiwan is surrounded by water on every side — on average, a one-hour drive will bring you to the coast — yet it is hard for us to call ourselves a "sea people" who truly know the ocean. For a long time, for the people of Taiwan, the ocean was the farthest place of all.

Cast your mind back to the martial law era, from 1949 to 1987. To guard against military and civilian incursions from across the strait, the government simultaneously restricted ordinary citizens from approaching the coast. The law of the time required people to apply for permission before entering or leaving coastal zones, turning Taiwan's entire shoreline into forbidden territory. Only after the lifting of martial law did people gain the freedom to draw closer to the sea and begin exploring Taiwan's maritime culture.

On a warm, reminiscence-filled afternoon, we visited Chen Kuo-tung at Academia Sinica's Institute of History and Philology. He grew up by the sea as a child, and went on to research Ming-Qing economic history, East Asian maritime history, and the history of arts and crafts. He spoke openly with us about his ocean memories and the delightful twists and turns of his research. Now, let's follow Chen Kuo-tung and dive into the ocean of memory together!

Front-Row Ocean Views! Remembering Life by the Sea

As a child, Chen Kuo-tung lived in a village called "Huiyaozi" along the North Coast Highway. He laughed as he recalled: people today love houses by the sea — they want to sit in the "front row" with an unobstructed ocean view — but only someone who has actually lived by the water knows just how inconvenient it can be!

Salt-laden sea breezes eat away at buildings; walking along the shore, you're easily cut by the rocks. Very few fishing-village residents savored the romantic side of coastal living. Children were the exception.

"We were great at entertaining ourselves when we were little!" Chen Kuo-tung said. He has vivid memories of the plants that lined the shore — especially the sea hibiscus (Talipariti tiliaceum) and screw pine (Pandanus tectorius), both common along Taiwan's coast, each carrying its own trove of childhood memories and historical stories.

In the 1950s, during the early years of the Nationalist government, many American troops were still stationed in Taiwan. Children would press the tips of sea hibiscus stamens onto their noses to mimic the "big noses" of Westerners. Or they would use a blade to scrape off the sharp serrated edges of screw-pine leaves, then weave them into toys like flutes and windmills.

These coastal plants also once served as a form of "natural defense against invaders." In 1883 the Sino-French War broke out, and the following October French troops landed near Tamsui, forcing them to push through a coastline dense with screw pines and sea hibiscus.

The serrated leaf margins of the screw pine cut the soldiers as they pressed through, and the thick groves of sea hibiscus broke their formations apart. They were ultimately defeated in an ambush by the defending forces. The Qing army, aided by Taiwan's "natural barrier," won one of the rare victories of that conflict.

Although Chen Kuo-tung left his seaside village at the age of ten, his connection to the ocean was far from over. His research into Ming-Qing trade history brought him back to the sea once more. To resolve the questions that arose during his work, he began collaborating with scholars from other fields to investigate ships, navigation, islands, and other areas of maritime knowledge, and along the way he gathered countless ocean stories from across history and around the world.

During our conversation, Chen Kuo-tung reached into what seemed like a magician's bag and pulled out one historical document after another, all related to the sea. He led us back to the Age of Sail and to Taiwan under Qing rule, narrating stories of lives adrift upon the waves.

Women Adrift at Sea

At one point, Chen Kuo-tung recited a short poem titled "Hairdressing," collected in The Complete Poetry of Taiwan:

The poet was Xie Caifan, the daughter of Xie Jinluan of Houguan, Fujian. During the Qianlong reign, she followed her father to Taiwan as part of his official posting, and the experience of crossing the sea by ship inspired her to write.

In those days, women wore their hair tightly bound. To style it, they first had to wet it with water — but fresh water was the one thing most scarce on board a ship. With nothing but seawater available for three nights running, her hair eventually came loose, leaving her looking rather disheveled!

Unlike the maritime Silk Road tales, pirate chronicles, or laments over the perilous crossing to Taiwan that fill most historical records, this poem paints a warm, everyday scene — and what makes it all the rarer is that it is a woman's memory, left behind on the open sea.

Traditionally, there were strong taboos around women boarding ships or working on them. Chen Kuo-tung explains that many such taboos originated with the literate class — the ones who held the power of the written word. The prohibitions were likely rooted in Confucian thinking, which discouraged women from appearing in public, let alone venturing out to sea.

Yet in everyday life along the coast, women's leadership and hard labor were a common sight. In the 19th century, Western ships passing by Taiwan recorded their astonishment at seeing large numbers of women working strenuously at sea.

Taiwan even has a saying: "Penghu women, Taiwan oxen" — comparing Penghu's women to oxen in their capacity for hard work and endurance. Chen Kuo-tung had heard of a place in Penghu known as "Women's Island," where women ran the household independently. In the days before reliable navigation, men who went to sea did not always return, and women had no choice but to go to the shore themselves, gathering fish, shrimp, and shellfish to feed the family.

Fishing the sea was hard and bitter work — but when a family's survival was pressing enough, gender ceased to be a deciding factor.

Documents Like a Coded Cipher! A Qing Dynasty Warship Flying the Dutch Flag?

Before long, Chen Kuo-tung pulled several more documents from his bag. At first glance they looked richly illustrated, but on closer inspection, the characters — though resembling the Chinese script we know — were completely incomprehensible!

It turns out these documents recorded shipbuilding methods. Master craftsmen had written the construction guidelines for different parts of a junk into traditional siàu-phōo-á (ledger books), covering the making of a ship's keel, the methods for gauging dimensions and proportions — but recorded in symbols that only insiders could decipher.

This has given historians no end of headaches. Cracking these "coded ciphers" requires consulting a wide range of historical sources and collaborating with other shipbuilding experts.

Chen Kuo-tung then produced another document: a copy of the "No. 1 Tong'an Shuttle-Boat Diagram" held in the National Palace Museum collection. This is a design drawing for a warship that the Qing navy built in imitation of the Tong'an-style vessel, complete with detailed measurements such as the ship's length and the breadth of its beams.

Seemingly unremarkable at first glance, the diagram conceals a historical puzzle. Look closely at the leftmost mast — flying from it is a flag of horizontal red, white, and blue stripes: the flag of the Netherlands! Wasn't this a Qing dynasty warship? So why was it flying the Dutch flag?

Before revealing the answer, let us return to the turbulent East Asian seas of the 16th and 17th centuries.

The supreme maritime power of that era was the Dutch East India Company. Ships from surrounding nations, hoping to avoid being plundered by the Dutch and to borrow their fearsome reputation to intimidate rivals, began hoisting the Dutch flag on their own masts.

Intriguingly, in 1627 — the year before his father Zheng Zhilong surrendered to the Ming dynasty — ships under Zheng Zhilong's command were still flying the Dutch flag while conducting raids at sea. More than thirty years later, in 1662, Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga) drove the Dutch out of Taiwan, yet the Dutch flag did not disappear. It continued to appear on Qing dynasty junks well into the mid-19th century.

By that point, as Dutch sea power had long since faded, flying the Dutch flag had lost any practical value for protection or intimidation. Sailors simply kept it as a decorative banner — a symbol of good fortune and victory.

Chen Kuo-tung places enormous value on the documents still awaiting decipherment. Because most people in East Asia have been shaped by a continental culture, their lived experience is rooted in the land, leaving them with only a hazy understanding of maritime knowledge. Even when seafarers' documents do surface, they are difficult to interpret.

What's more, every document is a hard-won cultural treasure. Although during the Qing period Chinese officials, students traveling to the capital for imperial examinations, and other educated people regularly crossed the strait by ship, those who made a genuine effort to record maritime culture and sailing experience were few and far between.

"A lot of people probably started getting seasick the moment they stepped on board — and if you're barely conscious, there isn't much you can hold onto in your memory!" Chen Kuo-tung said with a laugh. As he told each ship's story, the ocean memories of antiquity seemed to sail aboard a wooden junk right into the room with us.

Sharing Memories as Deep as the Sea

Talking with Chen Kuo-tung, it is easy to find yourself suddenly swept into a whirlpool of history and memory. In one of his books, he wrote: I have lived my life, and so I cherish memory and hold history dear.

This made us wonder: what does "memory" mean, especially to a historian? Chen Kuo-tung began from the moment he joined Academia Sinica forty years ago, drawing us once again into the currents of the past.

Before joining the Institute of History and Philology, Chen Kuo-tung had started his career at the Institute of Economics, working on economic history. Some of his colleagues there were first-generation mainlanders who had come to Taiwan with the Nationalist government, and their life memories differed greatly from those of native Taiwanese. They loved to sit with Chen Kuo-tung and talk about the old days in China.

"They probably felt that chatting with a historian like me meant they'd get more meaningful feedback," he said with a smile. "The older people get, the more interested they become in the past." Those years working alongside his elders led Chen Kuo-tung to reflect deeply on what "memory" and "recollection" mean for human beings.

Both "memory" and "recollection" can be expressed in English by the word memory, but "recollection" has its own more precise term — recollection — which refers to memories that have sunk into the depths of the mind and then, at some particular moment, are retrieved again.

"You have to have memory in order to recollect." Chen Kuo-tung underlined the importance of memory:

Because you have memory, you can understand your place in history — your coordinates in a particular span of time and space. Through memory, you feel the reality of your own existence. You know where you came from — and remembering that brings you a sense of peace.

Chen Kuo-tung emphasized that memory matters for both individuals and communities alike. We often hear grandparents telling stories of a distant past; across generations, these tales are passed down by word of mouth, building a shared repository of family and national memories — and through that process, shaping our sense of who we are.

Yet in today's era of rapid change, the traditional ways of building and transmitting memory are under threat. Many memories vanish before anyone has had the chance to preserve them, and this may widen the gap between generations — making it harder for young and old to share a common sense of identity and leaving the divide between them deeper than ever.

As a historian, Chen Kuo-tung considers himself fortunate: not only can he keep his own memories intact, but he has far more opportunities than most to encounter and record the memories of other communities.

On that warm afternoon, we shared with Chen Kuo-tung a stretch of maritime story — belonging to Taiwan and to the seas of East Asia. What memories do you hold between yourself and the ocean? Why not find a moment to write them down and share them with someone?

References

1. Academia Sinica Investigator: Does Taiwan Have Its Own "Way of Water"? Maritime Historian Chen Kuo-tung Dives Into the Ocean of Memory
2. Research Fellow Chen Kuo-tung's Personal Page
3. Chen Kuo-tung (2020). Memory, the Ocean, and Everyday History. New Taipei City: Tamkang University Press.