Islet
An islet is a small island. As suggested by its origin as islette, an Old French diminutive of "isle", use of the term implies small size, but little attention is given to drawing an upper limit on its applicability. Cay or Key – an islet formed by the accumulation of fine sand deposits atop a reef. Motu – A reef islet formed by broken coral and sand, surrounding an atoll. River island – A small islet within the current of a river. Rock – A "rock", in the sense of a type of islet, is an uninhabited landform composed of rock, lying offshore, having at most minimal vegetation. Sandbar – An exposed sandbar is another type of islet. Sea stack – A thin, vertical landform jutting out of a body of water. Skerry – A small rocky island defined to be too small for habitation. Subsidiary islets – A more technical application is to small land features, isolated by water, lying off the shore of a larger island. Any emergent land in an atoll is called an islet. Tidal island – Often small islands which lie off the mainland of an area, being connected to it in low tide and isolated in high tide.
In the Caribbean and West Atlantic, islets are called cays or keys. Rum Cay in the Bahamas and the Florida Keys off Florida are examples of islets. In Normandy and the Channel Islands, they are identified by the French suffix -hou from the Scandinavian -holm. In Scotland and Ireland, they are called inches, from the Gaelic innis, which meant island, but has been supplanted to refer to smaller islands. In Ireland they are termed skerries. In and around Polynesia, islets are known by the term motu, from the term for the coral-rubble islets common to the region. In and around the River Thames in England, small islands are known as eyots. Whether an islet is considered a rock or not can have significant economic consequences under Article 121 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which stipulates that "Rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf." One long-term dispute over the status of such an islet was that of Snake Island.
The International Court of Justice jurisprudence however sometimes ignores islets, regardless of inhabitation status, in deciding territorial disputes. There are thousands of islets on Earth: 24,000 islands and islets in the Stockholm archipelago alone; the following is a list of example islets from around the world. Clive Schofield. "Islands or Rocks, Is that the Real Question? The Treatment of Islands in the Delimitation of Maritime Boundaries". In Myron H. Nordquist, John Norton Moore, Alfred H. A. Soons, Hak-So Kim; the Law of the Sea Convention: US Accession and Globalization. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Pp. 322–340. ISBN 978-90-04-20136-1. CS1 maint: Uses editors parameter
Tidal island
A tidal island is a piece of land, connected to the mainland by a natural or man-made causeway, exposed at low tide and submerged at high tide. Because of the mystique surrounding tidal islands many of them have been sites of religious worship, such as Mont Saint-Michel with its Benedictine Abbey. Tidal islands are commonly the sites of fortresses because of their natural fortifications. Ma Shi Chau in Tai Po District, northeastern New Territories, within the Tolo Harbour Jiangong Islet in Kinmen Naaz islands in Persian gulf, southern seashore of Qeshm island Jindo Island and Modo Island in southwest South Korea Lihou in Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands Mandø Island – on Denmark's western coast Knudshoved Island – north of Vordingborg on southern Zealand, Denmark Île Madame in Charente-Maritime Île de Noirmoutier in Vendée Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy Tombelaine in Normandy The Halligen in the North Frisian Islands, Germany/Denmark The Neuwerk in the Wadden Sea, Germany Coney Island near Rosses Point, County Sligo Omey Island in Connemara, County Galway, Connacht Inishkeel, County Galway, Connacht Grótta in Seltjarnarnes in Capital Region Cortegada Island in Pontevedra coast, Galicia.
San Nikolas Island in Lekeitio, Bizkaia Asparagus Island, Mount's Bay, Cornwall Burgh Island, Devon Burrow Island, Portsmouth Harbour Chapel Island, Cumbria Chiswick Eyot in the River Thames in London Gugh in the Isles of Scilly Hilbre Island, Middle Eye and Little Eye in the River Dee estuary, between North Wales and the English Wirral, but administratively in England. Horsey Island, Essex Lindisfarne, Northumberland Mersea Island, Essex Northey Island, Essex Osea Island, Essex Piel Island, Cumbria Sheep Island, Cumbria St Mary's Island, North Tyneside St Michael's Mount, Cornwall Nendrum Monastery on Mahee Island, Strangford Lough Baleshare in the Outer Hebrides, joined to North Uist Bernera Island, joined to Lismore Brough of Birsay in Orkney, joined to Orkney Mainland Castle Stalker on Loch Laich in Argyll Cramond Island in the Firth of Forth Davaar Island near Campbeltown, off the Kintyre peninsula Eilean Shona in Loch Moidart, Highland Eilean Tioram, in Loch Moidart Erraid off the Isle of Mull Hestan Island near Rough Island in Auchencairn Bay Islands of Fleet: Ardwall Isle and Barlocco Isle in Galloway Isle Ristol, the innermost of the Summer Isles Kili Holm in Orkney, joined to Egilsay Oronsay in the Inner Hebrides, joined to Colonsay Rough Island opposite Rockcliffe, Dumfries & Galloway Vallay, joined to North Uist, Outer Hebrides Burry Holms off the Gower Cribinau off Anglesey Gateholm off the south west coast of Pembrokeshire Ynys Llanddwyn off Anglesey Mumbles Lighthouse located in Mumbles, near Swansea St Catherine's Island in Pembrokeshire Sully Island in the Vale of Glamorgan Worm's Head at the end of the Gower Ynys Cantwr off Ramsey Island, Pembrokeshire Ynys Feurig off Anglesey Ynys Gifftan in Gwynedd, north Wales Ynys Gwelltog off Ramsey Island, Pembrokeshire Ynys Lochtyn on the coast of Cardigan Bay43 tidal islands can be walked to from the UK mainland.
Finisterre Island off of Bowen Island, British Columbia, Canada Micou's Island in St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada Minister's Island in New Brunswick, Canada Ross Island and Cheney Island in Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada Wedge Island, Nova Scotia, Canada Whyte Islet in West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Bar Island in Maine Battery Point Light in California Bumpkin Island in Massachusetts Camano Island in Puget Sound of Washington State, since earth filled Cana Island Lighthouse in Wisconsin Charles Island, in Connecticut Douglas Island in Alaska High Island, New York Long Point Island, MaineNahant, MA The Point Walter Sandbar in Perth, Western Australia has formed into a tidal island and is only connected to the mainland in extreme low tides. Penguin Island in the Shoalwater Islands Marine Park Former tidal island Bennelong Island in Sydney, Australia was developed into Bennelong Point and is now the location of the Sydney Opera House. Matakana Island in Tauranga Harbour Opahekeheke Island in the Kaipara Harbour Puddingstone Island in Otago Harbour Rabbit Island, Bells Island, Bests Island in Tasman Bay The Hauraki Gulf islands of Motutapu Island and Rangitoto Island are connected at low tide The Okatakata Islands and Walker Island in Rangaunu Harbour Island Islet Tied island Vanishing island Media related to Tidal islands at Wikimedia Commons
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin abbreviated to pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China and to some extent in Taiwan. It is used to teach Standard Mandarin Chinese, written using Chinese characters; the system includes four diacritics denoting tones. Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters; the pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang, based on earlier forms of romanizations of Chinese. It was published by revised several times; the International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as an international standard in 1982, was followed by the United Nations in 1986. The system was adopted as the official standard in Taiwan in 2009, where it is used for international events rather than for educational or computer-input purposes, but "some cities and organizations, notably in the south of Taiwan, did not accept this", so it remains one of several rival romanization systems in use.
The word Hànyǔ means'the spoken language of the Han people', while Pīnyīn means'spelled sounds'. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing; this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, issued his Xi Ru Ermu Zi at Hangzhou. Neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing dynasty scholar-official, Fang Yizhi; the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the stunning effect of the kana syllabaries and Western learning there; this galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script.
While Song did not himself create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, further improved by Herbert Giles in the Chinese–English Dictionary of 1892, it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. In the early 1930s, Communist Party of China leaders trained in Moscow introduced a phonetic alphabet using Roman letters, developed in the Soviet Oriental Institute of Leningrad and was intended to improve literacy in the Russian Far East; this Sin Wenz or "New Writing" was much more linguistically sophisticated than earlier alphabets, but with the major exception that it did not indicate tones of Chinese. In 1940, several thousand members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Society's new journal.
Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Fo. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, some contemporary Chinese literature, a spectrum of textbooks. In 1940, the movement reached an apex when Mao's Border Region Government declared that the Sin Wenz had the same legal status as traditional characters in government and public documents. Many educators and political leaders looked forward to the day when they would be universally accepted and replace Chinese characters. Opposition arose, because the system was less well adapted to writing regional languages, therefore would require learning Mandarin. Sin Wenz fell into relative disuse during the following years. In 1943, the U. S. military engaged Yale University to develop a romanization of Mandarin Chinese for its pilots flying over China. The resulting system is close to pinyin, but does not use English letters in unfamiliar ways. Medial semivowels are written with y and w, apical vowels with r or z.
Accent marks are used to indicate tone. Pinyin was created by Chinese linguists, including Zhou Youguang, as part of a Chinese government project in the 1950s. Zhou is called "the father of pinyin," Zhou worked as a banker in New York when he decided to return to China to help rebuild the country after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, he became an economics professor in Shanghai, in 1955, when China's Ministry of Education created a Committee for the Reform of the Chinese Written Language, Premier Zhou Enlai assigned Zhou Youguang the task of developing a new romanization system, despite the fact that he was not a professional linguist. Hanyu Pinyin was based on several existing systems: Gwoyeu Romatzyh of 1928, Latinxua Sin Wenz of 1931, the diacritic markings from zhuyin. "I'm not the father of pinyin," Zhou said years later. It's a lo
Ming dynasty
The Ming dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China – known as the Great Ming Empire – for 276 years following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last imperial dynasty in China ruled by ethnic Han Chinese. Although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng, regimes loyal to the Ming throne – collectively called the Southern Ming – survived until 1683; the Hongwu Emperor attempted to create a society of self-sufficient rural communities ordered in a rigid, immobile system that would guarantee and support a permanent class of soldiers for his dynasty: the empire's standing army exceeded one million troops and the navy's dockyards in Nanjing were the largest in the world. He took great care breaking the power of the court eunuchs and unrelated magnates, enfeoffing his many sons throughout China and attempting to guide these princes through the Huang-Ming Zuxun, a set of published dynastic instructions; this failed when his teenage successor, the Jianwen Emperor, attempted to curtail his uncles' power, prompting the Jingnan Campaign, an uprising that placed the Prince of Yan upon the throne as the Yongle Emperor in 1402.
The Yongle Emperor established Yan as a secondary capital and renamed it Beijing, constructed the Forbidden City, restored the Grand Canal and the primacy of the imperial examinations in official appointments. He rewarded his eunuch supporters and employed them as a counterweight against the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats. One, Zheng He, led seven enormous voyages of exploration into the Indian Ocean as far as Arabia and the eastern coasts of Africa; the rise of new emperors and new factions diminished such extravagances. The imperial navy was allowed to fall into disrepair while forced labor constructed the Liaodong palisade and connected and fortified the Great Wall of China into its modern form. Wide-ranging censuses of the entire empire were conducted decennially, but the desire to avoid labor and taxes and the difficulty of storing and reviewing the enormous archives at Nanjing hampered accurate figures. Estimates for the late-Ming population vary from 160 to 200 million, but necessary revenues were squeezed out of smaller and smaller numbers of farmers as more disappeared from the official records or "donated" their lands to tax-exempt eunuchs or temples.
Haijin laws intended to protect the coasts from "Japanese" pirates instead turned many into smugglers and pirates themselves. By the 16th century, the expansion of European trade – albeit restricted to islands near Guangzhou like Macau – spread the Columbian Exchange of crops and animals into China, introducing chili peppers to Sichuan cuisine and productive corn and potatoes, which diminished famines and spurred population growth; the growth of Portuguese and Dutch trade created new demand for Chinese products and produced a massive influx of Japanese and American silver. This abundance of specie remonetized the Ming economy, whose paper money had suffered repeated hyperinflation and was no longer trusted. While traditional Confucians opposed such a prominent role for commerce and the newly rich it created, the heterodoxy introduced by Wang Yangming permitted a more accommodating attitude. Zhang Juzheng's successful reforms proved devastating when a slowdown in agriculture produced by the Little Ice Age joined changes in Japanese and Spanish policy that cut off the supply of silver now necessary for farmers to be able to pay their taxes.
Combined with crop failure and epidemic, the dynasty collapsed before the rebel leader Li Zicheng, defeated by the Manchu-led Eight Banner armies who founded the Qing dynasty. The Mongol-led Yuan dynasty ruled before the establishment of the Ming dynasty. Explanations for the demise of the Yuan include institutionalized ethnic discrimination against Han Chinese that stirred resentment and rebellion, overtaxation of areas hard-hit by inflation, massive flooding of the Yellow River as a result of the abandonment of irrigation projects. Agriculture and the economy were in shambles, rebellion broke out among the hundreds of thousands of peasants called upon to work on repairing the dykes of the Yellow River. A number of Han Chinese groups revolted, including the Red Turbans in 1351; the Red Turbans were affiliated with a Buddhist secret society. Zhu Yuanzhang was a penniless peasant and Buddhist monk who joined the Red Turbans in 1352. In 1356, Zhu's rebel force captured the city of Nanjing, which he would establish as the capital of the Ming dynasty.
With the Yuan dynasty crumbling, competing rebel groups began fighting for control of the country and thus the right to establish a new dynasty. In 1363, Zhu Yuanzhang eliminated his archrival and leader of the rebel Han faction, Chen Youliang, in the Battle of Lake Poyang, arguably the largest naval battle in history. Known for its ambitious use of fire ships, Zhu's force of 200,000 Ming sailors were able to defeat a Han rebel force over triple their size, claimed to be 650,000-strong; the victory destroyed the last opposing rebel faction, leaving Zhu Yuanzhang in uncontested control of the bountiful Yangtze River Valley and cementing his power in the south. After the dynastic head of the Red Turbans suspiciously died in 1367 while a guest of Zhu, there was no one left, remotely capable of contesting his march to the throne, he made his imperial ambitions known by sending an army toward the Yuan capital Dadu in 1368; the las
Typhoon Meranti
Typhoon Meranti, known in the Philippines as Typhoon Ferdie, was one of the most intense tropical cyclones on record. Impacting the Batanes in the Philippines, Taiwan, as well as Fujian, China in September 2016, Meranti formed as a tropical depression on September 8 near the island of Guam. Tracking to the west northwest, Meranti intensified until September 11, at which point it began a period of rapid intensification. Continuing to intensify, it became a super typhoon early on September 12, as it passed through the Luzon Strait reaching its peak intensity on September 13 with 1-minute sustained winds of 315 km/h. Shortly afterwards, it passed directly over the island of Itbayat. Meranti passed to the south of Taiwan as a super typhoon, began weakening as a result of land interaction. By September 15, it struck China as a Category 2-equivalent typhoon, becoming the strongest typhoon on record to impact Fujian Province. Upon moving inland, rapid weakening ensued and Meranti became extratropical the next day, dissipating shortly afterwards after it passed to the south of the Korean Peninsula.
The island of Itbayat sustained a direct hit from the super typhoon near its peak intensity, severing communications from the island for several days. No fatalities were reported on the island from the island; the typhoon caused ₱244.99 million in damage on the island. However, the most costly and direct impacts were felt in China, where 45 people were killed from floods. Total economic cost in China reached ¥31.78 billion. In total, Meranti killed 47 people. During its lifetime, Meranti tied several meteorological records. With JTWC-estimated 1-minute sustained winds of 315 km/h, Meranti is tied with Typhoon Haiyan as the second-strongest tropical cyclone on record by wind speed. Additionally, in terms of 1-minute sustained winds, the storm's landfall on the island of Itbayat shortly after peak intensity ties it with Haiyan as the strongest landfalling tropical cyclone on record; the estimated pressure of 890 mbar was the lowest on record in the Western Pacific since Typhoon Megi in 2010. On September 8, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center issued a Tropical Cyclone Formation Alert for an area of convection about 155 km west of Guam in the western Pacific Ocean.
According to the agency, the circulation was consolidating alongside fragmented rainbands. At 18:00 UTC that night, the Japan Meteorological Agency classified the system as a tropical depression. On the next day, the JTWC classified it as Tropical Depression 16W. By that time, the nascent system was moving west-northwestward through a region of low wind shear, steered by ridges to the north and southwest. Increasing but fragmented convection, or thunderstorms, was fueled by unusually warm water temperatures and outflow from the south. At 06:00 UTC on September 10, the JMA upgraded the depression to Tropical Storm Meranti, which meandered over its own track while consolidating. Northerly wind shear shifted the deepest convection to the south of Meranti's circulation, although rainbands and a central dense overcast continued to evolve as the wind shear decreased. By early on September 11, the storm's movement was steady to the west-northwest, south of the ridge. At 06:00 UTC that day, the JMA upgraded Meranti to typhoon status, shortly thereafter the JTWC followed suit.
The storm's structure continued to improve, with increased outflow. A small eye 9 km across developed within the spiraling thunderstorms, signaling that Meranti was intensifying. At 06:00 UTC on September 12, the JTWC upgraded Meranti to a super typhoon, with 1-minute maximum sustained winds of 240 km/h. Six hours the JTWC estimated 1-minute sustained winds of 285 km/h, equivalent to Category 5 on the Saffir–Simpson scale, while noting "an favorable environment", that the eye became more symmetric within intense convection. Outflow enhanced by a strong anticyclone over Meranti fueled the intensification, the typhoon peaked in intensity on September 13 while passing through the Luzon Strait; the JMA estimated peak 10-minute sustained winds of 220 km/h and a minimum barometric pressure of 890 hPa, while the JTWC estimated peak 1-minute sustained winds of 315 km/h. Based on the JMA pressure estimate, Meranti was among the most intense tropical cyclones; the JTWC wind estimate made Meranti the strongest tropical cyclone by wind speed worldwide in 2016, surpassing Cyclone Winston, which had peak sustained winds of 285 km/h when it struck Fiji in February.
Late on September 13, the storm made landfall on the 83 km2 island of Itbayat in the Philippine province of Batanes shortly after attaining its peak intensity, with 1-minute sustained winds of 305 km/h. At around 03:15 CST on September 15, Meranti slammed into the Xiang'an District, Fujian, in China, with measured 2-minute sustained winds of 173 km/h, making it the second strongest typhoon to make landfall in China's Fujian Province. Meranti struck the northernmost Philippine province of Batanes at peak strength, passing directly over the island of Itbayat. From text messages received by family members, residents in Itbayat reported their stone homes to be swaying during the height of the typhoon. Assessments as of September 17 indicated that 292 homes were destroyed and 932 were damaged across the Batanes. More than 10,000 people were affected with many in dire need of water. A state of calamity was declared for the province on September 15. Total d
Koxinga
Zheng Chenggong, Prince of Yanping, better known internationally by his Hokkien honorific Koxinga or Coxinga, was a Chinese Ming loyalist who resisted the Qing conquest of China in the 17th century, fighting them on China's southeastern coast. In 1661, Koxinga defeated the Dutch outposts on Formosa and established a dynasty, the House of Koxinga, which ruled the island as the Kingdom of Tungning from 1661 to 1683. Zheng Sen was born in 1624 in Hirado, Hizen Province, Japan, to Zheng Zhilong, a Chinese merchant and pirate and a Japanese woman, recorded only by her surname "Tagawa" or Tagawa Matsu, he was raised there until the age of seven with the Japanese name Fukumatsu and moved to Nan'an county in Quanzhou in Fujian province of China. In 1638, Zheng became a Xiucai in the imperial examination and became one of the twelve Linshansheng of Nan'an. In 1641, Koxinga married the niece of Dong Yangxian, an official, a Jinshi from Hui'an. In 1644, Koxinga studied at the Imperial Nanking University, where he met the scholar Qian Qianyi and became his student.
In 1644, Beijing fell to rebels led by Li Zicheng and the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself on a tree at modern-day Jingshan Park in Beijing. Manchu armies aided by Wu Sangui's forces took the city; the Ming remnant forces retreated to Nanjing where they put Prince Fu on the throne as the Hongguang Emperor in an attempt to continue the Ming dynasty in the south. The next year, the Manchu armies led by Dodo advanced south and conquered Yangzhou and Nanjing while the Ming leader defending Yangzhou, Shi Kefa, was killed; the Hongguang emperor was executed. In 1645, Prince Tang was installed on the throne of the Southern Ming as the Longwu Emperor with support from Zheng Zhilong and his family; the Longwu Emperor established his court in Fuzhou, controlled by the Zhengs. In the part of the year, another Ming Prince Lu proclaimed himself as Regent in Shaoxing and established his own court there. Although Prince Lu and Longwu's regimes stemmed from the same dynasty, each pursued different goals. Due to the natural defences of Fujian and the military resources of the Zheng family, the emperor was able to remain safe for some time.
The Longwu Emperor granted Zheng Zhilong's son, Zheng Sen, a new given name and the title of Koxinga. One of his cousins had it. In 1646, Koxinga first led the Ming armies to resist the Manchu invaders and won the favour of the Longwu Emperor; the Longwu Emperor's reign in Fuzhou was brief, as Zheng Zhilong refused to support his plans for a counter-offensive against the expanding forces of the newly established Qing dynasty by the Manchus. Zheng Zhilong ordered the defending general of Xianxia Pass, Shi Fu, to retreat to Fuzhou when Qing armies approached Fujian. For this reason, the Qing army faced little resistance. In September 1646, Qing armies broke through the inadequately defended mountain passes and entered Fujian. Zheng Zhilong retreated to his coastal fortress and the Longwu Emperor faced the Qing armies alone. Longwu's forces were destroyed; the Qing forces sent envoys to meet Zheng Zhilong secretly and offered to appoint him as the governor of both Fujian and Guangdong provinces if he would surrender to the Qing.
Zheng Zhilong agreed and ignored the objections of his family, surrendering himself to the Qing forces in Fuzhou on 21 November 1646. Koxinga and his uncles were left as the successors to the leadership of Zheng Zhilong's military forces. Koxinga recruited many to join his cause in a few months, he used the superiority of his naval forces to launch amphibious raids on Manchu-occupied territory in Fujian and he managed to take Tong'an in Quanzhou prefecture in early 1647. However, Koxinga's forces lacked the ability to defend the newly occupied territory. Following the fall of Tong'an to Zheng, the Manchus launched a counterattack in the spring of 1647, during which they stormed the Zheng family's hometown of Anping. Koxinga's mother, Lady Tagawa, had come from Japan in 1645 to join her family in Fujian, she did not follow her husband to surrender to the Qing Dynasty. She was caught by Manchu forces in Anping and committed suicide after refusal to submit to the enemy, according to traditional accounts.
By 1650, Koxinga was strong enough to establish himself as the head of the Zheng family. He pledged allegiance to the only remaining claimant to the throne of the Ming Dynasty, the Yongli Emperor; the Yongli Emperor was fleeing from the Manchus in south-western China with a motley court and hastily assembled army at the time. Despite one fruitless attempt, Koxinga was unable to do anything to aid the last Ming emperor. Instead, he decided to concentrate on securing his own position on the southeast coast. Koxinga enjoyed a series of military successes in 1651 and 1652 that increased the Qing government's anxiety over the threat he posed. Zheng Zhilong wrote a letter to his son from Beijing at the request of the Shunzhi Emperor and the Qing government, urging his son to negotiate with the Manchurians; the long series of negotiations between Koxinga and the Qing Dynasty lasted until November 1654. The negotiations failed; the Qing government appointed Prince Jidu to lead an attack on Koxinga's territory after this failure.
On 9 May 1656, Jidu's armies attacked Jinmen, an island near Xiamen that Koxinga had been using
Kinmen County Government
The Kinmen County Government is the local government of the Republic of China that governs Kinmen County. Civil Affairs Bureau Finance Bureau Education Bureau Economic Development Bureau Public Works Bureau Social Affairs Bureau Transportation and Tourism Bureau Research and Evaluation Office General Affairs Office Accounting and Statistics Office Civil Service Ethics Office Personnel Office Police Bureau Health Bureau Land Administration Bureau Environmental Protection Bureau Fire Bureau Cultural Affairs Bureau Revenue Service Office Kinmen County Kinmen County Council
