Zheng Chenggong, Prince of Yanping, better known internationally as Koxinga, was a Southern Ming general who resisted the Qing conquest of China in the 17th century, fighting them on China's southeastern coast.
The mid-17th century painting The Portrait of Koxinga
Zheng Chenggong statue in Xiamen, Fujian, China. The granite statue is 15.7 m tall and weighs 1617 tons.
Image of Koxinga Temple in Tainan
Extent of territory held by Koxinga (red), sphere of influence (pink)
The Southern Ming, also known in historiography as the Later Ming, officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China and a series of rump states of the Ming dynasty that came into existence following the Jiashen Incident of 1644. Peasant rebels led by Li Zicheng who founded the short-lived Shun dynasty captured Beijing and the Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide. The Ming general Wu Sangui then opened the gates of the Shanhai Pass in the eastern section of the Great Wall to the Qing banners, in hope of using them to annihilate the Shun forces. Ming loyalists fled to Nanjing, where they enthroned Zhu Yousong as the Hongguang Emperor, marking the start of the Southern Ming. The Nanjing regime lasted until 1645, when Qing forces captured Nanjing. Zhu fled before the city fell, but was captured and executed shortly thereafter. Later figures continued to hold court in various southern Chinese cities, although the Qing considered them to be pretenders.
A cannon cast in 1650 by the southern Ming when remnants of the Ming regime were based in Guangdong. (From the Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence.)
Depiction of a Southern Ming soldier and a Chinese man and his wife, by Georg Franz Müller