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Remember those two Polish cargo ships and one oil tanker from the USSR seized by the ROC Navy in the 1950s? Well, the story has one highly interesting extra element we didn't have time to get to in the last episode. Plus, John wants to write a book about an "ox ditch."
Cover image: Lovepik/Wikimedia Commons
Below: The Yukikaze (雪風, “Snowy Wind”) was a Kagero-class destroyer in service with the Imperial Japanese Navy during WWII. The Yukikaze was the only member of her class to survive the war, and did so without suffering any major damage. All images below via Wikimedia Commons.
Following the war, the Yukikaze was transferred to the Republic of China Navy, where she was renamed Dan Yang (丹陽 DD-12) and served until 1966, before being scrapped in 1970.
READ: TAIPEI TIMES ARTICLE on the Qing-era "Tu Niu Boundary" (“Earth Ox Ditch”土牛界線) separating Han Chinese settlers from Indigenous areas. Below is a photo, courtesy of the Taichung Department of Cultural Heritage, showing a stone marker used during the Qing dynasty to demarcate the boundary protected by tempered glass. The stone marker is now located at Tu-niou Elementary School in Taichung City’s Shigang District. Further below is an illustration of the "Tu Niu" or "Ox Ditch" boundary, which in some places was surprisingly deep and high. Image via Taiwan Cultural Memory Bank.
Below: A section of the "Tu Niu" boundary as it exists in modern times. This photo is from what's today, Taoyuan City, and is via the National Cultural Database Management System website.
Below: Taiwan's Provincial Highway 3 (or Route 3/台3線) roughly approximates the “Earth Ox Ditch” line.
Below: Map of the Chinese provinces where the so-called “Great Clearance” was implemented. According to Wikipedia, the Great Clearance (遷界令), also translated as the Great Evacuation or Great Frontier Shift, was caused by edicts issued in 1661, 1664, and 1679, which required the evacuation of the coastal areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangnan, and Shandong.
The newly-enthroned Qing dynasty evacuated coastal areas (by five to 25 kilometers) to prevent Taiwan-based pro-Ming dynasty restoration rebels (the most famous of which was Zheng Chenggong or Koxinga) from getting supplies from coastal China.
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Check our very first episode, the story of a very white man who showed up in London in 1703... and claimed to be from Formosa. Or try a foodie episode from Season 3. Or, for those who want some harder-core history, hear the tale of the Lockheed U-2 pilot Wang Hsi-chueh 王錫爵, who became famous for defecting to the PRC by hijacking China Airlines Flight 334 on May 3, 1986.
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