Four seasons of mild weather
"Taiwan has mild weather that is rarely cold. In the winter it's windy, but one rarely sees frost or snow. The night dew is like drizzle. Hence, trees, grasses and flowers flourish. There is mild weather all four seasons of the year and bugs don't hibernate. Planting is easy, and foods produced here include sweet potatoes, peanuts, sugar, fish, salt, and rice. Other fruits and vegetables, beans, wheat, hemp and other crops are also suitable for growing here." So described an official who inspected Taiwan in a report during the Kangxi-Yongzheng era. It is one of many concrete descriptions of this "treasure island"--with its fertile soil and abundant produce--found in the documents released by the National Palace Museum.
Even in the early Qing dynasty, Taiwan was a major rice producer for the southern Fujian area. According to imperial reports from officials posted in Fujian, Taiwanese rice was cheaper than rice from Zhangzhou and Quanzhou. They wrote, "Taiwan has vast expanses of farmland, and every year much rice is produced there. Even in years when the harvest is poor, the price of rice is still low there." And when there was ample rain during the summer and fall, there was an abundant yield of sweet potatoes, which could be substituted for rice as a staple food, thus helping to keep down the price of rice.
These historical materials show that during the years of Kangxi, there was a long stretch when the heavily populated areas of Quanzhou and Changzhou absorbed much of Taiwan's rice production. "It is estimated that from the first to the fifth lunar month, Taiwan ships 10,000 dan [one dan equals about 60 kilos] of rice a month, 5,000 going to Zhangzhou and 5,000 going to Quanzhou," reported Gao Qizhuo, Yongzheng's governor general of Fujian and Zhejiang.
For fear that Zheng Chenggong's pro-Ming settlers and their descendants would grow stronger, and also because the government hoped to ensure the supply of rice, limits were placed on migration to Taiwan during the reigns of Kangxi and Yongzheng in the early Qing dynasty. But because life was hard all along the Fujian coast and agriculture was thriving in Taiwan, many people went to the island illegally. Chuang Chi-fa says that statistics in local reports to the emperor show that from 1747-1792 a total of 4,496 people smuggled themselves onto the island. The majority of these were from Fujian and Canton, and they entered through such ports as Luermen, Lutsukang (now Lukang), Tanshui, Penkang, Tunhsiao (now Tunghsiao), Chungkang and Keelung.
Stories about these illegal immigrants to Taiwan that appear in the reports of high ministers are quite colorful. Some "arrived in Taiwan to sell goods for a few days, and then, lacking money, decided to stay." Then there were fishermen "whose catch wasn't enough for their families to eat, and thus decided to smuggle people onto the island." Officials described in great detail how soldiers took bribes to let people in, and how mainlanders would take great risks to smuggle themselves onto the island. These reports also describe the methods local officials took to combat the problem. The situation today offers many parallels, with mainlanders still taking risks to smuggle themselves into Taiwan.
When Kangxi often wrote "useless" in the lists that local officials made of things given to him in tribute, did this show that the presenters had not successfully curried his favor ? (from Brief Introduction to the Taiwan Historical Documents of the National Palace Museum)