Before zheng zhilong was groomed, he had been a pirate for a period of time, with a total of 5 wives. During his exile in Japan, he and a Japanese woman, Tagawa Matsu, gave birth to Zheng Chenggong and Tagawa Shichizoemon. Zheng Chenggong lived with his mother until he was seven years old, and later, after Zheng Zhilong was recruited, he took Zheng Chenggong back to China, and his mother was forbidden to leave the country because of the Japanese government's ban at the time.
Moreover, according to the "Genealogy of the Zheng Clan", after Zheng Zhilong returned to China, he maintained close contact with Japan, Japanese overseas Chinese and the Tagawa clan, and every year a merchant ship came to Nagasaki, "a simple number of books" and "silver gifts per year" to the Seven Left Gate. Therefore, it was a long time before Tagawa Matsu was taken away from Japan by Zheng Zhilong.
After Zheng Chenggong returned to the motherland, he immersed himself in hard study, and was admitted to Xiucai at the age of fifteen, just in time for Li Zicheng to enter Beijing, and Zheng Chenggong, who was in a chaotic world, was accepted by Qian Qianyi and continued to study. After the establishment of the Longwu regime, Zheng successfully joined the Southern Ming regime and was given the surname Zhu. The following year, the Manchus attacked Fujian and the Longwu regime collapsed.
At this time, Zheng Zhilong felt that the Ming Dynasty had reached the end of the road, so he accepted Hong Chengyu's offer and defected to the Manchu Qing. Because Zheng Zhilong insisted on surrendering despite his son's persuasion before surrendering, the father and son broke up after this incident. The Manchus invaded the south and plundered everywhere, and Zheng Chenggong's family was also looted. In order to avoid humiliation, Zheng Chenggong's mother, Tagawa Songning, died unyieldingly and committed suicide by cutting her abdomen.
According to legend, Zheng Chenggong had a deep affection for his mother, the Tagawa clan, and once cast a statue for his mother with gold, and used agarwood as a bed and five-colored jewelry as a curtain to cherish the offering. This golden statue was later snatched and burned by the Qing army, and Zheng Chenggong hated the Qing Dynasty even more.
Seeing that the country fell and his mother died at the hands of the Manchus, Zheng Chenggong vowed to be inseparable from the Manchus, and one day the national hatred and the family hatred would be liquidated. In 1647, a team of Xiao Kinmen pulled up the banner of "Xiao Bo recruited the great general Zhu Chenggong", and Zheng Chenggong raised an army. In 1649, Zheng successfully switched to Yongli and was made the King of the County.
In the following years, Zheng Chenggong's army continued to fight against the Qing army, during which time three major victories were achieved, and the main force of the Qing army in Guangdong was wiped out. In 1655, the Manchu General Ji Du led 30,000 Qing troops to conquer Guangdong and join the remaining Qing forces in guangdong. Because the Manchus were far away from the sea and were not good at water warfare, Zheng Successfully fled in defeat and led the Qing army to the sea. After that, naval battles broke out between the two sides, and it did not take long to annihilate the Qing army.
In the sixteenth year of Zheng Chenggong's army, he had firmly controlled the islands, including Xiaojinmen and Xiamen, and completely controlled the sea control in the region. After gaining his own base area, Zheng Successfully raised funds by trading with foreigners to develop the army. At the same time, Zheng Chenggong invested in many industries anonymously inland, listened to intelligence while earning military funds, and obtained a lot of news about the Shunzhi regime.
After that, Zheng Chenggong sent troops to attack the inland several times, and several times talked with the Manchus and rested. Due to the special situation of Zheng Zhilong's father and son, the Shunzhi Emperor repeatedly ordered Zheng Zhilong to write letters to his son, demanding that Zheng Chenggong surrender, and also crowned Zheng Chenggong as a general of Jinghai in the Qing Dynasty, but Zheng Chenggong refused to take the title. In 1657, Zheng Zhilong's correspondence with his son was exposed, and Zheng Zhilong was convicted of collaborating with the enemy and imprisoned in Ninguta.
The following year, Zheng successfully raised 170,000 troops and marched on the Northern Expedition. From the Yangtze River all the way north, first took Zhenjiang, and then besieged Nanjing. In the course of the attack, Zheng Chenggong was caught in the tricks of the Qing army, suffered heavy losses, and had to retreat to Xiamen. The following year, he annihilated 40,000 Qing troops in Fujian and won a complete victory.
After Kangxi ascended the throne, he ordered the blockade of coastal trade from Shandong to Guangdong, destroyed all civilian commercial ships, and did not allow even an inch of wooden planks to be launched, completely cutting off Zheng Chenggong's source of military expenses. At the same time, Kangxi killed Zheng Zhilong, destroyed the ancestral tomb of the Zheng family, and gave preferential treatment to the Surrendered Zheng Family Army.
It can be said that it was Kangxi's means that plunged Zheng Chenggong's army into an unprecedented crisis, and Zheng Chenggong had to abandon the inland defense line and withdraw to the island to recuperate. At this time, the era of great navigation came, and Colonial powers such as Portugal, Spain, Britain, and the Netherlands crossed the ocean to divide Taiwan.
In March of the same year, Zheng successfully dispatched a large number of elite and hundreds of warships to attack Kagoshima alone, defeating the Dutch army with absolute superiority in manpower and laying siege to Chichi Castle. Subsequently, Zheng Chenggong adopted the tactic of encircling and not attacking the other Dutch entrenched in Taiwan, and after nine months of siege, the Dutch were forced to surrender and hand over Taiwan to Zheng Chenggong.
Zheng Chenggong established Chengtianfu in Taiwan to compete with the Manchu Qing regime in the interior. Unfortunately, not long after Zheng Chenggong's death, his grandson Zheng Ketuan surrendered to the Manchu Qing, and in order to prevent retaliation by the People of Taiwan, the ancestral tomb of the Zheng family in Taiwan was moved back to the mainland.
According to folklore, in order to make Zheng Chenggong sleep peacefully underground and no longer be disturbed, Zheng Ketuan escorted Zheng Chenggong's coffin from Beijing to Gushi ZhengjiaYi Hall for burial. On the other hand, in order to cover people's eyes and ears, he also sent his brother Zheng Keju to Nan'an, Fujian Province, to carve a piece of "Tombstone of Zheng's Buried Grandfather", claiming that Zheng Chenggong was buried in the ancestral tomb of "Zheng's Lezhai Gongmu".
Historians have always had a high evaluation of Zheng Chenggong, and most of the troops who fought with Zheng Chenggong were Zheng Zhilong's old subordinates, and most of these soldiers were from pirate backgrounds, which is why Zheng Chenggong was extremely strict with his subordinates and never listened to their opinions. Because Zheng Chenggong had received a higher education, it was easier to "subdue people with virtue" among this group of thieves-born soldiers.
Because Zheng Chenggong is of mixed Chinese and Japanese descent, the Japanese also regard him as a hero of their own country.
To this day, there is still a "child's birth stone" on the hirado beach, and it is said that the Tagawa clan once built a property here. Every year in the local Motogawa area, the "Zheng Chenggong Festival" is held on this day, and Japanese writers have written a drama about Zheng Chenggong, which is popular in the local area. It can be said that in the eyes of the Japanese, Zheng Chenggong is a businessman with Japanese ancestry and a big hero.
However, in the eyes of Chinese, Zheng Chenggong is undoubtedly a national hero who recovered lost ground from foreign invaders.