A Crossroads of Empires: Nan’ao’s Geographic Significance

Perched on the Tropic of Cancer where Fujian and Guangdong provinces meet, Nan’ao Island served as a maritime sentinel during the Qing dynasty. This 120-square-kilometer territory—today administered by Guangdong—alternated between Fujian and Guangdong’s jurisdiction, reflecting its status as a contested frontier. Its location made it a natural fortress: whoever controlled Nan’ao commanded the shipping lanes between two of China’s most economically vital regions.

The island’s military importance became starkly apparent during the Ming-Qing transition. Before conquering Xiamen and Jinmen from rival factions, the Ming loyalist Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong) used Nan’ao as a staging ground. Recognizing its strategic value, the Qing later established a garrison command (zhenshoufu) here, overseen by a regional military commander known as a zongbing (roughly equivalent to a major general).

The Unconventional Commander: Liu Yongfu’s Island Exile

In 1886, the celebrated anti-French war hero Liu Yongfu arrived on Nan’ao as its new zongbing—a posting he bitterly called “an imperial gilded cage.” Having gained fame leading the Black Flag Army against French colonial forces in Vietnam, Liu found his assignment to this remote outpost suspiciously convenient for Beijing’s bureaucrats. “Eight years!” he would lament each Lunar New Year, counting his isolation.

Nan’ao’s unique dual-command structure—with its left battalion answering to Fujian’s naval commander and right battalion to Guangdong—paradoxically granted Liu unusual autonomy. As one contemporary observed, the arrangement left him “without a true superior,” allowing the maverick general to operate with surprising independence. His old comrade Tang Jingsong, now Taiwan’s provincial administrator, jested in correspondence: “You, sir, rule your own universe there—how enviable!”

Black Flags and Red Tape: Liu Yongfu’s Unlikely Career

Liu’s path to Nan’ao traced the turbulent margins of 19th-century East Asian geopolitics. Born in 1837 to an impoverished Guangxi family, he joined the Tiandihui (Heaven and Earth Society)—a secret society with anti-Qing tendencies—at age 21. When the Taiping Rebellion erupted, Liu’s militia became entangled in the chaotic warfare between imperial forces and revolutionaries.

After the Taiping collapse in 1864, Liu led his remaining troops—now called the Black Flag Army for their distinctive banners—into northern Vietnam. There, they became mercenaries for Emperor Tự Đức’s Nguyễn dynasty, battling both French colonial forces and local rebels. Liu’s victories against the French, including the 1873 killing of Captain Francis Garnier, made him a legend.

The 1884-85 Sino-French War marked Liu’s zenith. Despite his irregular forces’ successes, the Qing court—pressured by Li Hongzhang—opted for a negotiated settlement. Recalled to China in 1885, Liu exchanged battlefield glory for the bureaucratic purgatory of Nan’ao.

Between Brush and Blade: The Scholar-Warrior Correspondence

Liu’s surviving letters to Tang Jingsong reveal a fascinating cultural dynamic. The self-taught warrior struggled to compose missives worthy of his classically educated friend (a jinshi degree holder). Drafts littered his desk, discarded when phrases failed to capture his thoughts. “If only I could wield words as I do a sword,” he reportedly sighed.

Their exchange from 1894 crackles with subtext. Liu’s veiled requests for transfer to Taiwan (“a proper island, not this pebble where arrows land in the sea”) met Tang’s polite demurrals. The scholar-official understood what Liu could not admit: Beijing preferred the troublesome hero safely contained.

The Dragon Boat Festival in Exile: 1894

On June 8, 1894—the fifth day of the fifth lunar month—Liu observed Nan’ao’s Fujian-style Dragon Boat Festival. As he ate zongzi rice dumplings, events were unfolding that would reshape East Asia: Japan’s forces mobilized toward Korea, beginning the conflict that would expose Qing weakness.

Liu’s isolation proved temporary. Within months, he would be summoned to defend Taiwan against Japanese invasion—a final chapter that would cement his legacy as China’s last imperial irregular commander.

Legacy of a Maritime Sentinel

Nan’ao’s story encapsulates Qing China’s defensive dilemmas. The island’s dual-command system reflected the empire’s balancing act between regional powers, while Liu’s exile demonstrated its uneasy relationship with martial heroes. Today, Nan’ao’s tunnels and fortifications stand as UNESCO-protected relics, their strategic obsolescence mirroring the Qing’s inability to adapt its coastal defense systems to modern naval warfare.

Liu Yongfu’s later defense of Taiwan (1895) and subsequent guerrilla campaigns made him a folk hero across southern China and Vietnam. His career—from anti-Qing rebel to imperial commander to resistance leader—embodied the contradictions of late imperial China’s struggle to reconcile tradition with modernity.

The Nan’ao interlude remains a poignant footnote: eight years when one of China’s most formidable warriors watched the tides from a forgotten island, his ambitions rolling out with the South China Sea’s ceaseless waves.