Ministers › Provincial Governors
Liu Mingchuan
Huai Army commander who directed the defence of Taiwan in the Sino-French War and became the first governor of Taiwan Province, building its first railway and telegraph lines
A walled hilltop city with a tall brick gate tower stands above a pine-covered cliff, its wall running along the ridge, while a long wooden bridge crosses a wide river below and plains, islets and layered mountains stretch into the distance, with no person in view.
Also known as Zi Shengsan · Zi Hao Da Qian Shan Ren · Shou Ren Tai Wan Xun Fu · Zhuang Su
Liu Mingchuan, courtesy name Shengsan, came from Hefei in Anhui and began by raising a local militia. In 1862 his men were taken into Li Hongzhang's Huai Army as the Ming Corps, and he fought the Taiping and the Nian, pursuing the Eastern Nian through Hubei and Shandong from 1867. During the Sino-French War in 1884 he was sent with a governor's rank to take charge of Taiwan's defence; he first held Keelung, then shifted his forces to Tamsui, where the garrison drove off a French landing that October. When Taiwan became a province in 1885 he was its first governor, carrying out a new land survey, opening telegraph offices and building a railway from Keelung to Taipei, which reached Hsinchu in 1893. He resigned on grounds of illness in 1891 and died at Hefei in 1896, receiving the posthumous name Zhuangsu.
Life and times
Dates 1836 CE–1896 CE