It must be Song history week here at the Granite Studio. Yesterday I wrote about Yue Fei and today it’s the Liao and the Jin. On January 28, 1005, the Song Dynasty agreed to the Chanzhou Pact with the Khitan Liao. The agreement fixed the boundary between the Song and the Liao and forced the Song court to pay annual tribute to the Khitan rulers. Also today in 1115, the Jurchen leader, Wányán Āgǔdǎ (完顏阿骨打) established the Jin Dynasty. The Jin conquered the Liao in 1125 and continued southward, taking the Song capital at Kaifeng in 1126. In 1142 a treaty was signed between the Song and the Jin that ceded all of China north of the Huai River to the Jurchens.
On this date in 1662, the Ming loyalist and part-time pirate Zheng Chenggong, better known perhaps as Koxinga, accepted the surrender of the Dutch stronghold at Zeelandia, on the island of Taiwan. Zheng and his family would rule the island for the next two decades until a Qing armada, under the command of Shi Lang, a former comrade of Koxinga’s father, defeated the Zheng family and claimed Taiwan for the Qing Empire. Today China recognizes February 1, two