Wei Wen's Fleet Reaches Yizhou (Taiwan)

In the Three Kingdoms period, the state of Eastern Wu, based in Jiangdong, paid great attention to naval strength. Wu's shipbuilding was well developed and could make ships of large capacity. It actively developed sea travel, sending people to Liaodong and Hainan Island, and sending Zhu Ying and Kang Tai as envoys to Funan (around today's Cambodia) and other Southeast Asian states. In AD 230 Sun Quan, King of Wu, sent the generals Wei Wen and Zhuge Zhi with 10,000 armored men by sea to Yizhou and Danzhou. After nearly a year's voyage the fleet reached Yizhou but never found Danzhou. Many soldiers fell sick and died from the unfamiliar climate, and the fleet later returned to the mainland with several thousand Yizhou inhabitants. Wei Wen and Zhuge Zhi were jailed and executed for “disobeying the edict and achieving nothing.” The Wu author Shen Ying's Gazetteer of the Lands and Waters of Linhai recorded Yizhou's climate, products and the customs of its people, matching Taiwan's character, and is one of the earliest written records of Taiwan in the world. Scholars generally agree Yizhou is today's Taiwan. Wei Wen's voyage is an early clear record of a mainland regime sending a large fleet to Taiwan; it strengthened ties between the mainland and Taiwan and shows that close contact between the two has existed since early times. Later, the Sui sent people to Liuqiu three times, the Yuan set up an Inspectorate at Penghu, Zheng Chenggong recovered Taiwan at the end of the Ming, and the Qing established a prefecture there, so that ties between Taiwan and the mainland grew ever closer.