Ku Lang Hsu: A Colonial Heritage

Ku Lang Hsu is now known as Gulangyu. The Island lies a few minutes by boat off the island city of Xiamen on the Fujian coast of central China. Taiwan, known earlier as Formosa, lies 160 kilometres due east. Xiamen was previously called Amoy. Both Ku Lang Hsu and Amoy have a long association with European traders. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to enter Amoy. They arrived in the early1500s but it took them until the mid 1500s to establish regular trade. A small number of Spanish traders from the Philippines followed the Portuguese to the Guangdong and Fujian coast in the late 1500s but it was the Dutch who really strove to extend trade to the hinterland beyond Amoy. The Dutch had begun regular trading with China from the early 1600s but they found it difficult to settle on the China coast, due to Chinese hesitancy. Consequently they occupied Formosa in 1624 and turned it into a trade station to service their commercial interests in both Japan and China. They also used Formosa to provision ships sailing on the southern trade route to the Dutch East Indies. During the 1700s and 1800s British and French rivalry dominated the China scene along with a growing American presence in the late 1800s and early 1900s