Yu Yonghe was born before 1650 in the city of Renhe,
Zhejiang province. Modern scholars regard Yu as a unique figure of his time because of several factors. For instance, although traveling was not uncommon at his time, Yu was known to have travelled to every corner of
Fujian and to Taiwan. Furthermore, in his accounts of the
Taiwanese aborigines and
Zheng family (entitled 番境補遺, 偽鄭逸事, respectively), he shows his knowledge of those people and lands were extraordinary for his era. Under the consent of the Fujian officials, Yu travelled to Taiwan following the explosion of the
Fuzhou gunpowder stores in 1696
to mine sulfur. Yu's voyage began at the coast to
Xiamen, crossing the
Taiwan Strait and coming to a halt in
Penghu before arriving in
Tainan. Yu then journeyed northward to
Tamsui and
Beitou where he bought amorphous sulfur from local Aborigines for the making of pure sulfur. The expedition lasted ten months. Eventually Yu returned to Fuzhou with a memoir of his ten month journey. The memoir chronicles Yu's life in
Taiwan under Qing rule where he was introduced to the unique culture of the island. It subsequently became
Small Sea Travel Diaries (sometimes translated
The Small Sea Travel Records or
Small Sea Travelogue). As Yu was on a mission collecting sulfur, his book is also referred to as the
Sulfur Extraction Diaries (採硫日記). When Yu arrived in Taiwan, the island had been under the administration of the
Qing dynasty for 13 years. Yu not only recorded the developments of the era, he also took into account the administrative structures passed down by the
Dutch and Zheng dynasty. == See also ==