In the twenty-fifth year of Kangxi's reign (1686), three years after the Qing government unified Taiwan, immigrants from the mainland continued to cross Taiwan. There were frequent conflicts between immigrants from southern Fujian and Hakka and the Pingpu and Gaoshan ethnic groups over land and water sources. Government governance was weak, and pirates continued to cause trouble. Taiwan was in a state of "development and chaos coexisting."
As a descendant of immigrants from Zhangzhou, Lin Afa followed his father in trading with the Pingpu people since he was a child. He is proficient in Hokkien, Hakka, and Pingpu dialects, and he knows a few words of the remaining "red-haired dialect" of the Netherlands. As a government-certified general manager, he is daily responsible for translating between Chinese and Chinese, witnessing land deeds, and collecting taxes from Fanshe on behalf of the government. At the same time, he does some grocery intermediary business privately to earn the difference to support his family!
