The Self, Other and Empire

Abstract For a long time, Taiwan was an island relatively unknown within the Chinese realm. The defeat of the Ming loyalist forces in 1683 would result in the island becoming an official imperial possession of the Qing empire. It was within this context that Yu Yonghe produced the Small Seas Travel Diaries , a travel account documenting his ten-month journey across Taiwan as part of an official expedition to mine for sulphur. Moving beyond a geographical and ethnographical mode of analysis, in this article I present an alternative view through examining Yu’s literary and historical constructions of identity. The Small Seas Travel Diaries reveals an intricate narrative pertaining to themes of the self, other and empire. This not only highlights the non-linear nature of Yu Yonghe as an explorer-writer, but also can be seen to situate the Small Seas Travel Diaries within a broader context of identity in relation to the empire.