We’ve just had an impromptu private screening of Koxinga: A Hero’s Legacy, the National Geographic documentary that’s been part of my life, on and off, for the last two years. It’s already been twelve months since I was flown to Taiwan, where I had a fantastic time poking around historical sites with the camera crew, wittering into the lens about pirates, revolutionaries and my enduring obsession with the greatest Ming loyalist, Zheng Chenggong, a.k.a. Coxinga, a.k.a., for the purposes of this documentary, Koxinga.

The programme charts the construction of a replica of a Chinese war junk, and bravely includes the fantastic cat-fights that broke out over design, materials and additions, as tourist officers clashed with historical recreationists and seasoned boat-builders over where they should stick their screws, what 17th century pirates would have made of Swedish motors, and the likelihood that a tourist attraction would be “real” enough to fall apart after three years. I wade through the middle of it all, waving around things I’ve stolen from the shipyard, and getting so badly sunburned on the launch day that the HD camera had to move ten feet back to stop me looking like a leper in all later footage.

In what is likely to be an unrepeatable highlight of my career, I was also forced to address a conference of marine historians in Mandarin, hacked my way through a bamboo forest near a funeral home, filmed at an illegal shrine built on a sandbar, and had a blissful two hours shopping for old Chinese music CDs in Tainan. I must have cut a strange dash, caked in Cover Girl for the camera, and with my radio mic still sticking out of my back pocket, snatching 1940s propaganda songs from the bargain bins. I had also been wearing the same shirt for five days for the sake of continuity, so the Chinese gave me a wide berth.

Koxinga: A Hero’s Legacy will be broadcast first on Taiwanese TV this coming August, and should be on other countries’ National Geographic channels in the months after that. I have had an absolutely wonderful time working on it, and I can only hope that National Geographic wake up to the documentary potential of Admiral Togo or Mannerheim some time soon…

In the process of making the documentary, the director Sigal Bujman also stumbled upon a Chinese Coxinga cartoon series currently in production, so who knows, maybe this will cross back over into my other specialty soon enough.