Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Yishiha" in English language version.
While Hai Tong and Hou Xian were busy courting the Mongols and Tibetans, a Ming eunuch of Manchurian stock, Yishiha, also quietly carried the guidon in the exploration of Northern Manchuria and Eastern Siberia. In 1375, the Ming dynasty established the Liaodong Regional Military Commission at Liaoyang, using twenty-five guards (each guard consisted of roughly 5,600 soldiers) to control Southern Manchuria. In 1409, six years after Yongle ascended the throne, he launched three campaigns to shore up Ming influence in the lower Amur River valley. The upshot was the establishment of the Nuerkan Regional Military Commission with several battalions (1,120 soldiers theoretically made up a battalion) deployed along the Songari, Ussuri, Khor, Urmi, Muling and Nen Rivers. The Nuerkan Commission, which parallelled that of the Liaodong Commission, was a special frontier administrations; therefore the Ming government permitted its commanding officers to transmit their offices to their sons and grandsons without any dimunition in rank. In the meantime, The Ming court periodically sent special envoys and inspectors to the region, making sure that the chiefs of various tribes remained loyal to the Ming emperor. But the one enboy who was most active and played the most significant role in the region was the eunuch Yishiha.
Yishiha belonged to the Haixi tribe of the Jurchen race. The Ming shi provides no background information on this Manchurian castrato except that Yishiha worked under two powerful early Ming eunuchs, Wang Zhen and Cao Jixiang.16 It is also likely that Yishiha gained prominence by enrduring the hard knocks of court politics and serving imperial concubines of Manchurian origin, as Emperor Yongle kept Jurchen women in his harem. At any rate, in the spring of 1411, Yongle commissioned Yishiha to vie for the heart and soul of the peoples in Northern Manchuria and Eastern Siberia. Yishiha led a party of more than 1,000 officers and soldiers who boarded twenty-five ships and sailed along the Amur River for several days before reaching the Nuerkan Command post. Nuerkan was located on the east bank of the Amur River, approximately 300 li from the river's entrance and 250 li form the present-day Russian town of Nikolayevka. Yishiha's immediate assignment was to confer titles on tribal chiefs, giving them seals and uniforms. He also actively sought new recruits to fill out the official ranks for the Regional Commission.17
year, during which time he artfully maneuvered his trusted Jurchen friends to leadership positions. And by constructing a Buddhist temple called Yunning, or Forever Tranquil, Yishiha also attempted to convert the Oroqens and other ethnic groups of the region into Buddhism. In 1414, he ordered the erection of a stone monument near the Yunning Temple on which he scribed his major activities in four different languages — Chinese, Mongolian, Jurchen, and Tibetan. During this mission, Yishiha also visited Sakhalin Island and was said to have conferred a Ming title of a tribal chieftain there. And according to a stone monument found in an old shipyard of Jilin City, Yishiha probably undertook another mission around 1420, as he used many of the Jilin ships to transport grain and utensils to the Nuerkan region.
By 1420, Yishiha's experience, character, record, and judgement had certainly made him not only an expert on the frontier defense of the region, but also might well have provided him a coat of armor that protected him against jealous and wily court rivals. His next mission to the Nuerkan Command post ended in 1425 as he and his party were awarded by Yongle's successor, the Emperor Hongxi. During the reign of the fifth Ming sovereign, Emperor Xuande, Yishiha was dispatched at least three more times to the lower Amur River, inspecting, spreading imperial will and Ming policies, and reporting on the frontier defense and general conditions of the region. In 1432, when the commissioner in chief Kang Wang retired, Yishiha escorted Kang's son Kang Fu, who resided in Beijing at the time, to assume his inherited position. A part of 2,000 soldiers and an armada of fifty big ships arrived at the Siberian frontier fortress during the summer season. Almost immediately, Yishiha ordered the refurbishing of the Yunning Temple and the erection of yet another stone stele to commemorate the occasion. All told, Yishiha had made a total of nine missions to this desolate but strategically important region, pacifying the minority groups and serving as Ming's expansionist agent.18 Yishiha was later promoted to grand defender, or zhenshou, of Liaodong and received an annual salary of forty piculs of rice in 1444. Three years later, he was awarded an annual increment of thirty-six piculs of rice as a consequence of a memorable military campaign.19
Two years later, in 1413, Yishiha undertook a second mission to the area, bringing with him large quantities of foods, clothes, and agricultural tools. That mission did a great deal to mollify some of the tribes who continued to make contact with the Mongols. Yishiha stayed there for nearly a
