Lin Kungang, born in 1832 in present-day Jiangjun District, Tainan, in a rural community known as Chu-tsu-kha, was a village schoolmaster and military examination graduate who taught the Confucian classics and military texts and organized local militia. By the time news of the cession of Taiwan reached southern Taiwan in 1895 he was already sixty-three, but he answered the call to arms and raised a volunteer force from the villages of Jiangjun and Jiali. His unit took up defensive positions along the Zengwen River, blocking the Japanese line of advance and operating in support of Liu Yongfu's Black Flag Army and other southern volunteers in the Tainan defenses. In September 1895 the Japanese Imperial Guards and Second Division advanced south of Chiayi toward the Zengwen River, and Lin deployed his men along the riverbank to prevent a crossing. In early October the climactic battle was fought along the river, in which his volunteers engaged Japanese regular troops in close combat; overwhelmed in numbers and firepower, most of his family and a majority of his men were killed, and Lin himself fell in action. After his death organized grassroots resistance in the south effectively collapsed, the Japanese pressed on to Tainan, and Liu Yongfu fled across the strait later in the month. His story long remained primarily a local tradition, with a memorial and shrine later established in Jiangjun. Lin embodies the southern rural counterpart to the better-known northern Hakka resistance: village schoolmasters and martial examination graduates who mobilized their kin and neighbors to fight. The annihilation of his family in battle remains the central image of his legacy in local historical memory. He is widely regarded as the representative figure of grassroots southern resistance in the 1895 war, complementing the 'Three Heroes' of the north.

• 1895 Raised village volunteers to defend the Zengwen River line

• 1895 Killed in action at the Battle of the Zengwen River