CHAPTER XXIII. FOREIGN ACCOUNTS OF CHINA UNDER THE MING. A SUDDEN lull in the intercourse between China and the West follows the expulsion of the Mongols. The ravages of Tamerlane compelled the traders of Europe to seek an opening for their enterprise in other regions of the world than Central Asia. The power of the Turks formed another barrier, and we have to wait till the 16th century, when the attractions of the new Western continent began to pall, for a sort of rediscovery of China, as a great kingdom accessible by the Indian seas; followed by a slow and dubious recognition of the northern part of the kingdom, also accessible by land, as identical with the far-famed Cathay of Marco Polo and other early travellers. The ambassadors sent by Shah Rukh, as previously mentioned, in 1419, state that two virgins stood on each side of the throne, with paper and pencils to take down every word spoken by the Emperor: a trait which recalls the employment of women in place of eunuchs at the end of the Tang Dynasty. Only one other report, of so much as second-hand authority, comes to us during the interval. A Venetian gentleman,1 who first started for Tana in 1436, after long mercantile experience of these distant parts, was sent, in 1471, as ambassador to Persia. There he was told, in answer to inquiries, that Samarcand was the great mart for those who came from Cini, Macini, and Cataio. He himself did not proceed farther, but he heard from many that Chin and Machin were very great provinces, the place whence porcelains, silk wares, and such choice goods were brought. Through them you go to Cathay, and he was told by a Tatar ambassador, whom he saw afterwards at Tana, that, when you enter Cathay, all expenses of the merchants are defrayed and they are brought to a place called Cambalu, where they prostrate themselves before the lord, and tell their business, which is then referred to the nobles, who promptly settle it. The lord takes what he pleases of the merchant's wares, giving more than its value, and they sell the rest. "A land of liberty and great justice;" paper money is in use. These rumours are only of interest as showing that there was no material change in the attitude of the Chinese Government towards such foreign traders as reached the empire, during this period of comparative isolation. The freedom of trade, enjoyed by Arabs and Italians under the Tang and Sung Dynasties, was not refused by China; it was only not claimed, on account of obstacles quite outside the reach of her influence. 1 Ramusio, ii. p. 106. The commercial colonies of Mahomedans and Jews already settled in China were practically cut off from their countrymen and co-religionists, and were regarded as naturalized Chinese. China had commerce enough of her own to thrive by, and the foreign ships were scarcely missed; but the habit of hospitality to sea-borne foreigners was interrupted in the South, just at the time when, from other causes, it seemed necessary to exercise a strict control of the overland traffic, which knocked at the Northern gate of the Empire. Had the trade of Western Europe and Asia been able to come in any volume by this route, the conditions of foreign traffic would have been regulated to meet its needs; as it was, though the Tatars were not absolutely the only traders desirous of offering a well-rewarded tribute, they were the nearest, the most numerous, and the most dangerous, and therefore the general course of trade was controlled in the way that seemed best adapted to keep the Tatars at once at a distance and in a good temper. Portuguese ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope were the first to re-enter the China seas. In 1517 a fleet of eight sail reached Canton, bearing an ambassador, with presents for the Emperor of China. They passed peaceably through the Chinese naval force, then stationed outside the Canton River to protect merchant vessels from piracy, and the provincial authorities, though cautious, were not unfriendly. The Portuguese were allowed to dispose of their wares while awaiting a reply from Peking, as to the proposed embassy. This was delayed till 1520, and, meanwhile, the naval commander had been induced, by sickness among the sailors, to return to Malacca. Before his departure, he satisfied the claims of all Chinese creditors against members of the expedition, thus at once securing a reputation for good faith, which, if kept up, would in all human probability have established free trade with China three centuries and a half ago. Unfortunately, a brother of the first commander, who was placed at the head of the second expedition, was a more typical representative of Portuguese commercial enterprise. He set at defiance all the laws and regulations of the country, despised its ceremonies, and while nominally desirous of establishing peaceful intercourse, actually displayed the greed of an invader and the insolence of a conqueror. Small wonder then that the emperor, who had just accomplished his visit to Nanking, was prepared to believe the warnings, which reached his viceroys from Bintang and Malacca, that the Portuguese sought to obtain admission as traders, in order that they might conquer China, as they had already conquered its tributary, the king of Malacca, and those parts of India in which they had obtained a lodgment. The suspicion was perfectly well founded. Portugal, Spain, Holland, and England in succession cast their eyes on China, as a finer prey than any to be found in the Indies, east or west; and the Chinese have only themselves and a wary Government to thank for their escape from the fate of Spanish America, British India, and the shorterlived Dutch and Portuguese settlements. The annals of Canton say that the king of Portugal, a country in the Western ocean, sent an ambassador to China in 1525, and another, with tribute, in 1528. The Memoirs of Mendez Pinto, whose buccaneering exploits date about 1540, are enough to explain why these new tributebearers seemed to require to be as much kept at a distance as the Tatars. But with the best will in the world, their numbers were too small to make them really a formidable annoyance to the already enormous empire, and hence it is that the question, of admitting or excluding the Western islanders, occupies much less space in the official annals than the problem of tolerating horse fairs. Apart from the personal rhodomontade which has discredited them, the author of the Memoirs just referred to seems to be fairly veracious, so far as his Chinese experiences are concerned. Piracy, with a slight flavour of commerce, was the profession of himself and the comrades with whom he entered the China seas. After various discreditable adventures, they were wrecked, after an attempt to loot an imperial cemetery, and it was in consequence of this mishap that they were able to see as much as they did of inland China. They endeavoured to make their way by road to Nanking, where they hoped to get a vessel for Ningpo, and as long as the foreigners were able to persuade the country people that they were unfortunate sailors and not pirates, they were helped on their way by private and public charity. In a town where the officials were more suspicious or better informed, they were arrested as bad characters, and completed their journey as prisoners. From Nanking they were transferred to the capital for judgment, and we are able again to view the Chinese highways with a European eye. The interval that separates Chaucer from Shakespeare has made little difference to the Middle Kingdom. Pinto repeats the tale of all earlier travellers. China is "the country in the world most abounding in all things that may be desired. The roads and waterways are lined with great numbers of villages and little hamlets of two or three hundred fires apiece; woods and orange groves, plains of wheat, rice, beans, pease, millet, panic, barley, rye, flax, and cotton, and gardens and houses of pleasure" succeed each other. In one town, with a water supply that is supposed to yield the brightest hues for dyeing silk, he is told that there are 13,000 dyers at work, who pay 300,000 taels yearly to the Emperor (say about £100,000). As they proceed up the river, the country grows more and more populous; pagodas stood within a stone's throw of each other, and for the last eleven days "cities, towns, villages, boroughs, forts and castles, not a flight shot distant from one another," gave the Portuguese the same impression of Northern China in the 16th century, as had been carried away from Southern China by the Arab travellers of the 9th and the 14th centuries. The specialization of employments struck Pinto as carried to a remarkable extent. Every kind of traffic and commerce is divided into several branches; thus, in the trade in ducks, some hatch the eggs and sell the ducklings, others fatten them for eating; some sell the eggs only, others Voyages and Adventures of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, tr. by H. C. Gent, 1663. the feathers, and so on. He notices the brisk trade in town sewage, by means of which, used as manure, their grounds bear three crops in a year. He recognises as one chief cause of the great wealth and commerce of China, the multiplicity of rivers and artificial waterways, to the construction of which ancient kings, great lords, and the people themselves have in all times contributed, so as to render the whole country navigable, and enable all parts to communicate and exchange the produce of their labour. Even the pagodas help to promote traffic, for fairs and markets are free on religious festivals; and the temples, erected on the river banks to profit by the consequent concourse, enable the people to do their business and their devotion under one. He sums up, that after having seen great part of Asia, as well as his own country and other lands, he would set China by itself above the whole of Europe for abundance, riches, and magnificence, and most of all for the exact observance of justice, "for there is so well ruled a government in this country as it may justly be envied of all others in the world." In 1560 the Portuguese obtained leave to rent a site for their factory at Macao, and before long 500 or 600 merchants of that nation were established there. By 1565 the missionaries had also effected an entry, and the zeal of the religious orders for the conversion of China was much stimulated by the reports of success already obtained among the similar people of Japan. Mendoza's history of China is a compilation, first published in 1585,1 to which his own short residence in China enabled him to contribute comparatively little of his own knowledge. The process of making porcelain is not described amiss, and he mentions the use of large visiting cards, as now, and other since familiar characteristics. Otherwise, he does little but summarize and combine the accounts given at first hand by Galeotto Perera and his fellow-captive, Gaspar da Cruz, a preaching friar, who resided in China between 1556 and 1569, and published an account of his experiences on his return to Portugal.2 Da Cruz is probably to be identified with the over-zealous monk, who nearly got into trouble, according to Mendoza, by throwing down images in an "idol" temple, but saved himself by a rationalistic discourse on the impotence of idols, which should rather be expected to worship their maker, man, than conversely. He speaks of all the foreign traffic in Canton, putting together that of the Portuguese and all that came from Siam, as insignificant when compared with the local and national trade. Other writers dilate on the enormous revenue derived by the Emperor from the provinces; but he is more struck by the smallness of the individual taxpayer's contributions, the chief of which is a poll-tax of 9d., paid by the heads of households for the members of their family.3 It is a land where 1 Translated by the Hakluyt Society. For an account of the trade with Cathay, by a Turkish Dervish, circ. 1560, see Busbequii Epistolæ, pp. 326-30. ? In Black Letter 4°; a Tractado, containing many particularities concerning things Chinese, translated in Purchas, his Pilgrims, vol. iii. 3 Mendoza puts this tax at about half as much again. every one works, and all are free to enjoy and bequeath their own earnings as they please. Prices, it would seem, have not risen much since he wrote, for he speaks of shoes to be bought at from two crowns each to threepence ; boots vary from ten crowns to two, and the good friar evidently regards the variation as a popular trait: "even the very poor may wear shoes." He experienced the "great courtesy " of the Chinese in his own person, and apparently rather admired the custom of not receiving friends in "undress." He is introduced to the "somewhat bitter, red, and medicinal drink called Cha" (tea), and during his thirteen years' intercourse with the Chinese, certainly gained a degree of familiarity with their institutions and modes of thought, which must have made Ricci's task less difficult. One of his statements must be the less omitted because of its singularity; he says "the merchants are commonly false, and lyars," a complaint which the Jesuits echo at rare intervals, though their general evidence is the other way. Probably, such Portuguese as may have tried to engage in a cheating match with the idolaters, were left with a livelier sense of the moral obliquity of cheating as their sole gain from the adventure. 1 -- Mendoza's authorities have a tolerably clear understanding of the position of the literary class, or "a certain order of gentlemen called Loutea." Offices are given for merit, not descent; but, it is added, correctly, while the higher offices of justice are bestowed "after trial made of their learning," the lower posts in the administration, as of "constables, sergeants, receivers and the like" are given by favour. No man governs in his native place, or for more than three years, so that the king is well served without fear of treason. There are no nobles, as in Europe and Japan, except the emperor's kinsmen, and these are not allowed to take any part in public affairs. They take all possible pains to avoid condemning any to death, and it is thought cruel to issue more than six or eight death-warrants at a time, though prisoners liable to sentence of death, who are not executed, and who have no friends to pay for their support, are in danger of being allowed to die of starvation instead. The system of reports to the Emperor, and of periodical visits of inspection by his delegates, is well understood, and the custom of offering all memorials or petitions in writing is also noticed. The Mandarin dialect is compared to Latin, as the common language of the learned; but Trigault is the first to explain that it is the written character only that approaches to the nature of an "universal language." According to Perera, the Government examinations and the periodical gaol deliveries were done by the same officers on circuit. He was told that many of the students were maintained at the emperor's expense, and he made the acquaintance in gaol of some who had been disgraced for failing to pass their examinations. Like Pinto, he is filled with admiration for the way in which justice was administered in the Chinese courts; and as the 1 De Mailla, vol. xiii. p. 676. 3 2 This practice is said to date from 964 A.D. |