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Han Chinese Representations of South Sea Merchants in Song China

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Early Global Interconnectivity across the Indian Ocean World, Volume I

Part of the book series: Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies ((IOWS))

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Abstract

For a period of seven hundred years, the port cities of China played host to long-lasting communities of foreign maritime merchants who came from across the vast expanse of maritime Asia. Using the writings of Chinese officials and literati, it is also possible to offer some observations concerning how these merchant communities interacted with and were perceived by their Chinese hosts during the Song dynasty (960–1279). This paper focuses on accounts from Guangzhou and Quanzhou, the two most popular ports for those from the South Seas, and finds that there was a remarkable degree of tolerance for them among official and literati writers. Wealthy merchants might be faulted for their great wealth, but not for their physical features, customs, dress, or religion. This was a reflection of their non-threatening presence and their relative integration into port society, and also of an apparent lack of curiosity about them among the Chinese elites.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See, for example, Zhu Yu 朱彧 [1075?–after 1119] writing around 1090: “When people from various countries come to Guangzhou and do not return for a year, they are said too be “living [in the] Tang”. Zhu Yu 朱彧 [1075?–after 1119] (1989) Pingzhou ketan 萍洲可談 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe [Reprint of 1119]), 2.27.

  2. 2.

    Wang Gungwu (1958) “The Nan-hai Trade: A Study of the Early History of Chinese Trade in the South China Sea”, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 31:2, 80.

  3. 3.

    Howard S. Levy (1961) Biography of Huang Ch’ao (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press), 109–121. Levy compares the Chinese and Arab sources that either describe or refer to the massacre, the most detailed of which is that of Abu Zaid of Sīraf.

  4. 4.

    André Wink (1996) Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, Vol. I. Early Medieval India and the Expansion of Islam Seventh to Eleventh Centuries (3rd ed., Leiden, New York and Köln: E. J. Brill), 84.

  5. 5.

    See Tansen Sen (2003) Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600–1400 (Honolulu: University of ‘ --> Hawai’i Press), 154; and John Chaffee (2007) “Maritime Tribute and Maritime Trade from the Southern Seas in the Early Song”, Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, March, 8–9.

  6. 6.

    These are described in John Chaffee (2006) “Diasporic Identities in the Historical Development of the Maritime Muslim Communities of Song-Yuan China”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 49:4, 403–404.

  7. 7.

    See Li Yukun 李玉昆 (1995) Quanzhou haiwai jiaotong shilue 泉州海外交通史略 (Xiamen: Xiamen University Press), 45–67; and Billy So Kee Long (2000) Prosperity, Region, and Institutions in Maritime China: The South Fukien Pattern, 946–1368 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), 116–117.

  8. 8.

    These have been detailed by Yokkaichi Yasuhiro 四日市康博 (2000) “Gencho kyūtei ni okeru kōeki to teishin shūdan” 元朝宮廷における交易と廷臣集团, Bulletin of the Graduate Division of Literature of Waseda University 早稻田大學大學院文學研究科紀要 45.4, 3–15; Yokkaichi Yasuhiro 四日市康博 (2006) “The Structure of Political Power and the Nanhai Trade: From the Perspective of Local Élites in Zhejiang in the Yuan Period”, Paper Presented to the Annual Meetings of the Association for Asian Studies (San Francisco: No Publisher).

  9. 9.

    John Chaffee (2008) “Muslim Merchants and Quanzhou in the Late Yuan-Early Ming: Conjectures on the Ending of the Medieval Muslim Trade Diaspora”, in Angela Schottenhammer (ed.), The East Asian Mediterranean—Maritime Crossroads of Culture, Commerce, and Human Migration (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz), 115–132.

  10. 10.

    Gu Yanwu 顧炎武 [1613–1682] (1977; 2002) Tianxia junguo libing shu 天下郡國利病書, in Xuxiu Siku quanshu 續修西庫全書 (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan) fasc. 595–597.

  11. 11.

    Marc Abramson (2008) Ethnic Identity in Tang China (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), 87.

  12. 12.

    Zhu Yu (1989) Pingzhou ketan, 2.27. See Don J. Wyatt’s comprehensive treatment of these black slaves and Zhu Yu’s representation of them in Don J. Wyatt (2009) The Blacks of Premodern China (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press).

  13. 13.

    Zhu Yu (1989) Pingzhou ketan, 2.27–2.28.

  14. 14.

    Zhu Yu (1989) Pingzhou ketan, 2.28.

  15. 15.

    Gu Yanwu, Tianxia junguo libing shu (Qing; Siku quanshu zhenben ed.), Guangzhou shang, 104b–105a. For the identification of the Touhuang lu, I am following Kuwabara Jitsuzo (1928) “On P’u Shou-keng, a Man of the Western Regions, who was the Superintendent of the Trading Ships’ Office in Ch’üan-chou towards the End of the Sung dynasty, together with a General Sketch of Trade of the Arabs in China during the T’ang and Sung Eras, Part 1” Memoirs of the Research Department of the Tōyō Bunko 2, 37.

  16. 16.

    Yue Ke 岳珂 [1183–1240] (1981) “Panyu hailiao” 番禺海獠 (The Sea-Barbarians of Panyu), in Tingshi 桯史 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju), 11.125.

  17. 17.

    Zhu Yu (1989) Pingzhou ketan, 2.29.

  18. 18.

    Yue Ke (1981) Tingshi, 11.125.

  19. 19.

    Donald Leslie (1986) Islam in Traditional China (Canberra: Canberra College of Advanced Education), 40–44.

  20. 20.

    Wu Youxiong 吳幼雄 (1963) Quanzhou zongjiao wenhua 泉州宗教文化 (Xiamen: Lujiang chubanshe), 184, describes how a Japanese monk obtained a sample of Arabic writing while passing through Quanzhou in 1217 and took it back to Japan.

  21. 21.

    Chen Dasheng (1995) “Chinese Islamic Influence on Archaeological Finds in South Asia”.

  22. 22.

    Billy So Kee Long (2000) Prosperity, Region, and Institutions, 54, from Lin Zhiqi 林之奇 [1112–1176], Zhuozhai wenji 拙齋文集, in Siku quanshu, 15:1b–2a.

  23. 23.

    Zhao Rugua [1170–1231] (1911) Chau Ju-kua. His Work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Entitled Chu-fan-chï, translated. Friedrich Hirth and William W. Rockhill (St. Petersburg: Printing Office of the Imperial Academy of Sciences). According to Paul Wheatley, nine of Zhao’s country descriptions are taken from Zhou Qufei’s Lingwai daida, and a small number of others come from yet earlier works, but the vast majority provided new information to Chinese readers, cf. Paul Wheatley (1959) “Geographical Notes on Some Commodities Involved in Sung Maritime Trade”, Journal of the Malayan Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, 32.2, 6.

  24. 24.

    Xu Song 徐松 [1781–1848] (1964) Song huiyao jigao 宋會要輯稿 (Taibei: Shijie shuju [Reprint]), Chongru 2, 12a.

  25. 25.

    Xu Song (1964) Song huiyao, Fanyi 4.84a; Tuotuo (Toghto) 脫脫 [1313–1355] (1981) Songshi 宋史 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju), 490.14121.

  26. 26.

    See John Chaffee (2006) “Diasporic Identities” on both of these points; the lack of a foreign quarter in Quanzhou was previously and persuasively argued by So Kee Long (2000) Prosperity, Region, and Institutions, 54.

  27. 27.

    Li Tao 李燾 [1115–1184] (1979) Xu Zizhi tongjian changbian 續資治通鑑長編 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju [Reprint of 1183]), 118.2782.

  28. 28.

    Song huiyao, Xingfa, 2.21a.

  29. 29.

    Yue Ke (1981) Tingshi, 11.125; Zhu Xi朱熹 [1130–1200] (1974) Zhu Wengong wenji 朱文公文集, in Siku quanshu zhenben四庫全書珍本 (Taibei: Shangwu yinshuguan), 98.1750.

  30. 30.

    Huang Chunyan 黃純艳 (2003) Songdai haiwai maoyi 宋代海外贸易 (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe), 120.

  31. 31.

    Su Che 蘇撤 [1039–1112] (1982) Longchuan lüe zhi 龍川略志 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju), 5.28–9.

  32. 32.

    “Yanzhi zupu xu” 燕支族譜序, Yanzhi Su shi zupu 燕支蘇氏族譜, cited in Fu Zongwen 傅宗文 (1991) “Citong gang shi chutan” 刺桐港史初探, Part I, Haijiaoshi yanjiu 海交史研究 19, 114. Fu has calculated that, given Fujian rental rates of 12 dan 石 per mou 畝 (and in many cases it was only half that), he would have to have owned at least 1000 mou of land.

  33. 33.

    Concerning the stone carvers, see Chen Dasheng 陳達生 (1995) “Chinese Islamic Influence on Archaeological Finds in South Asia”, in Rosemary Scott and John Guy (eds.), South East Asia and China. Art, Interaction and Commerce [Colloquies on Art and Archaeology in Asia, 17] (London: University of London Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art), 60–62, where he argues that a Muslim gravestone in Brunei dated 1301 must have come from Quanzhou and been carved by stone carvers who produced gravestones for the Muslim community there.

  34. 34.

    Yue Ke (1981) Tingshi, 11.125. See Kuwabara Jitzuō (1928) “P’u Shou-keng”, 44, for a variant translation of this passage.

  35. 35.

    Zhu Xi (1974) Zhu Wengong wenji, 98.1750.

  36. 36.

    Zhu Xi (1974) Zhu Wengong wenji, 1583. The translation, with changes, is from Kuwabara Jitsuzō (1935) “On P’u Shou-keng, a Man of the Western Regions, who was the Superintendent of the Trading Ships’ Office in Ch’üan-chou towards the End of the Sung dynasty, together with a General Sketch of Trade of the Arabs in China during the T’ang and Sung Eras, part 2”, Memoirs of the Research Department of the Tōyō Bunko 7, 1–104.

  37. 37.

    See John Chaffee (1999) Branches of Heaven: A History of the Imperial Clan of Sung China (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center), Chap. 10, for a treatment of the imperial clan in Quanzhou. Unfortunately, I was not aware of this passage when I wrote the book.

  38. 38.

    Billy So Kee Long (1995) “Chinese Identity in the Traditional Context: The Case of Zayton”, Humanities Bulletin, Faculty of Arts, CUHK (Hong Kong) 2, 49–56.

  39. 39.

    Marc Abramson (2008) Ethnic Identity in Tang China, 182–184, 190–191.

  40. 40.

    Marc Abramson (2008) Ethnic Identity in Tang China, xiii–ix.

  41. 41.

    Donald D. Leslie (1986) Islam in Traditional China (Canberra: Canberra College of Advanced Education), 106.

  42. 42.

    Donald D. Leslie (1986) Islam in Traditional China, 105–107.

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  1. Binghamton University, The State University of New York, Binghamton, NY, USA

    John W. Chaffee

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Correspondence to John W. Chaffee .

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  1. University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

    Angela Schottenhammer

  2. Research Director of the Indian Ocean World Centre (IOWC), McGill University, Montreal, Canada

    Angela Schottenhammer

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Chaffee, J.W. (2019). Han Chinese Representations of South Sea Merchants in Song China. In: Schottenhammer, A. (eds) Early Global Interconnectivity across the Indian Ocean World, Volume I. Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97667-9_12

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