For Centuries
T'swan-Chau Was The Seat Of The Customs Department Of Fo-Kien, Nor Was
This Finally Removed Till 1473.
In all the historical notices of the
arrival of ships and missions from India and the Indian Islands during
The
reign of Kublai, T'swan-chau, and T'swan-chau almost alone, is the port of
debarkation; in the notices of Indian regions in the annals of the same
reign it is from T'swan-chau that the distances are estimated; it was from
T'swan-chau that the expeditions against Japan and Java were mainly fitted
out. (See quotations by Pauthier, pp. 559, 570, 604, 653, 603, 643;
Gaubil, 205, 217; Deguignes, III. 169, 175, 180, 187; Chinese
Recorder (Foochow), 1870, pp. 45 seqq.)
When the Portuguese, in the 16th century, recovered China to European
knowledge, Zayton was no longer the great haven of foreign trade; but yet
the old name was not extinct among the mariners of Western Asia. Giovanni
d'Empoli, in 1515, writing about China from Cochin, says: "Ships carry
spices thither from these parts. Every year there go thither from Sumatra
60,000 cantars of pepper, and 15,000 or 20,000 from Cochin and Malabar,
worth 15 to 20 ducats a cantar; besides ginger (?), mace, nutmegs,
incense, aloes, velvet, European goldwire, coral, woollens, etc. The Grand
Can is the King of China, and he dwells at ZEITON." Giovanni hoped to get
to Zeiton before he died.[2]
The port of T'swan-chau is generally called in our modern charts
Chinchew. Now Chincheo is the name given by the old Portuguese
navigators to the coast of Fo-kien, as well as to the port which they
frequented there, and till recently I supposed this to be T'swan-chau. But
Mr. Phillips, in his paper alluded to at p. 232, asserted that by
Chincheo modern Spaniards and Portuguese designated (not T'swan-chau
but) Chang-chau, a great city 60 miles W.S.W. of T'swan-chau, on a river
entering Amoy Harbour. On turning, with this hint, to the old maps of the
17th century, I found that their Chincheo is really Chang-chau. But Mr.
Phillips also maintains that Chang-chau, or rather its port, a place
formerly called Gehkong and now Haiteng, is Zayton. Mr. Phillips does
not adduce any precise evidence to show that this place was known as a
port in Mongol times, far less that it was known as the most famous haven
in the world; nor was I able to attach great weight to the arguments which
he adduced. But his thesis, or a modification of it, has been taken up and
maintained with more force, as already intimated, by the Rev. Dr. Douglas.
The latter makes a strong point in the magnificent character of Amoy
Harbour, which really is one of the grandest havens in the world, and thus
answers better to the emphatic language of Polo, and of Ibn Batuta, than
the river of T'swan-chau. All the rivers of Fo-kien, as I learn from Dr.
Douglas himself, are rapidly silting up; and it is probable that the river
of Chinchew presented, in the 13th and 14th centuries, a far more
impressive aspect as a commercial basin than it does now.
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