The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (58 page)

Ennin intended to visit China for a year but wound up staying nine. Some delays were due to the imperfect state of ninth-century communication, but this was a minor inconvenience compared with the highly ritualized and inscrutable demands of the Tang bureaucracy. At Yangzhou, the authorities refused Ennin permission to visit a Buddhist monastery in
Zhejiang Province on the grounds that it was too far to go in the time the Japanese emissaries would take to conduct their business at Chang’an. Ennin was forced to wait until the official party returned from the capital en route home; but rather than return to Japan he ingratiated himself with the Korean merchant community on the Shandong Peninsula and remained in China. He eventually made his way to Chang’an, but afraid to leave the capital without proper papers, between 841 and 845 he petitioned the court for a passport a hundred times. He was only allowed to go when all unregistered foreign monks were deported during
Tang Wuzong’s campaign against Buddhism.

That Ennin was able to stay in China, visit Buddhist monasteries in
Shanxi Province, and sojourn in Chang’an was due in part to the support he received from the large community of expatriate Koreans. At this time, Sillan merchants dominated the maritime trade of the
Bo Hai,
Yellow Sea, and East
China Sea at least as far south as Mingzhou (now
Ningbo), and they forwarded many of the exotics imported into China’s southern ports to Korea and Japan. Because of their familiarity with both China and Japan they served as intermediaries in commercial and diplomatic transactions between the two countries.
The Koreans in China were concentrated along the coast between the Shandong Peninsula and Chuzhou (now Huai’an), a major port of entry for ships from Korea and Japan where goods were transshipped to smaller craft for distribution along the
Grand Canal, Huai River, and other inland waters. The Korean quarter at Chuzhou was administered by a Korean general manager and an official interpreter, and there were comparable officials on the Shandong Peninsula where Ennin spent much of his time as a guest of the Mount Chi Monastery, which overlooks one of the easternmost anchorages in China. These quasi-administrators did not represent the kingdom of
Silla but rather Sillan merchant interests.

The most prominent trader during Ennin’s time in China was
Jang Bogo (Chang Pogo), whose history is known from Korean, Chinese, and Japanese sources. Of humble origins, Jang made his mark as a soldier in the Chinese army before returning to Korea around 828. Appalled by the piracy and slave trading endemic on the Yellow Sea, he persuaded the king of Silla to name him commissioner of a garrison on
Wando Island, on the southwest coast. He was successful in reducing if not eliminating piracy, and he capitalized on the resulting stability by developing a prosperous trading network that radiated to Japan and the China coast. He was well known as the founder and patron of the Buddhist monastery at Mount Chi, and Ennin records a letter he wrote Jang thanking him for his hospitality and his gracious offers of assistance. Around the time that Ennin arrived in China, Silla was embroiled in a succession dispute. Jang had helped enthrone the short-lived
Sinmu Wang, who promised to take Jang’s daughter for a consort should he become king. When Jang proposed that Sinmu’s heir accept his daughter as a consort, royal advisors pleaded that an islander would not dignify the royal bedchamber. Jang was murdered to prevent his avenging this insult, and by the time Ennin returned to the Shandong Peninsula en route home in 845 Jang’s trading empire was a fading memory.

The Silla government also closed Jang Bogo’s garrison on Wando Island, and toward the end of the century sea trade fell off due to political instability in China and Korea. Peasant revolts on the peninsula in the 890s quickly coalesced around two leaders who established the kingdoms of Later
Goguryeo and Later Baekje. With Silla no more than a rump state, the principal contest for Korea’s future lay between these two kingdoms, and key to the outcome was mastery of the coast and sea-lanes.
Wang Geon parlayed the maritime
expertise gained in his family’s business (his grandfather was a leading merchant in Jang Bogo’s day) to become an accomplished naval commander during the war. As
King Taejo he proclaimed the
Goryeo state (918–1392), with its capital at
Gaeseong (Kaesong), and he accepted the submission of the kingdoms of Silla (after an independent existence of 993 years) and Later Baekje, thereby uniting the
Korean Peninsula under a single throne.

Goryeo’s relations with the
Northern Song were tested in the eleventh century as both realms came under pressure from the
Khitan Liao and Jurchen nomads of
Manchuria. When the land routes were blocked by the Khitan, Korean and
Chinese merchants trading across the Yellow Sea maintained informal contacts between the two courts. Most foreign trade entered Goryeo through Yesong, the port of entry for Gaeseong. As the official
Song History
relates, “
There are several hundred Chinese in the capital, most of them [Fujianese] who have come by junk for the purposes of trade.” Merchants from more distant lands reached Goryeo by sea, too, and according to the official Korean history, in 1037 Muslims, Indians, and others arrived from the south having come
via Chinese ports.

Buddhists were not the only community to suffer from
Tang Wuzong’s attentions. Forced to limp by with less revenue than it required either for its military security or for the maintenance of the canals and other infrastructure, the government harassed Muslims,
Manicheans,
Nestorian Christians, and
Zoroastrians, too. Difficult as things were for minorities around
Chang’an, however, Chinese citizens in the traditionally prosperous regions between the Yellow and Yangzi Rivers experienced even greater hardships. Despite the fiscal benefits of closing the monasteries and returning people to tax-paying status,
pirates in gangs of a hundred or more were at large, operating in concert with corrupt officials of the state markets in the formerly secure Yangzi plain. A decade later disaffection was widespread among both the peasantry and the army, and a yearlong uprising in what is now eastern Zhejiang, including the ports of
Hangzhou and
Mingzhou, combined elements of both.

The unrest of the 850s was a mere prelude to the devastation unleashed by the rebel
Huang Chao, who came to the fore two decades later. After seizing most of Fujian Province, Huang Chao petitioned the court to be made protector general of
Annam. Officials opposed this on the grounds “
that the markets and shipping of the South Seas constituted immeasurable wealth, and that if the bandits acquired them they would become increasingly prosperous,” at the expense of the imperial treasury. After this rebuke, Huang Chao
marched south to Guangzhou, China’s principal port for overseas trade. As related by the Persian
Abu Zayd, the city capitulated after a nearly yearlong siege, whereupon Huang Chao’s forces killed
120,000 Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Persian merchants.
^b
Huang Chao subsequently captured
Luoyang and Chang’an and forced Emperor
Tang Xizong to flee, just as Xuanzong had during
An Lushan’s rebellion 120 years before. But control of supplies from the south was no less important to rebels than to emperors, and because the capital was unable to feed itself, Huang Chao’s occupation was brief and brutal. With canal transportation at a standstill and food unavailable, the inhabitants of Chang’an were reduced to cannibalism, as “
Communication with the southeast is cut: no way for grain supplies to be brought in,” in the words of a contemporary lament. Xizong eventually regained the upper hand, but despite the government’s ultimate victory, the dynasty never recovered from the damage to its finances, prestige, and administration.

Insofar as foreign trade was concerned, the picture could not have been bleaker. According to reports from Indian Ocean traders, Chinese officials began

In effect, the government officials’ criminality created precisely the conditions the court had sought to avoid when it denied Huang Chao’s request to become protector general of Annam. Following the rebellion, power devolved on a number of military commanders, one of whom forced the last Tang emperor to abdicate in 907. China thereafter lapsed into an interregnum during which the empire was divided into three distinct regions: the
Sixteen Prefectures around modern
Beijing and the passes between Manchuria and China; the territory between there and the Yangzi, which was ruled by a succession of five short-lived “dynasties”; and the area south of the Yangzi, which was divided among ten longer-lived kingdoms.

Compared with the last decades of the Tang, the half-century interregnum
of the
Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms was relatively calm. When the last emperor of the Fifth Dynasty unexpectedly died leaving a seven-year-old heir, his generals chose one of their own to assume the throne. Emperor
Song Taizu managed to bring most of the remaining splinter states under the rule of the new dynasty, which had its capital at
Kaifeng. The most important transportation hub in China, Kaifeng lies on the Yellow River at the intersection of four canals, including the
Grand Canal, and canal boats and other inland vessels moored in a vast lake within the city walls. It is also closer than either Chang’an or Luoyang to the major sources of rice, wheat, and other commodities essential for the sustenance of a large imperial metropolis. The city already had a prosperous foreign quarter during the Tang and served as the capital for all but one of the Five Dynasties, but under the Song its population quickly grew to about a million people. Although far more people lived here than in any other single city in China, it is indicative of the
importance of urbanization in Song China that an estimated six million people—about half the world’s urban population at the time—lived in cities, and increased urbanization was a major catalyst for encouraging new attitudes toward and improvements in transportation and commerce.

The Song purchased peace from the neighboring
Khitan Liao and
Xi Xia tribes of the northwest, but while their inland borders were no longer threatened, transcontinental trade had fallen off. Dependent as it was on revenues from trade to cover its payments to the Liao and Xia, the
Northern Song could not afford to ignore the potential of sea trade, which it encouraged to a greater degree than any previous dynasty. Developments during the Tang had laid the groundwork for this new openness to overseas commerce. The vulnerability of Chang’an to invasion from the steppes had been revealed repeatedly and deficiencies in the transport system had forced the court to move to Luoyang in times of stress, most drastically in the 690s when about 100,000 families—perhaps half a million people—were
forcibly relocated from Chang’an. In the eighth century, the permanent loss of the empire’s western territories exposed the ancient capital to attack by
Tibetan and Central Asian armies, and this in turn led to a decline in the authority and influence of the northwest clans that had formed the core of China’s leadership since the
Qin Dynasty. Coupled with the widespread flight of northerners toward the Huai and Yangzi valleys, which were less susceptible to invasion, the periodic relocation of the national capital inclined the
Chinese to look south and seaward. These changes would have profound implications for the development of China’s maritime trade, from the numbers of ships and ports to the direct participation of Chinese in overseas ventures, as well as for China’s trading partners in Southeast Asia from Vietnam to Sumatra, Java, and beyond.

One reason for the increase in the number of Chinese seaports in the Northern Song was that after a thousand years of more or less constant occupation by their more powerful neighbors, the people of
Jiaozhi in northern Vietnam had finally achieved independence as the kingdom of
Dai Viet. While the Chinese allowed this to happen in part because they needed to concentrate government resources on the more pressing threats from Inner Asia and
Manchuria, Jiaozhi had also become a liability. During the Sui and early Tang Dynasties, Jiaozhi was ably administered by Chinese authorities, although finding qualified officials willing to serve there was a perennial difficulty. An infamous illustration of the government’s problem dates from the reign of
Tang Taizong, who appointed
Lu Zushang to the post of governor-general in Jiaozhou, a region that encompassed parts of northern Vietnam and southern China. “
Giao [Jiaozhou] is a large frontier region,” noted the emperor, “and it is necessary to have good officials to look after it; up to now, none of the governor generals has been equal to his responsibilities. You have the ability to pacify this frontier; go and defend it for me, and do not refuse on account of its being far away.” Doubtless flattered by the appointment, Lu had the temerity to decline the posting on the grounds that “In the south there is much malaria; if I go there I shall never return,” a reaction that reflected not simply a concern for his health, but a Confucian anxiety about being buried far from his ancestral home. To spare Lu such an unsettling destiny, the magnanimous Taizong had him beheaded.

As part of a raft of administrative changes, in 679 Jiaozhi and adjacent provinces in northern Vietnam became the protectorate of
Annam, meaning “pacified south.” Only five years later, however,
Kunlun merchants at Guangzhou murdered a corrupt governor who “
tried to cheat them of their goods.” Long-distance retaliation by the Tang was impossible. Faced with a shortage of men to deal with threats from Inner Asia, Gaozong was forced to withdraw the bulk of the Chinese armies stationed there. But the authorities who remained took the lesson to heart and for the next sixty years there are few reports of routine corruption in China’s busiest international port.
Sanskrit inscriptions from about a century later record two raids on Annam’s southern neighbor, the
Cham state of
Huanwang, as the kingdom of
Linyi was now called, in which “
ferocious, pitiless, dark-skinned men born in other countries, whose food was more horrible than corpses, and who were vicious and furious, came in ships … took away the [Hindu temple linga], and set fire to the temple” near
Panduranga (Phan Rang), south of
Cam Ranh Bay. Where these raiders originated is unknown, but they knew that Panduranga, Kauthara (Nha
Trang), and Hoi An (near modern
Da Nang) were centers of a substantial trade. Although the people of Huanwang had access to a few choice products of their own for foreign markets, notably ivory, rhinoceros horn, and aromatic woods, their prosperity derived from their active engagement in coastal and long-distance trade, as well as the services they provided foreign sailors.