ANTIQUES

Magazine Antiques, March, 2001 by Wendell Garrett

The Chinese do habitually call and consider Europeans "barbarians"; meaning by that term "peoples in a rude, uncivilized state, morally and intellectually uncultivated"....Those Chinese who have had direct opportunities of learning something of our customs and culture... mostly consider us beneath their nation in moral and intellectual cultivation....They are always surprised, not to say astonished, to learn that we have surnames, and understand the family distinctions of father, brother, wife, sister, etc.; in short, that we live otherwise than as a herd of cattle.

Thomas Taylor Meadows, Shangae Almanac for 1854

When Francis Bacon remarked around 1620 that the world was being made over by printing, gunpowder, and the magnetic compass, he did not mention that all three had appeared first in China. Nowadays it is generally conceded that eleventh-century China was at a level of economic development not achieved by any European state until at least the eighteenth century. The paradox that haunts Chinese patriots today is why the country has lagged so far behind in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

China was not only the equal of the Roman Empire but far ahead of medieval Europe. Between the eighth and the twelfth centuries the country was transformed by improved methods of rice cultivation, the creation of an integrated system of waterways, advances in shipbuilding that included watertight bulkheads, the use of copper money, and the availability of credit.

A century before Columbus and his fellow Europeans began to make their way to the new world, fleets of giant Chinese junks carried porcelains, lacquerware, copper coins, and silks far and wide. Seven epic expeditions between 1405 and 1433 took the Chinese treasure ships to the Spice Islands of Indonesia and the Malabar Coast of India and on to the Persian Gulf and the east coast of Africa. They may even have reached Australia three hundred years before Captain James Cook landed there in the eighteenth century.

The shipyards near Nanjing built about two thousand vessels between 1403 and 1419, including nearly one hundred of the enormous treasure ships. These were between 370 and 440 feet long with a beam of 150 to 180 feet. With 4 to 9 masts up to 90 feet tall, a dozen watertight compartments, and as many as 50 cabins, they could carry between 450 and 500 men. The sails were red silk, the prows were adorned with carved animal heads and painted dragon eyes.

The expedition of 1405 to 1407 comprised an estimated 317 ships, of which 62 were said to be treasure ships. (By comparison, the Spanish Armada of 1588 was composed of 132 ships.) In command was the Grand Eunuch Zheng He, who was accompanied by a staff of 70 eunuchs, 180 medical personnel, 5 astrologers, and 300 officers commanding a force of 26,800 soldiers.

The seven expeditions did some trading in silks and porcelains, but their main purpose was to establish diplomatic relations with some thirty countries. They exchanged gifts, enrolled tributaries, and brought back geographic information and natural curiosities such as giraffes, which were touted as auspicious unicorns.

The great Chinese voyages ended in 1433, opposed by Confucian-trained scholar-officials who rejected foreign contact on principle. The voyages were never resumed. By the mid-fifteenth century the Mongols threatened, and in the sixteenth century the Great Wall was built to keep them out. The decline of Ming naval power contributed to the growth of piracy on the South China coast, and the Chinese withdrew inland. The Manchu supplanted the Ming dynasty in 1644 but inherited their fear of foreign trade and contact with the West.