EASTWARD HO! 95domiciled in yards next to their work. Since the shipwrights and their
apprentices were generally illiterate, learning proceeded by example,
using handcrafted models whose parts fitted perfecdy without nails. No
detail was too small to escape the planning of the shipwrights: over
lapping planks, multiple layers, joints between planks caulked with jute
and covered with sifted lime and tung oil, iron nails sealed against rust,
special woods for every purpose, even large "dragon eyes" painted on
the prow so that the ship could "see" where it was going. These eyes,
plus a good, balanced stern rudder and heavy ballast, the whole guided
by navigational experience and folkloric wisdom, would take the ship
from port to port. The work itself was done in huge drydocks (China
here anticipated European technology by hundreds of years) opening
onto the Yangtze (Yangzi). In this way, over a period of three years, the
Chinese built or refitted some 1,681 ships. Medieval Europe could
not have conceived of such an armada.^11
Yet this Chinese opening to the sea and the larger world came to
naught, indeed was deliberately reduced to naught.* In the 1430s a
new emperor reigned in Peking, one who "knew not Joseph." A new,
Confucian crowd competed for influence, mandarins who scorned and
distrusted commerce (for them, the only true source of wealth was
agriculture) and detested the eunuchs who had planned and carried out
the great voyages. For some decades, the two groups vied for influence,
the balance shifting now one way, now the other. But fiscality and the
higher Chinese morality were on the Confucian side. The maritime
campaign had strained the empire's finances and weakened its author
ity over a population bled white by taxes and corvée levies.
The decision (early fifteenth century) to move the capital to Peking
made things worse: new city walls, a palace compound of over nine
thousand rooms, peasants liable in principle for thirty days service but
kept at work for years running. The transportation bill alone—moving
the court from Nanking, some eight hundred miles—drove tax sur
charges upward.^12 A few conscientious officials spoke up, but the im
perial courtiers stifled them by severe and humiliating penalties. A
prefect who protested the extra requisitions was put in a cage and
wheeled in disgrace to the capital to be interrogated by the emperor.
So much for duty. Meanwhile, on the northwest frontier, a changing
but unchanging cast of nomadic raiders gave the empire no peace,
draining resources and demanding undivided attention.
- They also explored the east coast of Asia as far north as Kamchatka, but there too
decided to abstain. (Once you've seen an ice floe, you've seen 'em all.)