104 Boundaries and Beyond
and three months he lived in Malacca, he used his leisure time to compile
an extensive account of littoral Asia, the Suma Oriental,^11 that provided the
Portuguese merchants with useful information about trade opportunities
in China and other regions in the East.
Pires’ account contains interesting information about Sino-Malacca
trade. He reports that the chief merchandise that went from Malacca
to China was pepper, “of which they will buy ten junk-loads a year”.
The Chinese also purchased large quantities of incense, elephants’
tusks, tin, apothecary’s lign-aloes, Borneo camphor, red beads, white
sandalwood, brazil-wood and “the black wood that grows in Singapore”.
Other important commodities included carnelians from Cambay, scarlet
camlets and colored woolen cloths.^12
The chief items imported from China were many kinds of silk fabrics,
seed-pearls in various shapes, musk in powder and in pods, apothecary’s
camphor, abarute (lead), alum, saltpeter, sulfur, copper, iron, rhubarb,
vases of copper and fuseleira (?), cast iron kettles, bowls, basins, boxes,
fans, needles, copper bracelets, gold and silver, brocades, and porcelain.
Although these commodities had been imported from China, some had
originated elsewhere. China produced “plenty of good sugar” and was
also a major supplier of salt to countries in the region surrounding
Malacca. Each year some 15 hundred sailing boats came to Malacca to
purchase salt.^13
The city of Guangzhou (Canton) on the estuary of the Pearl River was
the gateway to China for both envoys and traders from Southeast Asia, a
place where “the whole kingdom of China unloads all its merchandise,
great quantities from inland as well as from the sea”.^14 Upon their
arrival, foreign vessels anchored at Tunmen (Tamao) and other nearby
islands near the mainland of Nantou, which lay some 30 leagues from
Guangzhou. Pires gives a vivid description of how junks from Malacca
were received there:
As soon as the lord of Nantou sees the junks he immediately sends
word to Canton (Guangzhou) that junks have gone in among the
islands; the valuers from Canton go out to value the merchandise;
they receive their dues; they bring just the amount of merchandise
that is required: the country is pretty well accustomed to- Tomé Pires, The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires: An Account of the East, from the
Red Sea to Japan, written in Malacca and India in 1512‒ 1515 , trans. Armando
Cortesão (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1944). - Ibid., p. 123.
- Ibid., pp. 125, 127.
- Ibid., p. 124.
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