Trade, the Sea Prohibition and the “Folangji” 105
estimate it, so well do they know of you the goods you want, and
they bring them.
They ... [collect] twenty per cent on pepper, βifty per cent on
brazil [wood], and the same amount on the Singapore wood; and
when this has been estimated a junk will pay so much in proportion.
They receive their dues on the other merchandise at ten per cent;
and they do not oppress you; they have genuine merchants in their
dealings. They are very wealthy. Their whole idea is pepper. They
sell their foodstuffs honestly; business over, each returns to his
own country.^15Pires claimed that the Chinese merchants in Nantou made a proβit of 30
to 50 per cent on trade with foreigners.^16 He also observed that no Chinese
“may set out in the direction of Siam, Java, Malacca, Pase and beyond,
without permission from the governors of Guangzhou, and they charge
so much for signing the licence to go and come back that they cannot
afford it and do not go”.^17 But, obviously many managed to bribe their way
out or simply sneaked off. In Malacca, for example, there were so many
Chinese traders that one of the Shahbandars, the harbor-masters who
received foreign ships, was made responsible for junks from China.^18 After
the Portuguese conquest, Chinese continued to come.^19
During Pires’ sojourn, the Portuguese busied themselves preparing for
voyages to China by gathering navigational information. Among the maps
drawn by Francisco Rodrigues, a pilot and cartographer at this time, for
example, is a rutter for the voyage from Malacca to the Pearl River, in all
likelihood based on information gathered from Chinese sailors before the
βirst Portuguese voyage to China.^20
In 1513, when the situation in Malacca had stabilized, the Portuguese
commander of Malacca, Rui de Brito Patalim, sent Jorge Álvares on a
trading expedition to China.^21 Existing Chinese goodwill toward the
Portuguese made this pioneer exploration a success. Álvares and some
other Portuguese sailed on board a Chinese junk that was among a
returning merchant βleet and was assisted by these junk traders while
on the China coast. Álvares and his company were not permitted to land
- Ibid.
- Ibid., p. 122.
- Ibid., p. 119.
- Ibid., pp. 265, 268.
- Ibid., p. 283.
- Armando Cortesão, “Introduction”, p. xciv.
- Concerning the departure date and the expedition, see J.M. Braga, “The ‘Tamao’
of the Portuguese Pioneers”, Tien Hsia Monthly 8, 5 (May 1939): 422; also
Stephen Chang, Ming-chi tung-nan chung-kuo, pp. 201‒2.