364 Boundaries and Beyond
south-bound junk (nan cao). They shipped goods to Zhangzhou, Nan’ao
and places in Guangdong. The north-bound junks (bei cao) headed to
Wenzhou, Ningbo, Shanghai, Jiaozhou, Tianjin, Jinzhou and other ports
in the north. Akira Matsuura cites a contemporary author, Lan Dingyuan,
who observed that the Fujianese saw “the Jiang-Zhe provinces, Denglai,
Guandong [Manchuria] and Tianjin as their courtyards”. He goes on,
... sailing from Amoy on the favorable trade wind [southeast
monsoon] took only slightly more than ten days to arrive in Tianjin.
Farther north they went to Guandong [Manchuria], or southward
from Tianjin to Jiaozhou, Shanghai, Zhapu and Ningbo. All these
seaports were destinations of the trading junks from Fujian and
Guangdong.^45The βigures given for the years 1731 and 1732 indicate that there were
respectively 53 and 45 merchant junks arriving in Tianjin in each year.
These vessels were all manned by Quan-Zhang seafarers.^46 The Amoy
Gazetteer also records that the ocean-going junks and the coastal
merchant junks anchored in Amoy in the year 1796 numbered more
than a thousand.^47 The wealth of Amoy at this juncture had earned it a
reputation as the “Silver City” (yincheng).^48
Another port was soon to contest Amoy’s leading position in shipping.
It was Changlim in the Chaozhou region. It rose to become the largest
thriving seaport in eastern Guangdong in the early decades of the
seventeenth century and its maritime trade scaled the heights from the
early eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries.^49 As the contemporary
Qing scholar, Lan Dingyuan, remarks, the Chaozhou people sailed to the
north taking advantage of the south wind at the juncture of the spring
and summer seasons. They visited Fujian, Ningbo, Shanghai, Denglai and
the ports between Tianjin and Guandong. The whole journey took only
15 days. During the autumn and winter, they followed the seasonal wind
[northeast monsoon] sailing from their home port to Jieshe, Dapeng,
Xiangshan, Yashan, Gaozhou, Lezhou, Qiongzhou and other ports on the
- Akira Matsuura, Qingdai fanchuan dongya hang yun, pp. 188‒9.
- Ng Chin-keong, Trade and Society, pp. 144‒5; see also Zhou Kai, Xiamen zhi,
juan 5, p. 166. - Zhou Kai, Xiamen zhi, juan 5, p. 180.
- Zhou Kai, Xiamen zhi, juan 15, pp. 639‒40.
- Song Zuanyou 宋钻友, Guangdong ren zai Shanghai (1843‒1949) 广东人在上
海 (1843‒1949) [The Guangdong People in Shanghai, 1843‒1949] (Shanghai
renmin chubanshe, 2007), p. 47.
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