20 Boundaries and Beyond
that Muslim traders, primarily Arabs and Persians, “controlled a trading
network in the South Seas from 700 to 1200”. The South Fujianese
beneβited from the commercial knowledge and navigational expertise
of the Arabs and Persians. By dint of long contact and collaboration
with them, the Chinese gradually became acquainted with the maritime
world. By the late tenth century, the Fujianese were to be found on board
Muslim ships on their way to trade in the Nanhai. In other words, they
were “essentially apprentices under their Muslim masters”. Only in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, some Chinese “sailed their own junks”,
asserts Chang.^66
The third author sets the date of Chinese engagement in the long-
distance shipping even later. Discussing the indigenization process of
foreign merchants in China, Cheng Wing Sheung argues that “fan bo”
(foreign ships) controlled and managed overseas trade in the Tang period
and before. The “fan shang” (foreign merchants) continued to dominate
the long-distance trade during Song times. Their position in China’s
ocean-going trade still carried weight during the Yuan Dynasty, Cheng
claims.^67 Therefore, Cheng believes that the “Tang bo” and “zhongguo bo
shang” (literally “the ship merchants of China”) mentioned in the Song
text should be understood as “ships originating from Tang China” and
“sea-going merchants from China”, rather than Chinese ships and Chinese
sea merchants.^68
- Chang Pin-tsun, “The Formation of a Maritime Convention in Minnan (Southern
Fujian), c. 900–1200”, in From the Mediterranean to the China Sea, ed. Claude
Guillot, et al. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998), pp.147–9. - Cheng Wing Sheung, “Cong fanke dao tangren: zhongguo yuanyang waishang
(618–1433) shenfen zhi zhuanhua” 從蕃客到唐人：中國遠洋外商 (618–
1433) 身份之轉化 [From fan ke to Tang ren: the transforming identity of the
ocean-going foreign merchants, 618–1433], in Zhonggguo haiyang fazhan shi
lunwen ji dishi ji 中國海洋發展史論文集, 第十辑 [A Collection of papers on the
development of maritime history of China, Vol. 10], ed. Shi-yeoung Tang (Taipei:
Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, 2008),
pp. 155, 168; on indigenization, see also Kuwabara Jitsuzo, Pu Shougeng kao,
p. 49. The author mentions intermarriage as a common phenomenon among
the Arab sojourners in China; and Lo Hsiang-lin 羅香林, Pu Sougeng yanjiu 蒲壽
庚研究 [A New Study of P’u Shou-keng and His Times] (Hong Kong: Institute of
Chinese Culture, 1959). Lo’s work surveys the family history of an indigenized
Arab descendant in Quanzhou during the Song-Yuan transition. - Cheng Wing Sheung, “Cong fanke dao tangren”, pp.161–2. For an earlier
important study of Chinese merchant ships trading in the Persian Gulf, see
Kuwabara Jitsuzo 桑原隲藏, Tang-Song maoyi gang yanjiu 唐宋贸易港研究 [A
study of trading ports during Tang-Song times], trans. Yang Lian 杨鍊 (Taipei:
Shangwu yinshu guan, 1963), pp. 17–46.
http://www.ebook3000.com