Commodity and Market 21
Indeed, the issues about when the Chinese began to participate in
the outbound long-distance shipping trade and whether the “Tang bo”
mentioned in Chinese texts were owned by the Chinese still remains a bit
murky. The limited sources available have presented researchers with a
puzzle. Often they have to make deductions from circumstantial evidence.
To tackle these questions, it is proposed to put the study into
perspective by taking another look into the long development of East
Asian long-distance shipping trade. First and foremost, it is undeniable
that the Chinese involvement in maritime trade in one way or another
was characterized by a continuous process that commenced over 2,000
years ago during which their sailors were among the earliest goods-
carriers along China’s southeast coast and the northern stretch of the
Vietnam coast.^69 By the third century, a mission sent to the Nanhai
from the Kingdom of Wu reached as far as the Gulf of Siam and Chinese
ship(s) could have been used for this purpose. Although no information
exists about Chinese involvement in the regular long-haul shipping
between Java and Guangzhou from the βifth century, the ship that the
Liu Song Emperor intended to send to fetch Gunavarman from Java was
probably a Chinese ship. Let us make a bold assumption that the ship
was likely to have been sailed by both Chinese and Nanhai seamen. Even
if this proposition is true, one has to concede that Chinese shipping in
the Nanhai would have been a rare occurrence. At this point in time,
however, it is good to recall that quite a number of Chinese Buddhist
pilgrims in transit to India arrived in Java on board foreign ships. This
seems a sure sign that undertaking a journey overseas from China had
become less uncommon. Very likely Chinese traders and some migrants
would have been among the travelers venturing abroad. During the Tang
period, evidence shows that foreign vessels were numerous in the port
of Guangzhou, making them the most convenient transport on which the
Chinese could travel to the Nanhai or the Indian Ocean. There were also
sizeable Persian and Arab merchant communities in the coastal cities
during this time. Gradually a number of the sojourners chose to take up
- In publications in China, scholars generally believe that, right from the mission
to India at the beginning of the Christian era, Chinese and their ships had been
sailing along the “maritime silk road”. See for example, Feng Chengjun 冯承钧,
Zhongguo nanyang jiaotong shi 中国南洋交通史 [A history of communications
between China and the Nanyang] (Hong Kong: Taiping shuju, 1963), part 1;
Zhongguo haijiang tong shi 中国海疆通史 [A general history of China’s maritime
frontiers], ed. Zhang Wei 张炜 and Fang Kun 方堃 (Zhengzhou: Zhongguo guji
chubanshe), pp. 73–7, 134–5; and Zhongguo haiyangxue shi 中国海洋学史
[History of Oceanography in China], ed. Xu Hongru 徐鸿儒 (Shandong jiaoyu
chubanshe, 2004), Chapters 3–7.