Expanding Possibilities 383
arrived from China. The number increased to βive in 1822, six in 1823,
seven in 1824, seven again in 1825 and ten in 1826.^120
To lure the Chinese junks, in their town plans of 1822, the colonial
authorities set aside a block of land as the residential area for the Quan-
Zhang people from Amoy.^121 In its early founding years, Singapore
reaped the beneβits of the Chinese presence. The contribution of the
Canton and Amoy junks to the Singapore trade was second only to that
of their European counterparts.^122 Because of their contribution to trade,
especially that of Amoy, it was not surprising that Singapore’s trade
surpassed that of Batavia in 1823.^123 In his book, Akira Matsuura recounts
the story of a rich merchant from Amoy, Lin Xing, who came to Singapore
in 1828 with a capital of 3,000 taels. He bought pepper, birds’ nests,
nutmeg and cloves and, in three months, had made a proβit of 80 0 taels.^124
This story highlights how quickly a proβit could be made by merchants
involved in the Amoy-Singapore trade.
John Crawfurd describes the Sino-Singapore trade as follows:
The most valuable, but not the largest, of the Chinese junks come
from the port of Amoy...; the largest come from several ports of ...
[Guangdong], —such as Canton, Changlim, and Ampo [Huangpu?];
and the smallest and least valuable from the island of Hainan....
The articles imported ... are coarse earthenware, βlooring-tiles,
umbrellas, shoes, paper, incense rods, dried fruits, confectionary,
sugar-candy, medicines, nankins [nankeen], gold thread-lace, tea,
and a great number of minor articles. The cargo of a Fokien [Fujian]
junk is sometimes worth one hundred thousand Spanish dollars:
that of a Canton junk will vary from twenty thousand to eighty
thousand.... The exports consist of a great variety of articles,—such
as the bark of two species of Rhizophora, or mangrove; a species
of Alga, ... eagle-wood, ebony, and some ordinary woods; esculent
swallows’ nests; the holothurion, or tripang; sharks’ βins, tortoise-
shell, tin, pepper, areca-nut, cloves and nutmegs, hides and horns,
opium, British iron, cottons, and woolens.^125
The great variety of items reβlects the nature of junk trade that involved
not just substantial players but also a multitude of small investors, the
- John Crawfurd, Journal of the Embassy, p. 540.
- Lim How Seng, Xingjiapo huashe yu huashang, p. 6.
- John Phipps, Practical treatise on the China and Eastern Trade, pp. 263, 281.
- Sarasin Viraphol, Tribute and Proϔit, p. 205.
- Akira Matsuura, Dongya haiyu yu Taiwan de haidao, pp. 46‒7.
- John Crawfurd, Journal of the Embassy, pp. 539‒40.