No major seaport cities would emerge on the Chinese coast to challenge the
cultural and political authority of the traditional capitals until modern times.
Earlier, the only possible such contender was Guangzhou (Canton), and that
was simply too remote from the nation’s political heartland to exercise any kind
of threat to the existing order.
China lacks an enclosed sea, a Mediterranean or a Baltic, in which seamen
might have safely practiced the arts of salt-water sailing. The East China Sea is
temperate and was generally kind to sailing ships, except perhaps during typhoon
season, but the Taiwan Strait is known to be one of the most dangerous stretches
of water in the world. The island of Taiwan, slow to become part of mainstream
Chinese culture, has a long coastline, but the coast is characterized by treacherous
shoals and has few safe anchorages.
The pattern of winds and currents discouraged Chinese navigators from
venturing very far eastward out into the Pacific. Like other mariners operating
under sail, the Chinese at once feared the wind and dreaded the lack of
it. Typhoons raged from June to November. But one sailor recalled being
‘‘becalmed in the ocean for seventeen days and the ship did not move a foot or
an inch; the water was smooth as a mirror.’’
Nearby landmasses do not shelter the China seas from the open Pacific.
China’s oceanic neighbors, like Japan or the Philippines, are archipelagic. China
also lacked nearby overseas trading partners. The nearest Japanese ports were
more than five hundred miles away; Luzon was equally remote and, like nearby
Taiwan, remained undeveloped.
The peasant farmer spearheaded Chinese expansion. He looked for new lands
to cultivate in China’s slow, steady southward march into the Yangzi valley and
beyond. The push of nomad pressure on the northern and northwestern frontiers
and the pull of opportunity offered by the fertile, amply watered, undeveloped,
and underpopulated lands of the south combined, motivating the farmer to
move in that direction.
The incorporation of southern territories expanded the range of crops for the
Chinese farmer. Rice, demanding much water, could supplement the millet and
wheat of the north China plains. Silk, reliant upon mulberry leaf to feed the
silkworm; tea, grown on sunny hillsides; and porcelain, fired from the rich clays
of the south, furnished valuable products for home consumption as well as for
export.
Moreover, north China produced no export goods like tea, silk, or porcelain,
those luxuries that would come to be so identified with China and so coveted
by foreigners. These would be primarily of south Chinese origin and
would become important as the south became an integral part of the Chinese
world.
An enlarged China enjoyed a variety oftopography, climates, and soils that
made possible a wide range of products and relative economic self-sufficiency.
Imperial China and the Sea 23