Page 186 - Vol_2_Archaeology of Manila Galleon Seaport Trade

8 The Kraak Porcelains Discovered from Taiwan … 157

(Cheng Ching) sent merchantmen to many ports buying shipbuilding materials and brought
them back to Taiwan. He built seagoing ships and bird ships, and loaded them with white
sugar, deer skin and so on. In order to enrich the country, he sailed up to Japan trading for
bronze canons, Japanese swords, armors and casting Yun-li currency (""!), down to
Siam (Thailand), Cochi (central Vietnam) and Tongking (northern Vietnam) for business.
Hence, Taiwan became prosperous, and its farmlands and markets were even better than
those of the inland of China. (Chiang 1951: 237)
After the middle of the seventeenth century, due to chaos of civil war and the
overthrow of the Ming government, the exportation of Chinese ceramics suffered to
a certain degree. Up to the early 1660’s, the condition became even worse, because
the Qing court carried out great coast evacuation campaigns and forbade any
maritime activity, intending to break the Cheng’s economic supply from mainland
China. Under this condition, the ceramic industry at Hizen (!") in Kyushu
swiftly developed and replaced part of the market that Chinese ceramics occupied
before. As Cheng, Cheng-Kung’s maritime trade group had conducted business
with Japan for a long time, they surely took Hizen wares as important goods in such
a situation, therefore the porcelains made in Japan started to be seen in the transit
trade ceramics in Taiwan. Regarding Cheng’s transit trade of Hizen wares in this
period, historical records had some de!nite information. For example, the branch of
the Dutch V.O.C. in Siam reported in 1664:
A Chinese-owned junk sailing from Japan was captured with 3090 bundles of Japanese
porcelain, and 1 case and 1 small straw bundle with Japanese tea-cup. The master of this
junk must have been a “long haired” Chinese, a Coxinder, distinguished from the “shorn”
Chinese who had submitted to the Manchu-regime… That Coxinder junks were regard as
enemies of the company and would never have a Company passport need hardly be stressed
here. (Volker 1971: 206)
Furthermore, the records of Spanish customs from the Philippines also revealed
that the Chinese junks transshipped porcelains (obviously including Japanese
plates) from Taiwan to Manila between 1664 and 1684 (Table 8.1).

Table 8.1 The type and quantity of ceramics transported by ships from Taiwan to Manila in the
records of Spanish customs between 1664 and 1684
Date of arrival Type and quantity of Date of Quantity and type of
ceramics arrival ceramics
April 18. Teapots Jan. 8. 1681 4500 pieces of !ne dishes
1665 and
7500 pieces of small bowls
April 2. 1666 Japanese dishes Apr. 15. 1682 20 bundles of big bowls
April 5. 1668 Dishes Apr. 11. 1683 1800 pieces of !ne dishes
April 19. Bowls Jan. 31. 1684 500 pieces of bowls
1672
Mar. 4. 1684 2000 pieces of soup bowls
*
Quote from Feng (2003), Table 11