Page 129 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780
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CHAPTER 3 Enamelled Porcelain Consumption in Eighteenth-century China
3.4.3. Association with ’Foreign Goods’
The third value of enamelled porcelain was the association with xiyang (foreign, 西
洋). The term xiyang, with its foreign or European connotation, denoted scarcity and
meant something superior and tasteful. Because of trade with Europe, eighteenth
century China was increasingly associated with novel adaptations of Western
decorative techniques and ideas, which found that the Qing court was an extreme
example. Foreign missionaries and ships arrived and brought various kinds of exotic
objects to the court, enamelled glass, enamelled coppers, clocks wine and other
objects.
Chinese consumers of the seventeenth century were already familiar with foreign
goods because of the trade between China and Southeast Asia. As Zheng Yangwen
pointed out, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, goods from Southeast
31
Asia already circulated in China, as observed by contemporary Chinese scholars.
When it comes to the eighteenth century, along with the arrival of Europeans and the
East India Companies, goods imported from Europe increased both in variety and in
quantity. According to contemporary customs records, textiles, garments, food,
utensils of various materials, and household items and some other miscellaneous items
32
were imported via Canton.
As foreign trade continued through Canton Customs, foreign goods emerged as a
special category and a specialised commerce of their own by the eighteenth century,
31 For example, the work Dong xi yang kao, [an examination of the east and west oceans] written
by the late Ming scholar Zhang xie (1574-1640), examined trade and profit in the Fujian area
during the period, cited in Zheng Yanwen, China on the Sea: How the Maritime World Shaped
Modern China (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2012), p.213.
32 Liang Tingnan, Yue Haiguan Zhi, vol. 9, pp.621– 47.
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