Page 102 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

CHINA

them easily portable, and their cheapness offered a

further inducement. Ibn Batuta, describing how

porcelain so-called was sent from China to

India, and how it passed from country to country

until it reached Morocco, says that in China it

commanded about the same price as earthenware in

Arabia. Much valuable information about the ex-

port trade from China in the thirteenth century is

given by Chao Jukua, an author to whose works Dr.
HeHirth has been the first to call attention.
held

the post of inspector of foreign trade and shipping in
the maritime province of Fuhkien, about the year

1 2 20, and in that capacity he compiled a work called

"Annals of the various Districts" (chu-fan-chih^
which was happily embodied in the encyclopedia of
the Ming Emperor Yung-lo (14031425), and thus

preserved to later generations. In the days of this

author, the city of Ch'uan-chou-fu in Fuhkien was

the principal mart of China's foreign commerce.

Thence the products of the Kingdom were exported

to Borneo, to Cochin-China, to Java, to Sumatra, to

Malabar, to Zanzibar, to Persia, to Japan, to Mecca,

to Ceylon, to India, and to various other places. The

nearest market was Borneo. Junks from Ch'uan-

chou-fu proceeded direct to Bruni, on the north-west
coast of that island, then a city of more than ten

thousand inhabitants, its ruler attended by a numer-

ous suite, and its safety guaranteed by soldiers wearing

copper armour, with a fleet of over a hundred ves-

sels. The arrival of a foreign ship was an occasion
of much ceremony at Bruni. The king visited the

ship, reaching it by a gangway covered with silk bro-
cade, and an interchange of costly civilities took place
during about a month before the question of trade

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