Page 342 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

private trader. Official China did not know or were mostly for magic and geomancy. Not until something more like a science. Up to the time of
care much about that world of commercial some time between the ninth and eleventh cen- Columbus Chinese navigational techniques sig-
activity. Despite heavy reliance on income from turies A.D., though still a century or two before nificantly surpassed those of their Asian
tariffs during the Song dynasty (960-1279), the Arabs or Europeans, did the Chinese take competitors and of the Europeans (who had not
foreign trade, especially by sea, though encour- their magnetic compass aboard ships and use it yet begun to enter Asian waters).
aged at the ports where customs tariffs were for navigating. Refinements soon followed. A
collected, was neither sponsored nor protected text of 1088 notes that there is a measurable and
by China's government, as it was in Europe. Nor constant declination of a few degrees to the NAVAL ARCHITECTURE. Various aspects of
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did the Chinese scholar-officials investigate it or east. The earth's magnetic variation was not Chinese ship construction were markedly dis-
write much about it. Nonetheless scholars have yet known in the West; by some accounts Co- tinct from European practice. Most remarkable,
in recent decades reconstructed much of the lumbus may have discovered it, as noted in his probably, was the Chinese method, used since
history of Chinese participation in private mari- log for September 13, during his voyage of the second century, of building hulls divided
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time commerce, the flourishing arena in which 1492. The compass enabled the sea captain to into water-tight compartments, a technique not
Chinese shipbuilders and navigators made steer his ship when fog and clouds interfered adopted in the West until the eighteenth cen-
important contributions to the fund of nautical with visual navigation. But when skies were tury. Such a ship was much less apt to sink if its
technology shared by the Asian world. 10 clear, the Chinese also had recourse to star hull was damaged; if the damage could be con-
The constant interchange among seafaring charts, to sea charts identifying coasts and fined to one or two of the separate compart-
people in Asia did not, however, lead to entirely islands, and to methods for measuring the speed ments, cargo could be salvaged from the
uniform technologies and operating modes. of sea currents. Printed manuals with charts and affected parts of the hull and emergency repairs
Some things the Chinese did differently at sea, compass bearings began to become available by made while still at sea. Less dramatically, to
mostly innovative practices that others did not the thirteenth century. meet the demands of a Chinese consumer
quickly copy. From the point of view of a It should be noted that printing, using wood- market which valued freshness of foods, one
developing worldwide nautical science, their block technology, arose in China in the seventh compartment of a fishing boat could be filled
contributions to marine navigation, to naval and eighth centuries, and movable-type technol- with sea water in which the catch could be kept
architecture, and to sailing ship propulsion ogy was developed in the mid-eleventh century. alive until the ship reached port.
interest us most directly. Because of the cumbersome nature of the A feature of ship design crucial for navigation
Chinese script, printing with movable type, or is the sternpost rudder, likewise a Chinese
typography, did not compete strongly with invention.This steering device, mounted at the
NAVIGATION. The discovery in China of woodblock printing for centuries and did not outside rear of the hull, could be lowered or
magnetism goes back to the first millennium supersede it until the late nineteenth or early raised according to water depth, and on large
B.C. , and long before Columbus the Chinese had twentieth century. Nonetheless books were ships could be turned by pulleys and ropes from
used a magnetic compass, which they called a plentiful and inexpensive in China from the the deck. The sternpost rudder greatly assisted
"south-pointing needle" because Chinese geo- tenth and eleventh centuries, and contributed steering through narrow channels, crowded har-
mancy ascribed salubriousness to the southern greatly to China's relative advantage in the bors, and river rapids. Chinese graves dating to
direction. This took the form of a magnetized accumulation and spread of knowledge. the first century A.D., about the time the mag-
piece of iron mounted on a strip of wood, float- It is difficult to separate the Chinese from the netic compass was invented, have yielded clay
ed in a small basin so that it could freely Arab and Persian contributions to some of these ship models showing the sternpost rudder; it
revolve, or of a magnetized needle suspended by aspects of nautical technology. Through con- also appears in many paintings and was named
a thread. Simple forms of the magnetic compass stant extension and refinement marine naviga- in literary sources of the following centuries.
are two thousand years old, but its early uses tion in Asia was transformed from an art to Neither invention was known in Europe until a

fig. 5. Zhang Zeduan (act. beginning of izth century). Qing-ming Shang He Tu (Spring Festival on the River). From a reproduction in the author's collection.

TOWARD CATHAY 34!