Page 348 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

quite forgotten until modern researches Portuguese, Cristavao Vieira, had letters Columbus would have seen none of that. He
brought it again to light. smuggled from jail which eventually reached might have observed the emperor from afar at a
Western Asians, particularly Persians and the Portuguese court, giving lengthy and per- few audiences, for this emperor attended all
Arabs, continued to travel to China by the cara- ceptive information about conditions that might such ceremonies, exerting all his feeble strength
van routes and by sea, right up to the time of affect future trade and diplomacy with China. to observe the weighty proprieties of his office.
Columbus, Magellan, and Vasco da Gama. The As the historian Donald Lach has noted, despite But in any relations with the king of Spain or in
extensive knowledge about the East that they his many frustrations and sufferings "... Vieira the treatment of his envoy Zhu Youtang would
had garnered also was unknown to the Euro- is fair enough to point out that the [Zhengde, have unquestioningly accepted the traditionally
peans of Columbus' time, who might have r. 1506-1521] emperor responded with charac- reasoned counsel of his ministers. Though he
learned much from it. Columbus, for example, teristic, condescending grace to the complaints enjoyed the position of an oriental despot, the
would have learned that the Mongol conquerors of his officials against the Portuguese by Hongzhi emperor was a mouse who never
had been driven out of China and supplanted by reminding them: 'These people do not know roared.
the native Ming dynasty in 1368, and that the our customs; gradually they will get to known Columbus' arrival in the West Indies had an
Chinese emperor was no longer to be addressed [sic] them.' Such sentiments were in harmony immediate and almost cataclysmic effect on the
as "Grand Khan," as in Marco Polo's day. with the compassion traditionally expected in native population. In China his presence would
Had Christopher Columbus sailed around the China from the emperor in his dealings with have made scarcely a ripple. Tact and patience
Americas (as Magellan did about thirty years 'barbarians'. " Compassion, to be sure, was might have produced opportunities to discuss
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later) and reached China, what might have hap- forthcoming, but not trade on Western terms. Sino-Spanish relations with a few officials of
pened? He is unlikely to have dealt with China middling rank. Most Chinese scholars and offi-
as an equal of Spain, and the Chinese court cials of the time would have treated him courte-
surely would have regarded as preposterous his Columbus in China ously, and some would no doubt have been
claim to represent a superior (or even an equal) Had Columbus actually met the emperor of curious to learn about far-off Europe, and might
power. He might have gained admission to the China at the end of the fifteenth century, he have recorded their conversations with him. But
New Year's reception for foreign envoys in would have encountered a singularly mild- it would have been very difficult for him to
1493 — if he had remained obsequiously respect- appearing, mediocre little man. The Hongzhi break through attitudes formed in the days of
ful, and if his captains and crews had not com- emperor, whose personal name was Zhu You- Zheng He's voyages, when dozens of heads of
mitted too flagrant atrocities on shore, and if he tang, was born in 1470 and ascended the throne state and hundreds of envoys were brought to
had, with Chinese assistance, worked out rit- in 1487. On his death in 1505 he left China to the Chinese court. Columbus would not have
ually appropriate forms of petitioning the court his erratic and impulsive son the Zhengde been seen as important in any way to the inter-
for the privilege of offering abject obeisance in emperor (r. 1506-1521), who died just after ests of China, only as another petty barbarian
the name of his uncultured, hence pitiable, Tome Pires arrived in Beijing. One eminent who was to be overwhelmingly impressed and
sovereigns. But to judge from the experience of biographer called Zhu Youtang "the most sent on his way.
the first Portuguese envoy, Tome Pires, twenty- humane" of the Ming rulers and observed that Knowing that he was an impressionable
five years later, little would have followed from this emperor apparently was the only monog- observer, we can speculate on the kinds of
that. In 1517 a few Portuguese ships from fleets amous ruler in all of China's long imperial descriptions he might have left had he traveled
based at Goa, where in the years 1507-1515 de history. Within traditional Chinese histo- down the Grand Canal from Beijing, stopping in
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Albuquerque had created the colonial base of riography the Hongzhi emperor was adjudged the great cities, wandering through the markets
Portugal's Asian commercial empire, sailed the best Ming emperor, not for any remarkable seeking luxuries to take back to Ferdinand and
from a newly won Portuguese base at Malacca, accomplishments of his reign, but because in his Isabella, watching skilled craftsmen make their
up the China coast to the Pearl River estuary relations with his scholar-officials he was so fine products, or observing the industrious
below Canton, very near modern Hong Kong. different from the other rulers of the dynasty. farmers at work in their terraced rice fields,
Attempting to intimidate the natives before He was temperate and self-restrained, sincerely orchards, and fish ponds. The wealth of China
pressing for commercial advantages, the Portu- committed to being a good ruler according to would have struck him keenly, as it had Marco
guese opened fire from their ships, then went Confucian prescriptions. He was particularly Polo two hundred years earlier. Doubtless he
ashore and behaved outrageously in the stan- respectful toward his advisors and officials, usu- would not have understood most of the refine-
dard manner of Iberian empire builders. Pires, a ally accepting their advice and striving to meet ments of elite life, the gardens and libraries, the
reasonable man, was put ashore, and after three the high standards of performance they elegant restraint in furnishings, or the intricate
years' delay at Canton was finally allowed to demanded of him. They and their kind wrote conventions of social behavior. Innumerable
proceed to Beijing, in 1520, to present his the histories that judged him; posthumously aspects of Chinese decorative arts, those gaudier
credentials from King Manuel i. There he they praised him lavishly, trying to make of him things that later Europeans avidly imitated in
waited, a guest of the state in a locked and a model they could use to curb the rash beha- the pursuit of what they called "chinoiserie,"
guarded compound, until May 1521. Then, vior of later rulers. But although he was gen- might well have taken his fancy, but the higher
because the reigning emperor had died on April erally compliant and hard-working, careful arts, especially Chinese poetry and painting,
20, he was told that no court reception would be reading of the historical record reveals that he may well have remained quite beyond his ken.
feasible and was sent back to Canton. In Canton was in fact no paragon: he was subject to petty It is also unlikely that the scholarly traditions of
he and his entourage were imprisoned by local jealousies, somewhat avaricious, subservient to China, and their manifestations in all aspects of
authorities still smarting over the destructive his constantly complaining wife and protective public and private life, would have been in any
bellicosity of the fleet that had brought Pires to of her relatives, who in time-honored fashion degree intelligible to him. A century later the
Canton four years earlier. Eventually he and abused their relationship to the throne for their Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), employ-
most of his party died in prison, but one of the own advantage. ing superb qualities of intellect and spirit

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