Lan Ting-yüan

“ For the people of Fuhkien and Kuang-tung are very numerous in proportion to the area they inhabit; and as the land is not sufficient to supply their wants, some five or six out of every ten look to the sea for a livelihood. Articles paltry in our estimation acquire the value of jewels when carried across the sea to these barbarians; all the dwellers on the sea-bord send off their trifling embroidery, etc., in the foreign-going ships for sale, and receive annually from the barbarians many hundred thousand taels of silver, all of which comes into China. ”

“ Before the prohibition, a considerable quantity of rice was sent from the Philippines to Amoy. These barbarian countries produce plenty of rice and do not look to China for their supply. The merchants engaged in the foreign trade, being all men of means, would be hardly likely to risk running counter to the law; and under any circumstances, seeing they can get four or five taels per picul for conveying other goods, it is hardly likely they would accept the comparative trifle they would obtain for carrying rice, and offend against the law into the bargain. ”

“ The wife of a man, named Chêng, once came before me to complain that her husband had been driven to commit suicide. She said that he had been beadle of a certain village, and that having had some trouble in collecting taxes from a man, named Hsiao, who withheld his title-deed and refused to listen to argument, the latter, on the 13th day of the moon, had collected a number of friends and wrecked the house, beating her husband so severely that, in despair, he threw himself into the river and was drowned. ”

“ They have never dared to entertain bad intentions towards China. Annam and Southern Cochin-China are connected together, like Kuang-tung and Kuang-si; and beyond these we have Cambodia, Ligor, Chiya, Patani, and other nations to the south-west, of all of which Siam is the most important. To the extreme west there are the red-haired and western foreigners, a fierce violent lot, quite unlike the other barbarians of the western islands. Among them there are the English, the Islamists, the French, the Dutch, the Spaniards, and the Portuguese. These are all very fierce nations ”

“ Buddhist nuns are also in most cases bought up when children as a means of making a more extensive show of religion, and are carefully prevented from running away. They are not given in marriage―the desire for which is more or less implanted in every human breast, and exists even amongst prophets and sages. And thus to condemn thousands and ten thousands of human beings to the dull monotony of the cloister, granting that they strictly keep their religious vows, is more than sufficient to seriously interfere with the equilibrium of the universe. ”

“ The advantages of repealing the prohibition would be the circulation of goods and the absorption of our own bad characters; and thus the people would have the wherewithal to support their parents and rear their children. Hence it would follow that a larger revenue would be yielded by the Customs, and the country enriched by the wealth of the people. ”

“ It’s all very well to be callous when other people are concerned; but now that you stand charged with this murder and your own necks are in peril, it being my duty to commit you to prison, do you mean to tell me that you are willing to take the consequences?” The accused men then burst into tears, and implored me to save them; to which I replied, “Here is this man Chêng, who was formerly an accomplice of thieves, alarmed by my appointment to office, disappears from the scene. ”

“ In case he ceases to care about trading abroad himself, he lets his junks out to somebody else and pockets so much per annum. He is not likely to wish to sell it. Besides, the barbarian wood is much stronger than our own; in fact our merchants buy quantities of it, a mast which costs there only one or two hundred taels being here worth as much as a thousand. The barbarians build their vessels much more strongly than we do, putting a whole tree where we should only use a plank, and where we use nails of a few inches they use nails of over a foot in length. ”

“ Of the eastern nations the Japanese are the fiercest and most important. Beyond Japan there are no barbarian nations of any magnitude. Descending a little we come to Lewchow, which consists of a number of islands of different sizes extending over about two thousand li. Their watercourses all debouch on the east coast, beyond which there are no other nations. The southern barbarians are many in number. ”

“ The foreign-going junks on the other hand leave the land thousands of li behind them, and being large vessels have no fear of the wind and the waves. No pirate junks could keep up with them. Besides the pirates have a fine field among the Cheh-kiang and Canton merchant vessels; there is no need for them to direct their attention to foreign-going junks. And even if they chanced to fall in with them, their own junks being so small, they would require a ladder to get up the sides. Pirate junks carry from twenty to thirty men; these sea-going junks at the very least over a hundred men. ”

“ THE barbarians of the south can do no harm to China. The prohibition against trade should be cancelled and the people allowed to do business with them, supplying the deficiencies of the Middle Kingdom from the superabundance of the lands beyond the sea. ”

“ Besides they hope that some day the clouds will break and the sun shine out, that the prohibition will be repealed and trade go on as before; and the loss of a single one of these large junks would reduce many families to misery and ruin. The present destitute state of the sea-bord population is entirely due to the stoppage of trade. Those of them who understand marine work and are accustomed to act as sailors are unable to adapt themselves to the duties of weight-carriers and earn their living as ordinary coolies. ”

“ It is a principle that nothing should be left undone which may turn out of the smallest advantage to the State and to the people; and, similarly, that everything likely to cause the least detriment to either should be incontinently cast away. ”

“ Hitherto our foreign-going junks have never been plundered on the high seas. Pirates hang about the coast and dodge in and out of islands, seldom going farther from land than two or at most three hundred li, for as but few junks go to a greater distance from the land than that, it would only be waste of time, to say nothing of their having no anchorage at hand, if it should chance to come on to blow. ”

“ That at the present moment, with His Majesty upon the throne and the empire at peace, and when all the human race are, as it were, but one family, we should prohibit trade only with the mild and gentle foreigners of the south, reflects somewhat upon those officials who know these things and yet do not speak them. ”

“ As to selling their junks to the barbarians to carry rice out of the country, or cases of piracy committed by foreigners, such things have hitherto been quite unknown. To build a foreign-going junk in China costs from seven to eight thousand taels for a large one, from two to three thousand for a small one. How much could they get for these? A Chinese trader invests his money in a junk as a means of enriching himself ”