Sailing from China - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 120

heads east across the South China Sea to Brunei. One heads south-east ( xunsi ,
145°) around the south end of Borneo towards the Moluccas, with a later branch
veering offdowntoSurabaya at the east endofJava. Another takes a dingwu bear-
ing(185°)downtoPalembangontheeastcoastofSumatra,andfromtheregoesto
Bantam and Batavia on Java. One more route passes through the Singapore Strait
and heads north-west ( qian , 315°) up the Malacca Strait to the port of Malacca
(now Melaka), then continues on up to Aceh at the north end of Sumatra. The final
leg in the Western Sea network runs north out of Aceh into the Indian Ocean.
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Moon harbour was also the place to embark on the third sea lane out of China, the
Eastern Sea route. Zhang Xie describes the route heading out on a bing bearing at
165°. The Selden map does not label the direction of the first short segment, but
labels the main line of navigation that slips past Taiwan and runs directly to the
Philippines as a xun (135°) bearing. The cartographer takes no interest in Taiwan,
for the simple reason that none of the early history for which it is famous - Dutch
trading stations, immigration from Fujian, the rise of the Zheng family's Eastern
Calm dynasty and its suppression by the Qing dynasty - had yet happened. At this
point Taiwan was of no interest. The Eastern Sea route instead makes a beeline on
a bing course(165°)forManila.Thestringofsevennamedportsdottingthenorth-
west coast of Luzon, the largest of the Philippine Islands, suggests considerable
geographical knowledge of the area. Before the bing course gets to Manila, it joins
with a xunsi course (145°) coming from Canton, or more precisely from the Por-
tuguesecolonyofMacaodownstreamfromCantonatthemouthofthePearlRiver.
The two routes for sailing from China to the Philippines flow together onto a bing
bearing (165°) and run straight into the harbour at Manila.
Manila was the entrepot where the Spanish empire of conquest met the Ming
empire of trade, where cargoes of Chinese merchandise were swapped for chests
of American silver. There is no indication on the Selden map that Manila is a
European city, but the naming of the Parian, the ghetto to which the Spanish con-
signed Chinese residents, across the river from Manila indicates an awareness that
this was an entrepot where Chinese went to trade but had to live apart. A place-
name just to the south of Manila marks the entrance to what appears to be Verde
Island Passage, which runs along the southern side of Luzon. Follow that passage
eastwards through the San Bernardino Strait and you reach the Pacific Ocean. The
Selden cartographer draws no line through the strait - he must have lacked the