Sailing from China - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 121

navigational data to do so - but he does insert a short note at the point where the
passage opens out to the ocean: 'Shapeshifting foreigners go via this anchorage
to and from Luzon.' This was the point at which the Manila galleons headed out
into open sea to make the trans-Pacific crossing for Acapulco. These 'shapeshift-
ing foreigners' have to be Spaniards. The term 'shapeshifter' ( huaren ) is one I had
never encountered in a Ming source before. The place to find it is in a Han-dyn-
asty collection of ancient myths and tales known as The Writings of Master Lie ,
which includes a story about people who come to China from a 'country far to
the west' and whose powers to transform themselves defy the physical limits of
this world. When strange-looking Europeans first arrived in the waters around the
Ming dynasty early in the sixteenth century and said they were from the far west,
people reached back into those old tales to find them a name. * The cartographer
did not know enough about sailing through the archipelago to plot the route, but
he did know that this was the exit point for ships heading to the Americas, and the
entrance for the galleons that arrived annually laden with Peruvian silver to buy
Chinese goods in Manila. We know it now as the channel connecting the Chinese
and European economies in the seventeenth century. Did he? Possibly.
Outside the mouth of Verde Island Passage, the routes divide. The western
strand heads straight to Brunei, on the north-west coast of Borneo. From Brunei
it veers onto a shengeng bearing (250°) to a pair of islands off the west corner of
Borneo, then turns due west and shoots across the bottom of the South China Sea
to the Malay Peninsula. For Zhang Xie, Brunei marks the end of the Eastern Sea
route. The Selden cartographer, however, turns Brunei into one of several points
where the Eastern and Western Sea routes connect.
The other strand of the Eastern Sea route south of Manila takes a south-easterly
course. Without either compass bearings or identifiable place-names, it is difficult
at first to figure out where the cartographer is sending his ships. Nor do the shapes
of the islands betray the reality they might be standing in for. The only name we
can identify with confidence among the scattering of east-tending islands south of
Luzon is Sulu. The Sulu Archipelago is still called that today, although it sits on
the same degree of longitude as Manila, due south rather than way off to the east,
which is where the Selden map has it. This is clearly not a part of the world with
which our cartographer is familiar. What he knows is that there is a nautical route
connecting Manila to Sulu, not where Sulu itself is located. In fact, his line doesn't
quite get to Sulu but halts at the next port to the west, as though uncertain exactly
how these places connect. His pen has wandered into terra incognita.