#tributary system

Today the mouth of the Huai River no longer exists as a single large entity, but the mouth of the Yangtse, including the port of Shanghai, is the great front door of China and the most important entrance and exit for Chinese foreign trade. The roles of the lower Yangtse and Huai Rivers in China's foreign intercourse in earlier periods are not so well known, but, because of their excellent geographic locations and of the present importance of the former, they are certainly worthy of study. This brief inquiry is merely a beginning in this direction and is limited, for the most part, to the eighth and ninth centuries, the earliest period for which we have a considerable body of evidence.

Let us consider first the Arab-Persian trade in China and the light it throws on our problem. There is apparently no known reference to the use of the lower Huai River by merchants from southern or western Asia. This is only natural, for, coming from the south as they did, they could enter the Grand Canal system long before they reached the mouth of the Huai. Their use of the lower Yangtse is a different matter. There is clear and ample evidence that Yang-chou, the great emporium on the Grand Canal some fifteen kilometers north of its junction with the Yangtse River, was known to Arab-Persian traders during the T'ang dynasty and was one of their major trade centers in China. In the middle of the ninth century Ibn Khordadbeh knew it under its alternate name of Chiang-tu (Kantou),2 and a Chinese text indicates that in the year 760 several thousand Arab and Persian traders were killed in a local disturbance at Yang-chou.3 Our best evidence that at least some of these foreign traders had come there by sea-going vessels, and therefore presumably by the lower Yangtse, is found in a Chinese Imperial ordinance of the year 834, which states, " To the foreigners living at Ling-nan, Fu-chien and Yang-chou, the viceroys of these provinces should offer consolations, and except the already fixed anchorageduties, the court-purchase and the regular presents, no additional taxes should be inflicted on them, allowing them to engage freely in their trade." 4 Furthermore, during the Sung dynasty, in the year 1146, a shih-po-wu (customs office) was established at Chiang-yin on the south bank of the Yangtse some 135 kilometers airline above Shanghai.5

This scattered evidence proves that the lower Yangtse was used by the traders from southern and western Asia as a route into China, at least intermittently if not continuously, during the T'ang and Sung dynasties. Unfortunately, there is not sufficient clear evidence to allow us to evaluate accurately the relative importance and use of this route. However, the paucity of references to it, the absence of accounts of merchants who used it, and the fact that Chiang-yin was one of the least important of the nine ports open to this trade in Sung times 6 all suggest that this route was of relatively little significance in the Arab-Persian trade.

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Early Japanese embassies to the Sui and T'ang courts skirted the west coast of Korea and then crossed to Shantung, landing usually on the northern side of the peninsula in the neighborhood of Teng-chou or Lai-chou, but, commencing with the embassy of 702, they began to cross directly from western Japan to the ports of central China.7 Several Japanese scholars who have studied this so-called southern route have not hesitated to mark it on maps as passing up the Yangtse River to Yang-chou.8 This, if true, would of course prove that the Yangtse route was of great importance and was probably part of the main route between China and Japan in the eighth and ninth centuries.

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This southern route was much shorter and was more convenient, because it connected with the Grand Canal system, but the long open sea voyage it entailed made it far more hazardous than the northern route. Only very sound reasons could have persuaded the Japanese to adopt it in place of the safer route via Korea and Shantung. *The chief reason seems to have been fear of the Korean state of Silla, Japan's traditional enemy among the early Korean states, after Silla had crushed and annexed the other two Korean states, Paekche in 663 and Koguryo in 668. The embassy which set sail in 669 is believed to have gone by the northern route, but all later regular embassies chose the dangerous southern route, and as late as 839 we find the members of the last Japanese embassy to T'ang China obviously afraid to return by way of Silla. (Cf. Junreiki, year 839, moon 4, day 2. All references below to books chronologically arranged will be, as here, by year, moon, and day.)

Conclusive proof of the chief reason for the shift of the routes is afforded by the section on Japan (ch. 2920) in the Hsin T'ang shu, where, after mention of an embassy from Japan, apparently that of 752, it is stated, " Silla blocked the sea route, but (the Japanese) changed and went by Ming-(chou) and Yfleh-chou to come to court and pay tribute." Yiieh-chou is the modern Shao-hsing on the south side of Hang-chou Bay.

The one exception among the Japanese embassies of the eighth and ninth centuries was that which left for China in 759 by a northern route, but this was not a real embassy, having been sent merely to search for FuJJIWARA Kiyokawa, the Ambassador dispatched to China in 7592 (cf. Shoku Nihongi 759/1/30). It does not seem to have gone by the usual northern route but by the " Po-hai route " (op. cit., 761/8/12)). This presumably means that it went up the east coast of Korea and then across Manchuria to China (cf. Tsuji Zennosuke, Zotei kaigai katsfL shiwa [Tokyo 19331 and ASHIDA Korehito, Heij6 Heian jidai Nihonkai kaij3 k6tsfiro no gaikan, Rekishi chini, 57.378-408). Some of the party returned from Po-hai the same year (Shoku Nihongi 759/10/18), but the leader returned from China in 761 by the southern route (op. cit. 761/8/12).