Digital Humanities

Here’s a question I can’t get out of my head: A city famous as the starting point of the Maritime Silk Road — was it really a port, or was it a fortress all along? I spent three days reading through the Wanli Quanzhou Prefecture Chronicle: Military Defense Volume and the Qianlong Quanzhou Prefecture Chronicle cover to cover. And I found something that sent a chill down my spine: Every tael of silver that flowed through Quanzhou’s harbor had at least one beacon tower watching over it. ...

Geographical Connections Specific locations mentioned in this article include: Quanzhou Prefecture, Anxi (Tea Country), Jinjiang (Fruit Region), Nan’an, Hui’an, Nanyang (Southeast Asia), Luzon, Zaiton Port, Dehua, and Yongchun. I. The Green Code of Zaiton 1602. Ming dynasty officials in Quanzhou sat down to compile a list. They sorted everything the prefecture produced into seven categories: grains, vegetables, fruits, flowers, medicines, flora, and fauna. Why seven? Because Quanzhou sits at a subtropical crossroads where mountain meets sea. Northern species collide with southern ones. Without categories, you’d lose count. Under those seven headings, hundreds of entries — each one a data point, each one a coordinate. ...

Geographical Connections Specific locations mentioned in this article include: Quanzhou Prefecture, Jinjiang, Nan’an, Tong’an, Anxi, Yongchun, Dehua, Hui’an, Fengzhou (Ancient Prefecture site), Licheng District (Old City core), Nanyang (Southeast Asia), Luzon, and Malacca. I. 618 AD: Where It All Began Here’s a wild thought: the way you say the word “eat” in Quanzhou today is closer to how people said it in Sui dynasty China than your Mandarin textbook. Quanzhou dialect didn’t just happen. It has coordinates. ...

Geographical coordinates: Quanzhou Prefecture, Jiuri Mountain, Fengzhou, Zaiton Port, Houzhu Harbor, Yanfu Temple, Zhaohui Temple Have you ever wondered how ocean-going fleets decided when to depart in an age before satellites and weather radar? They used a mountain. Jiuri Mountain, a small peak west of Quanzhou. On its cliffs are carved 78 inscriptions. Not poems. Records of a Song-Yuan dynasty state institution: wind-praying. Every winter-spring transition, the Prefect of Quanzhou led customs officials up Jiuri Mountain. They prayed to the sea god and waited for the monsoon. When the wind turned, hundreds of ships weighed anchor simultaneously, heading for the South Seas, India, and Arabia. ...

Geographical coordinates: Quanzhou Prefecture, Jinjiang Basin, Luoyang River, Puji Weir, Li-li Weir, Yinxiao Weir, Hui’an, Nan’an, Jinjiang Have you ever wondered if the secret to a port city’s prosperity is hidden in a rice field miles away? I was flipping through the Quanzhou Prefecture Chronicles when one number stopped me cold: over 240. That’s how many ancient weirs and ponds dot the Quanzhou landscape. Not 24. Over 240. Each one a miniature water management hub. ...

Geographical Connections Specific locations mentioned in this article include: Quanzhou Prefecture, Licheng District (Old City), Zhongshan Road, Kaiyuan Temple, Confucian Temple, Tianhou Temple, Qingjing Mosque, Cai Family Ancient Dwellings (Guanqiao), Luoyang Bridge, Anping Bridge, and Nan’an. Have you ever thought about how a city’s face grows out of a pile of bricks and stones? I was flipping through the Quanzhou Architectural Records when one number stopped me cold: 12 years. That’s how long it took to build the Twin Pagodas. Not a building — a pair of stone towers, one 48 meters high, held together with nothing but mortise-and-tenon joints. No steel, no concrete. And it survived an 8-magnitude earthquake during the Ming Dynasty. ...

A friend of mine works in digital heritage preservation. A while back, he told me something that stopped me cold. He said: “Crack open a Ming dynasty local gazetteer. You’ll see more of Quanzhou in one afternoon than in three days of walking the old city.” I called bullshit. He said: go read the Wanli Quanzhou Prefecture Gazetteer. So I did. Not one volume. Thirty-three. From the Ming-era Wanli Gazetteer, through the Qing-era Qianlong Gazetteer, all the way to the modern Quanzhou City Chronicles series — administration, customs, religion, overseas Chinese, dialect, agriculture, education, water conservancy. One by one. ...