Military History

One number kept spinning in my head long after I closed the Wanli Zhangzhou Fu Zhi at one in the morning. 2,500 zhang. That’s not just the length of a wall. That’s a nine-kilometer iron-clad defensive line. In the Ming Dynasty, Zhangzhou’s prefectural city was far larger and more sophisticated than any casual image of a “small southern Fujian town” would suggest. It wasn’t a city with a wall around it. It was a military machine wrapped in brick and stone. ...

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. ...