Digging for Gold: The Merchants of Australia

“Fuck, this situation is really like a rollercoaster.” Xiao Zishan muttered.

“The road to riches is paved by landmines.” Wang Luobin said. He still had his hands casually in his pockets. But Xiao Zishan knew that he was holding the taser in his pocket in a deathgrip.

“What are you guys talking about? Keep calm.” Wen Desi said, with a little bit of cold sweat on his own brow.

The original plan had fallen apart immediately. The moment Wen Desi shoved the wormhole portal back into his bag, the three of them had been jumped upon by dogs. Fortunately, Wang Luobin had been holding onto the taser, and, sensing the rush of wind behind them, turned and tased the first dog. The rest of the dogs quickly retreated, and kept a cautious distance after that.

Yet the sound of the scuffle and barking of dogs had alarmed everyone in the home. Without time to think about their next steps, seven or eight people had burst into the courtyard. They were dressed in green guard clothes and brandished spears and staves. One of them even had an old pistol in his hand, with the muzzle pointed directly at the three hapless time travellers.

The first people they had met on this journey were obviously not very friendly. This experience of being held at gunpoint was a first for the three otakus. Usually, when they discussed ancient firearms, they would look down on the bird guns^[1] of the Ming dynasty for their lack of refinement, range, and power. However, with less than twenty paces between them, regardless of how bad these firearms were, their heads would explode. They were so panicked that they didn’t know what to do, and the original opening speech Wen Desi had thought of went right out the window.

Luckily, the house guards who saw the current state of the dogs were also scared of these strangers, and the two sides were caught in a tense standoff. Wen Desi wanted to throw out a smoke bomb, but, thinking of their future dreams to build a grand new society in China, he gathered his courage. He retrieved the mirror powder box and threw it over, proclaiming in the meanwhile that they meant no harm in Cantonese.

What they didn’t expect was that the powder box would be so useful. Soon, the three of them found themselves seated as honoured guests.

“Hey Luobin, do you think this could be a trap? A trick to get us arrested?” Xiao Zishan asked. He looked around the room furtively. They found themselves inside a real Ming Dynasty building. Under them was real Ming Dynasty furniture; any random chair or stool could be sold for a fortune back home. But at this moment, none of the three had the heart to appreciate this fact.

“If they really wanted to arrest us, they could’ve, in the backyard…”

“By the way, everyone should be careful. Don’t touch the tea.” Wen Desi whispered to the others. “Look at the household guards, I think their master must be engaged in smuggling. Such people are usually black-hearted and ruthless, we should be on the lookout for their tricks.”

“Mmmm, got it.”

“Zishan, in a bit I’m going to throw out a smoke bomb. You should help me quickly get the wormhole out. Let’s get out of here.”

“Okay.”

While they were discussing in a low voice they saw seven or eight guards escort a man wearing hanfu into the room. The three travellers had calmed down a little, and their curiosity was now soaring—this was a genuine person of the Great Ming! Three pairs of eyes looked at the clean and well-kept middle-aged man.

Master Gao, after opening the powder box, was dumbfounded. Inside it was a priceless crystal mirror. Over his 20 years smuggling foreign goods he had only seen such crystal mirrors a handful of times, and although those were larger in size, their clarity and brightness was nowhere close to one in his hands now.

He had heard from Portuguese seafarers that this crystal mirror was only produced in a single place in the entire Occident: in a workshop on an island, guarded under tight security and made using a secret formula. It was rare to see such mirrors in Europe, let alone here in far-flung Guangzhou city.

These three Japanese had some really deep pockets. Could they be emissaries of some famous noble in Japan? Master Gao thought. Then again, the Japanese were themselves still short of daily necessities, and almost all their goods still needed to be imported by ship; how could they have such a rare treasure?

But since the other party actively showed goodwill by offering such an invaluable item, Master Gao felt obliged to meet them. He could almost taste the silver dangling in the air. He was still careful to bring his best guards with him however.

Upon walking in and setting sight on the three intruders, Master Gao was astounded to see that they were not Japanese! There were mostly only five ethnicities that stayed in Guangzhou, including Japanese. Consequently, he had met plenty of Japanese people, and these three did have the topknot haircut that the Japanese usually had.^[2] One of the three had his hair shaved very short, almost like he was imitating a monk, while the two had theirs a little longer. Their clothing was also quite strange - the hems of their Chinese gown didn’t even reach their knees…This type of dress definitely did not belong to the Japanese. However, it was also not the style of the Europeans.

Additionally, the three people were tall, completely unlike the Japanese^[3]. All of them were more than five chi, five cun^[4] tall, and one was even more than 6 chi.^[5] And as for their appearance, they had white skin, and uncalloused hands and feet. Obviously then, these were people who lived like royalty.

Looking at their expressions, although there were signs of some nerves, there was not a shred of humility or inferiority. In fact, their actions carried an aura of surety and confidence. Although Master Gao had been in the business world for many years, and could be counted as a fairly keen-sighted person, he couldn’t see through these people.

What was puzzling to Master Gao was that the gaze the three had towards him was extremely odd, and he couldn’t help but take a step back.

On the other side, as Xiao Zishan and his friends looked on as the colour of the middle-aged man’s face changed, they carried their own doubts. This person looked to be about fifty years old, wearing a pingding hat^[6] and silk outer garment. His appearance was prim and tidy, with a faint wisp of beard on his chin and a little fat hanging from his face. He stood in sharp contrast to the dark and skinny servants around him.

Master Gao bowed his hands towards Wen Desi. “May I ask, what is the name of this good sir?”^[7]

Wen Desi was naturally recognised by Master Gao as the leader of the group because of the lower hemline on his windbreaker, as well as because of its superior satin-like texture. It appeared markedly different from the rough and short cotton clothes of the other two.

Hearing this, Wen Desi realised that what he was speaking was not Cantonese, but rather something that sounded closer to a modern Nanjing accent.^[8] So, he replied in Mandarin: “We hail from a distant land across the sea, and, unacquainted with these roads, lost our way in the darkness. May I ask what this place is?”^[9]

Although Master Gao didn’t quite understand every word, he captured a few phrases, and his intuition told him that these people truly didn’t harbour any malice. He slowly asked again: “Where do you good sirs come from?”

Since they could now communicate some basic words, the two sides even wrote down their names and exchanged them. Wen Desi then told the backstory that the three had already pre-discussed.

“Our ancestors were Chinese people who had fled overseas after the Battle of Yashan.^[10] They built a home in Brunei,^[11] but the local lords did not want to see us Han people rise up in power. After much struggle and persecution, we could only flee ever further south, until we came to the far distant lands of Australia.^[12] Since then more than two centuries have passed.”

Master Gao thought for a moment and said. “So…you are not Japanese?”

”We are people of Huaxia, how could we be Japanese?!” Wang Luobin interjected.

Master Gao raised his eyebrows. These foreigners didn’t even have a sense of common courtesy: even a subordinate dared to speak over the masters.

“We are not Japanese.” Wen Desi said, seeing that this Ming dynasty man had no objections to this. Emboldened, he went on to talk about how Australia was originally a barbaric land with only a small population of natives. Their ancestors had pioneered a new and prosperous land. Yet, successive generations all cherished a hope to one day visit their old homeland, and thus, sent a few of them to take a look and sell some goods.

In fact, there were a lot of loopholes in this story. Like: how did they enter the city, where was their ship moored, etc. But, just as Wen Desi had predicted, as long as you stick to a consistent story it’ll all work out.

Master Gao nodded along as he listened. Brunei, he knew a lot about. Every year there would be several yangchuan^[13] that went there. Although he had never heard of this particular story about Song Dynasty people fleeing to a place known as Australia, he was too lazy to further investigate it. It was a matter hundreds of years in the past - who could possibly figure that out! Either way, he wasn’t interested in either Brunei or Australia.

“...We were not sure of the way, and we accidentally entered your home and startled everyone. We ask for your forgiveness.” Wen Desi bowed. “We have come from afar. May we ask where this is?”

“That’s easy to answer,” said Master Gao. To travel in the depths of night as a small group of three, laden with such precious treasures? These people must not be simple. He would take their stories with a grain of salt. “This is Nanhai County, within the Guangzhou prefecture of the Great Ming.”

Wen Desi hurriedly followed up: “Would you know what year, month and day it is?”

Master Gao was speechless for a moment, before he replied: “The second month of the seventh year of Tianqi.”^[14]

[TN]

The way that everyone from the Ming-side of the world speaks is very different from the modern vernacular that Xiao Zishan and our protagonists use. I have sort of tried to render it in an archaic/old-fashioned tone, but I’m honestly not 100% happy with how it turned out. If you have any suggestions for improvement let me know.

---

1. ‘Bird gun’ is an umbrella term encompassing both matchlock and flintlock guns during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Designs were similar to muskets/arquebuses of the same time period in the west. ↩︎

2. Referring to chonmage, traditional topknot haircut worn by men in the Edo period. Usually associated with samurai and now with sumo wrestlers. It’s pretty distinct. Here we are in the early Edo period. ↩︎

3. So apparently the Ming-era impression of the Japanese is that they’re all dwarves. ↩︎

4. 5 foot 5 inch, but in Chinese feet and inches. ↩︎

5. I have no idea how Master Gao immediately knows their exact height. Maybe he has a ruler marked on the wall behind our guests? ↩︎

6. Sifang Pingding Jin. A square, soft hat usually worn by Confucian scholars and hermits in the Ming dynasty. ↩︎

7. The conversation here uses old-sounding vernacular Chinese, I’m going to try rendering it in ‘old fashioned’ english to emulate the tone. ↩︎

8. You can listen to the differences online if you want. I won’t be trying to emulate the differences in English. ↩︎

9. In all the ‘local’ conversations a lot of fairly archaic Chinese is used. I suppose a fairly good equivalent would be to use Shakespearean English in the translation (as it's roughly the same ~400 years or so distance), but… I’m not anywhere near good enough at early modern English to do that; one rodeo of Macbeth in school is enough for me, thank you very much. ↩︎

10. The raw text is “崖山之后，逃亡海外”. I believe it refers to the Battle of Yashan/Yamen, which was a naval battle between the Song Dynasty and the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty that occurred in 1279. It’s considered the last stand of the Song Dynasty, and was a crushing defeat of the Song forces, with at least 100,000 dead from direct fighting or drowning. ↩︎

11. Referring to the Brunei Sultanate, 1368-1888, or the regions thereabout. ↩︎

12. There is well-documented contact between Indonesian traders and indigenous people in the northern parts of Australia from around the late 17th century, well into the Qing dynasty. It is conceivable then that the Ming people knew of the existence of the southern continent. The historical literature isn’t clear. They definitely didn’t have a detailed world map that showed where Australia was, and so most knowledge would have been anecdotal. Also, Wen Desi uses an abbreviation of the modern name of Australia, Ao Zhou (澳洲). I’m not sure what Australia was called in Ming China, or if it had a name at all. Note that the latin term ‘terra australis’ was used throughout history, meaning ‘southern land’. Australia, the modern day country, was called New Holland until 1817, after which ‘Australia’ came into official use. New Holland was the name first applied by the Dutch in 1644; the first documented landing by Europeans on the continent was by a Dutch explorer in 1606. The point of this long footnote is to explain that ‘Aozhou’ would not have been a particularly weird-sounding name, as the ‘zhou’ character is oftentimes used in names of regions/places. ↩︎

13. A special type of Ming dynasty sail ship that specialises in long-distance ocean-crossing trade. ↩︎

14. This places it in the Gregorian calendar as April 1627, which is just in the final months of Tianqi’s reign. His brother, Chongzhen, would take over on 2nd of October 1627. I will use the English month names for the Gregorian and numerical months in lunar. Note that months in Chinese don’t have specific names like we do in English; they are denominated ordinally. ↩︎