A crafts shop on Makung Island in the Penghu Island. A shard of blue-patterned pottery with the words "As You Wish" recently engraved on the bottom rests in a plastic dish, mixed in with stones, seashells, and bits of tile. Customers can choose any piece they want for NT$120. "A teacher told me that this piece dates back to the Yuan dynasty. I picked it up on an uninhabited island. Does this count as destroying cultural artifacts?" jokes the rather bohemian-looking shop owner. It seems he doesn't really care that the piece is so old.

He doesn't care because potsherds like this are not rare. In fact, with a little effort one can scoop up such pieces all over Penghu, both on the beaches and inland. Another crafts store owner says that though it has been getting harder to find old patterned pieces, "in the past, you could find scads of them even when they were just digging up the road."

Yue kiln porcelain discovered in Penghu is decorated with detailed patterns after the manner of Tang dynasty metalwork.

A 17th century tax haven?

How did these artifacts get here? Do they have any value? What is their relationship to the sunken ships which have recently been a focus of media attention? These are all questions of broad interest.

For geographic reasons Penghu was already a key point in shipping lanes by the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Scholars note that the sea lanes around Penghu were heavily used even in the late 13th and early 14th centuries (the Song and Yuan dynasties), when overseas trading flourished along China's southeast coast. What is not known is whether Penghu served as a transshipment point in this trade. In other words, people are still debating the question: Was Penghu an entrepot for foreign trade in porcelain as early as the Song-Yuan period?

In historical terms, this is an important question because it relates to sea travel to Penghu and Taiwan and the history of the pioneering of these two areas by Han Chinese.

Chen Hsin-hsiung, a professor of history at National Chung Kung University, makes the case that Penghu was indeed a Song-Yuan trading entrepot. During field research he discovered that Song-Yuan porcelain had been found in 55 different locations on 18 different islands in the Penghu chain. Moreover, "many different types of porcelain have been unearthed, and these closely resemble what has been found in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia." Given the tiny population of Penghu at that time, Chen surmises, local people had no need for so much porcelain ware, so he concludes that much of it must have been for export.

Other researchers have a similar view. Research associate Tsai Mei-fen of the National Palace Museum explained in an article that the pottery found in Penghu includes many varieties that were common in the Song-era trade between Southeast Asia and the Quanzhou region of Fujian: darkly-glazed "tall bottles" (gaoping, with small mouths, short necks, and dark brown glazing on the top portion), blue porcelain bowls made in Fujian with a "broken branch flower" pattern stamped on the bottom, Tong'an-style blue porcelain bowls with flowers painted on the inside and "comb style" lines for decoration on the outside, and imitation Jian kiln "heavenly eye" (tianmu) bowls.

Porcelain expert Liu Liang-you avers, "The Southern Song dynasty [the remnants of the great Song dynasty who took refuge in southern China after non-Han Chinese regimes took over north China] was very weak, and had to stay heavily armed against their enemies to the north. Therefore they levied a tax on the export of porcelain and pottery. Perhaps many ships were engaged in smuggling through islands such as Penghu, which were difficult for the government to police, in order to evade taxes." This may be the reason why contemporary documentary evidence does not mention the export of porcelain through Penghu.

A small mouth and a short neck are classic marks of Song dynasty porcelain. This was a vessel for holding alcohol.

Export products or household goods?

Liu once sent samples of pottery unearthed in Penghu to the Institute of Archaeological Technology in Shanghai to have the materials tested and compared to pieces from the great kilns of imperial China. It was found that some of the Song-Yuan era shards in Penghu originally came from as far away as north China. "Perhaps at that time merchants used Penghu as a distribution center. Ships from all over China may have congregated here, then exchanged goods among themselves before heading off to the South Seas to sell their products," he deduces. Naturally he does not exclude the possibility that some of these ships were brought to grief by Penghu's strong winds and treacherous waters. For example, when exploring the tiny 1,000-meter-square island of Hsienchiao (which means "dangerous coral reef"), he found an astounding amount of Yuan and Ming period potsherds. "It seems obvious that ships were wrecked here," he concludes.

Because all of the sites on which Song-yuan porcelain have been found are along the water's edge, Chen Hsin-hsiung contends that merchants may have set up warehouses on Penghu, and sent one or two shipments here each year when the winds were calm. The many bits of shattered porcelain on the beaches may very well be the "garbage" left behind by merchantmen when they rearranged their cargoes.

But Tsang Chen-hua of the Academia Sinica dissents. He says that the Song-Yuan porcelain found in Penghu was not for export, but was for daily use by the earliest settlers. He makes his case based on carbon-14 dating done at archaeological sites around the islands. He points out that, true as it may be that there are signs of human settlement in Penghu dating back to the late Tang (ended 907) and through the Song-Yuan period, the different layers at the sites show that these were nothing more than temporary hamlets for fishermen. Though there were permanent settlements by the later Song-Yuan period, the great majority of the porcelain objects unearthed at these sites were common items for daily use. While he agrees that these are similar to artifacts found in Southeast Asia, given that these items were produced en masse at that time, he concludes merely that Penghu pioneers bought the same things that Southeast Asians did: "It is by no means unreasonable to think that fishing villages at that time could afford to buy these porcelain objects."

A "broken branch flower" pattern on the bottom decorates this thick piece of unfired blue ware from Tong'an in Fujian.

Shards, shards everywhere

Hsieh Ming-liang, an associate professor of Art History at National Taiwan University, points out that the existence of large amounts of Song-Yuan porcelain in Penghu is an undeniable fact. As for its purpose, there is no need to jump to the conclusion that it was all for export or all for daily use. He figures that the artifacts in some places, as on Chungtun Island where a great variety of porcelain objects have been found, were almost certainly trade items which were stored in warehouses there.

Another NTU professor, Tsao Yung-ho, chimes in that there are probably many reasons behind the Penghu porcelain: some of it was sold from the mainland with Penghu as its final destination; some came to Penghu accidentally from lost or shipwrecked vessels; some was brought here for transshipment elsewhere. In the final analysis, more evidence needs to come to light before such questions can be resolved.

Last June, Chen Hsin-hsiung unleashed an academic bombshell at a conference in Taipei. He stated that there are more than 3000 pieces of porcelain from the renowned Yue kiln in Zhejiang Province at a certain site in Penghu. (The Yue kiln was active from the late Tang through the Song dynasties.) "The artifacts were found in three locations over a site 2000 meters long. This looks very much like a ship went aground here. Perhaps there was a shipwreck caused by heavy winds," he opined.

Moreover, based on the character "ding" on a potsherd, which is one of the "heavenly stems and earthly branches" in the 60 year cycle which was one method by which Chinese recorded the passage of time, and also taking into account the shape and pattern of the decoration, he calculated that it was manufactured during the Five Dynasties Period (10th century), probably in the state of Wu. If Chen's conclusions become accepted, current theories will have to be revised. Historians will have to push back the time when Han Chinese first came into contact with Penghu by 240 years (i.e. from the Southern Sung period, when such contact is first recorded in documents, to the Five Dynasties).

But Chen's ideas are still disputed in academic circles. Hsieh Ming-liang figures that it is going a bit far to determine the age of porcelain from the "ding" shaped design. "There has never in history been any example found of porcelain carrying a manufacturing date recorded using the heavenly stems and earthly branches," he states. He argues that it is more likely that these Yue kiln items date to the late tenth century, to the Northern Song era." Liu Liang-you, who has also found Yue kiln artifacts in Penghu, agrees.

Net gain

Let's leave aside for the moment the arguments over the purpose and age of the Penghu porcelain. The most noteworthy thing about all these discoveries is that evidence about Penghu's position in the shipping routes of old is not limited to documents. These potsherds, long hidden and now seeing the light of day, tell us clearly that Chinese vessels were coming to Penghu even before written records to that effect were made.

Indeed, such evidence is not limited to Penghu. Old porcelain has been continually unearthed in locations along the southwest coast of Taiwan, such as Tungshih and Putai. Liu Liang-you has a white porcelain dish caught in a fisherman's net. Much to his surprise, it turned out to be a priceless piece made in the Ding kiln in the Five Dynasties era. And there are several Yue kiln items in the art history library at National Taiwan University.

"Fishermen used to be worried that they might get things like this caught in their nets, because they could ruin the nets. Usually they would just throw them back into the sea," laughs Liu. In fact these discoveries all point to one conclusion: That there are signs everywhere of commercial ships running from Penghu to Taiwan. Were these ships plying their trade in the Ming, the Yuan, the Song, the late Tang, or even earlier? Until some sunken ships can be found, no one can say for sure.

[Picture Caption]

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There are countless pieces of Song and Yuan porcelain in the Penghu Cultural Center; they are valuable cultural artifacts.

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Yue kiln porcelain discovered in Penghu is decorated with detailed patterns after the manner of Tang dynasty metalwork.

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A small mouth and a short neck are classic marks of Song dynasty porcelain. This was a vessel for holding alcohol.

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A "broken branch flower" pattern on the bottom decorates this thick piece of unfired blue ware from Tong'an in Fujian.