Chapter 17 Portugal under my window

Thirty kilometers west of Lisbon, there are cliffs facing the sea, and the Atlantic Ocean is cold and foggy.The official name here is Cape Roca, and it is commonly known as the Horn of Europe because it is the westernmost point of the European continent.In the ancient times when people did not know the shape of the earth, it was taken for granted that this place was regarded as the ends of the earth. The wind was strong, blowing from the Atlantic Ocean, and it was almost choking.There is a stone tablet by the sea with a cross on it. The inscription is a sentence written by the ancient Portuguese poet Camões: The earth ends here, and the sea begins here.

I hid from the wind on the leeward side of the stele for a while, squinted at the Atlantic Ocean, and immediately moved my body and mind to five hundred years ago, fully understanding the thoughts of the Portuguese navigators back then.The lure of the sea was too great, the doubts of the end and the beginning were too great, the desire to decipher the doubts was too great. According to my superficial impressions from past readings, Portugal was the first to awaken to modern navigation.At that time, Germany and Italy were still under the feudal rule, Britain and France were not interested in seeking new waterways, but Portugal and Spain had made great progress in three-masted sailing ships and other navigation technologies.Compared with Spain, there have been generations of experts in the Portuguese royal family who are really obsessed with sailing, such as Prince Henry, Alfonso V, John II and Manuel I.I believe that the navigation experts of the Portuguese royal family have come to Cape Roca again and again, thinking about the long-distance travel route in this stormy sea.As a warm-up match, they have personally led the team to sail across Africa.Their ultimate goal, like most European navigators at that time, was China described in "Marco Polo's Travels".

Today I found new evidence here. Not far to the south of Cape Roca, it is the ancient royal residence.A generation of dynasties have longed for the east beyond the sea on this cliff of the Atlantic Ocean.Which side of the sea?The navigation experts in the Portuguese royal family have made preliminary judgments.They believe that they should go south from Cape Roca, continue south after reaching the waters of Africa, turn around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, and then turn east.Obviously, their judgment was correct. It was in this situation that they met Columbus.Columbus decided to cross the Atlantic Ocean to find the footprints of Marco Polo, hoping to obtain funding from the Portuguese royal family.The Portuguese royal family was too expert, and felt that the direction was wrong when they heard it, so they did not support it.Columbus turned to the Spanish crown for help, and Queen Isabel supported him.As a result, Portugal lost Columbus because he was too expert, and Columbus lost Marco Polo because he ignored the opinions of the Portuguese royal family.He crossed the Atlantic and did not find the East, but he found America by mistake.

The great success of Columbus's wrong course made the Portuguese royal family sour.The so-called mistakes are all products of certain coordinates; according to Marco Polo's goal, Columbus did not go right, but the discovery of the New World has made Columbus's reputation surpass that of Marco Polo. What's wrong?But the Portuguese royal family thought to themselves that although Columbus had become famous all over the world, the East should still be a target. So, five years later, the Portuguese Vasco da Gama found India accurately by following the route of going south and turning east.When he came back, the Portuguese held a grand ceremony to welcome him. The wealth he brought back was sixty times the entire cost of the expedition. Among them, gems and spices dazzled the Europeans, and his influence surpassed that of Columbus for a while.Twenty years later, the Portuguese Magellan was ordered by the Spanish government to simply circle the earth, but he did not return.

However, neither Da Gama nor Magellan has entered the world described in "Marco Polo's Travels", which is always unwilling, so Portugal is still determined to find China from the sea. I saw a document here, which mentioned that in February 1508, the King of Portugal sent a man named Sequara to lead a fleet to Malacca, and asked him to inquire there: How big is China?How tall are Chinese people?Brave or cowardly?What religion do you believe in?What kind of weapon do you use?Interestingly, at that time, the Portuguese expeditionary fleet was running amok in the East, but the king gave special orders not to provoke the Chinese and not to seize the spoils of the Chinese.Obviously, he retains too much awe of the mysterious China.

A few years later a man named Piles was sent to spy. Piles' intelligence transcript has now been found. Even if the information is so absurd, the Portuguese and the Chinese were relatively submissive at the beginning of their dealings with the Chinese. Local Chinese officials had no international knowledge and diplomatic experience, and they were cautiously spying on each other.The Portuguese had to berth first, then borrowed them, and paid taxes and rents after borrowing them; The gate sells them a little food.This situation has actually lasted for hundreds of years, which shows that the hearts of both parties are relatively peaceful.

I am very interested in this kind of confrontation before it develops into a vicious incident, because it is the easiest to see cultural differences.Of course, the Portuguese are based on European civilization, and regard themselves as discoverers, and they think that the discoverers are the owners of privileges, or even occupiers. That's all for being arrogant; Chinese officials didn't seem to take their arrival too seriously at first, which has something to do with the traditional understanding of the Fanyi.Later, some things happened, and the ridiculousness caused by arrogant self-esteem and closed ignorance was also displayed everywhere.What hurt my heart the most was the absurd sanction imposed on the first batch of translators by the Chinese government at that time. It was foolish to execute them one by one as if they had liaison with foreigners.

But history has finally gone in a vicious direction.Portugal suddenly became arrogant towards China after the Opium War.Seeing China's complete defeat before the British artillery fire, they took advantage of the fire and unilaterally declared Macau as a free port of Portugal's colony, and became a member of the wave of Western powers bullying China.In fact, it has been dealing with China for hundreds of years, and the country was already in decline at that time. It is a bit disgraceful to change into this image. In the data, two details caught my attention.The first detail is that the Portuguese first arrived in mainland China in June 1513, at Lingding Island outside Tuen Mun, just opposite the south window of my residence in Shenzhen; the second detail is that they officially It was in August 1517 that I got in touch with the Chinese administrative agency. The location was Nantou Guanfang, which was just in front of the west window of my residence.

Since you came to my window so early, I should also come and see the pier you departed from, as well as your hometown.