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Hami(Travellers | Cities | Routes | Trade Goods | Themes) The following is Chen Cheng's description of Hami in 1414, translated by Morris Rossabi: The city of Hami is located in the middle of a flat plain [pingchuan 平川]. It is three to four li in circumference, and has two gates, a north gate and an east gate. The population consists of several hundred households, and the people live in low [single-storey] earthen dwellings. East of the city is a river that flows southwest. There are two or three orchards where only one kind of fruit, a kind of apricot, is grown.[1] For agricultural cultivation they use soil enriched with night-soil, and they grow only panicled millet [ji 穄, a character identical in meaning with ji 稷], oats [mai 麥], garden peas [wandou 豌豆, Pisum sativum], barley, and wheat [da/xiao mai 大小麥]. It is very isolated there [duo xianlu 多陷鹵].[2] To the north there are large mountains; in the other three directions the land is open and flat [pingkuang 平曠]. Suzhou 肅州 is over 1600 li to the southeast, and between Suzhou and Hami one must cross a large plain [dachuan 大川] over 300 li across. It takes two or three days to emerge from the plain. [The previous 17 characters of the text are extrapolated from the wenji edition.] To the north one can reach the territory of the Oirats (a Mongol tribe called wala 瓦剌) – a quick journey takes about one month. The three cities of Huozhou 火州 are about 1000 li to the west. During the Tang it was called Yizhou 伊州. At present it is an important strategic area where the various northern and western peoples [hu 胡] come and go. Many of the people here are rude and brutal [kuanghan 獷悍], and anyone who passes through this territory must be entreat someone among them to be on one’s side [bi you qiu yan 必有求焉]. There are scattered groups of Mongols and Muslims, each wearing different types of dress, and practicing different rituals and customs. Notes [1] The fruit is called qiuxing 楸杏. According to the Liang Sh’ih-ch’iu dictionary, qiu is “a kind of hard wood used for making chessboards (Mallotus japonicus)”. Xing could be either apricot or almond, but as the text refers to orchards, it seems that apricot is best. From a website: “The cultivation of fruit and melon in Xinjiang has had at least a history of over two thousand years. The grapes of Turpan, the honeydew melons of Hami, the pomegranates of Yecheng, the apricots of Kuche, the apples of Ili, the figs of Artux, the pears of Korle, the peaches, the thin-shelled walnuts and almonds of Hotan are all choice varieties of fruits.” One wonders if it might be an early name for the famous Hami melon (Hami gua), but no evidence for this has yet been found. [2] This is a puzzling term. Xian means: sink, fall, submerge; harm another with trumped-up charges (ensnare); drop into, entrap, beguile; crush an enemy position, capture a city. Lu means: alkaline or saline soil; natural salt; rude, unrefined; and to capture or seize. It has the sense of falling into a trap; and the meaning of lu as rude or unrefined may mean that one feels trapped or isolated there, far from any source of culture. - Morris Rossabi, “Two Ming Envoys to Inner Asia”, T'oung Pao, |
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