Galeote Pereira
Encyclopedia
Galeote Pereira was a 16th century Portuguese
soldier of fortune who has left us one of the earliest accounts by a westerner of life in China's Ming Dynasty
, indeed the first detailed observation of that civilisation by a non-cleric since that of Marco Polo
.
against the invading army of King Tabinshwehti
of Pegu in the Burmese–Siamese War (1548–49), introducing Early Modern warfare to the region.
Pereira engaged in smuggling along the Ming Empire's South China Sea
coast, for which enterprise one notorious centre was the Taishan
islet of Wuyu in Xiamen
Bay. He was aboard one of two Portuguese junks
seized in March 1549 near the Dongshan Peninsula
during the Pirate Extermination Campaign of the Jiajing Emperor
, which was actively carried out by Fujian
's Viceroy
Zhu Wan. Happily not among the crew members executed extrajudicially
, Pereira and others were incarcerated at Fuzhou
.
During and subsequent to his trial, the detained aliens were taken out "many times ... and were brought to the palaces of noblemen to be seen of them and their wives," which allowed Pereira to see something of Fuzhou. Fortunately for Pereira and other surviving Portuguese (and their companions, coming from various parts of the Portuguese colonial empire in Asia), Zhu Wan's enemy at the imperial court learned of the irregularities involved in the execution of the prisoners and the handling of captured merchandise; censors arrived from Beijing, a number of officials were removed from their positions and punished, Zhu Wan committed suicide. The Portuguese prisoners waiting for the end of their lives in Fuzhou's prison were dispatched to live out their sentences of separate internal exile, in various locations around Guilin
, Guizhou
.
With the help of the Portuguese merchants in Canton, many of the exiles managed to make their way by bribe and stealth back to the sea coast and to Portuguese ships and off-shore bases. Pereira was one of these escapees. It is known that in mid-February 1553 he was already in the Shangchuan Island
, assisting at the exhumation of the incorrupt
remains of Francis Xavier
.
It is not known when Pereira first wrote his account. While C.R. Boxer surmised that Pereira may have penned his recollections soon after his escape to safety, the earliest known manuscript of his notes dates to 1561. It is a copy made by Indian pupils of the Jesuit Saint Paul's College
in Goa, and sent to one of the Jesuits' central offices in Europe. While the original Portuguese text, entitled "Algũas cousas sabidas da China ..." ("Some things known about China ...") was not published at the time, its (slightly abridged) Italian translation appeared in Venice
in 1565 in a book containing a number of other reports sent by Jesuits from India. An English translation of that Italian text, made by a former English Jesuit Richard Willis
was printed in 1577, in the History of Travayle in the West and East Indies, under the title "Certain reports of the province China, learned through the Portugals there imprisoned, and chiefly by the relation of Galeote Pereira, a gentleman of good credit, that lay prisoner in that country many years. Done out of Italian by R.W.". Willis' translation was reprinted a number of times.
A complete English translation of the original (i.e., the earliest known to us) Portuguese manuscript was made by C.R. Boxer and published in 1953 in Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, vol. XXII. The original Portuguese text has since been published in Portugal.
, Bernardino de Escalante
or Juan González de Mendoza
would be). Instead, both aspects are present to some extent.
Pereira's manuscript starts in the style of a geographical overview. Like most later geographical works on China, he starts with listing China's provinces
("shire
s", in Willis' translation), stating that there are 13 of them, giving names of 11 of them and a brief information about some, and concluding that for "Confu", Yunnan
and Sichuan
, "how many towns [those] three shires have, we are ignorant as yet, as also of the proper names of the twelfth and thirteenth shires, and the towns therein". This shows that Pereira (or his early Jesuit editors) were not in possession of the information that the Lisbon historian João de Barros
had when writing the Third of his Décadas da Ásia (publsihed 1563, but written much earlier), which correctly lists all fifteen provinces of the Ming China.
He then proceeds with a brief description of Chinese cities whose "streets are wonderful to behold" and which are decorated with numerous "arches of triumph
", and of the densely populated and intensively farmed countryside. He is impressed with well-paved roads and the bridges of Fujian's coastal road, built using huge stones.
Pereira is surprised that the word "China", which the Portuguese had learned in Southern and Southeastern Asia, is not known in China itself, and is curious how
Chinese people call their country and themselves, and gets the answer that "the whole country is called Tamen" (i.e., Da Ming
), and its people, Tamenjins (i.e., Da Ming ren, 大明人, "people of the Great Ming").
Interspersed with geographical and details and references to his personal experience is a fair amount of information about the country's administration, the titles and roles of various government officials.
He described harsh conditions inside the prisons of the time, as well as the practice of corporal punishment
:
Despite the severity of its punishments, Pereira extols the impartiality of the Ming judicial system, with its tradition of exemplary officials such as Judge Bao. The malign accusations of two local worthies, apparently their erstwhile partners, were not enough to see the Portuguese smugglers scapegoated :
or Matteo Ricci
). but he still gives a brief account of the religious practices of both Han
and Hui
people. He notes that people refer to the supreme divine power as "Heaven", explaining that "as we are wont to say 'God knoweth it', sa say they at every word Tien xautee, that is to say 'The heavens do know it'". He did realize at least that there are several types of temples, and the divinity worshiped in some of them is referred to as Omithofom Āmítuó Fó
Pereira deems the Fujian
Muslims
to be almost entirely assimilated into the Chinese mainstream. According to him, they "knew so little of their sect, that they could say nothing else but that 'Mahomet was a Moor, my father was a Moor, and I am a Moor, with some other words of their Alcoran, wherewithal and in abstinence from swine's flesh, they live until the devil take them all". ("Moors
" was at the time a common way for the Portuguese to refer to any Muslims). He says that there arewere over 200 Muslims in a Guangxi
city he visited (not quite clear whether he is talking of Wuzhou
or Guilin
), all attending the Friday prayers in their mosques. He thinks, however, "that will no longer endure", because while the older generation is still observant and remembers of its old homeland in Çamarquão (Samarkand
), "their posterity is so confused, that they have nothing of a Moor in them but abstinence from swine's flesh, and yet many of them do eat thereof privately".
a few years later, Pereira is dismayed at the prevalence and common acceptance of homosexual liaisons:
Marco Polo
, too, had found the practice quite as prevalent and accepted under the Mongol-ruled Yuan.
But too like Polo, Pereira has some surprising lacunae: he makes not one reference to the widespread, customary practice of Foot binding
(six hundred years old in his time, three in Polo's). Nor does he mention the use of the herb Camellia sinensis
, nor the unique character of the Empire's writing system nor to its marvelous facilities for the Printing
thereof.
's A Treatise of China, the first China-specific book published in Europe (1569). Via that book, or Bernardino de Escalante
's work largely derivative of da Cruz, much of the information conveyed by Pereira got into Juan González de Mendoza
's History of the great and mighty kingdom of China and the situation thereof (1585), which was to become Europe's most authoritative book on China for the following three decades.
Fernão Mendes Pinto
's Peregrinação ("Pilgrimage", 1614) depends heavily on Pereira at several points.
Thai film The King Maker
shows similarities based upon a character similar to Galeote Pereira. Although the character is named Fernando De Gama he is known as a Portuguese soldier of fortune helping to defend the Siamese Ayutthaya Kingdom
of which the film is based upon.
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
soldier of fortune who has left us one of the earliest accounts by a westerner of life in China's Ming Dynasty
Ming Dynasty
The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...
, indeed the first detailed observation of that civilisation by a non-cleric since that of Marco Polo
Marco Polo
Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...
.
Biography
Pereira and other Portuguese mercenaries helped defend the Siamese Ayutthaya KingdomAyutthaya kingdom
Ayutthaya was a Siamese kingdom that existed from 1350 to 1767. Ayutthaya was friendly towards foreign traders, including the Chinese, Vietnamese , Indians, Japanese and Persians, and later the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and French, permitting them to set up villages outside the walls of the...
against the invading army of King Tabinshwehti
Tabinshwehti
Tabinshwehti was a king who unified Burma in 1539 and known as the founder of the Second Burmese Empire.Tabinshwehti succeeded his father Mingyinyo as ruler of the Toungoo dynasty in 1530...
of Pegu in the Burmese–Siamese War (1548–49), introducing Early Modern warfare to the region.
Pereira engaged in smuggling along the Ming Empire's South China Sea
South China Sea
The South China Sea is a marginal sea that is part of the Pacific Ocean, encompassing an area from the Singapore and Malacca Straits to the Strait of Taiwan of around...
coast, for which enterprise one notorious centre was the Taishan
Taishan
Taishan is a coastal county-level city in Guangdong Province, China. The city is part of the Greater Taishan Region....
islet of Wuyu in Xiamen
Xiamen
Xiamen , also known as Amoy , is a major city on the southeast coast of the People's Republic of China. It is administered as a sub-provincial city of Fujian province with an area of and population of 3.53 million...
Bay. He was aboard one of two Portuguese junks
Junk (ship)
A junk is an ancient Chinese sailing vessel design still in use today. Junks were developed during the Han Dynasty and were used as sea-going vessels as early as the 2nd century AD. They evolved in the later dynasties, and were used throughout Asia for extensive ocean voyages...
seized in March 1549 near the Dongshan Peninsula
Dongshan County
Dongshan County is a county in Zhangzhou Prefecture-level city，Fujian province, People's Republic of China. It is located to the south of the west coast of Fujian province along the Strait of Taiwan . There are 44 islands altogether in the county...
during the Pirate Extermination Campaign of the Jiajing Emperor
Jiajing Emperor
The Jiajing Emperor was the 11th Ming Dynasty Emperor of China who ruled from 1521 to 1567. Born Zhu Houcong, he was the former Zhengde Emperor's cousin...
, which was actively carried out by Fujian
Fujian
' , formerly romanised as Fukien or Huguing or Foukien, is a province on the southeast coast of mainland China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, and Guangdong to the south. Taiwan lies to the east, across the Taiwan Strait...
's Viceroy
Viceroy
A viceroy is a royal official who runs a country, colony, or province in the name of and as representative of the monarch. The term derives from the Latin prefix vice-, meaning "in the place of" and the French word roi, meaning king. A viceroy's province or larger territory is called a viceroyalty...
Zhu Wan. Happily not among the crew members executed extrajudicially
Extrajudicial punishment
Extrajudicial punishment is punishment by the state or some other official authority without the permission of a court or legal authority. The existence of extrajudicial punishment is considered proof that some governments will break their own legal code if deemed necessary.-Nature:Extrajudicial...
, Pereira and others were incarcerated at Fuzhou
Fuzhou
Fuzhou is the capital and one of the largest cities in Fujian Province, People's Republic of China. Along with the many counties of Ningde, those of Fuzhou are considered to constitute the Mindong linguistic and cultural area....
.
During and subsequent to his trial, the detained aliens were taken out "many times ... and were brought to the palaces of noblemen to be seen of them and their wives," which allowed Pereira to see something of Fuzhou. Fortunately for Pereira and other surviving Portuguese (and their companions, coming from various parts of the Portuguese colonial empire in Asia), Zhu Wan's enemy at the imperial court learned of the irregularities involved in the execution of the prisoners and the handling of captured merchandise; censors arrived from Beijing, a number of officials were removed from their positions and punished, Zhu Wan committed suicide. The Portuguese prisoners waiting for the end of their lives in Fuzhou's prison were dispatched to live out their sentences of separate internal exile, in various locations around Guilin
Guilin
Guilin is a prefecture-level city in the northeast of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of far southern China, sitting on the west bank of the Li River. Its name means "forest of Sweet Osmanthus", owing to the large number of fragrant Sweet Osmanthus trees located in the city...
, Guizhou
Guizhou
' is a province of the People's Republic of China located in the southwestern part of the country. Its provincial capital city is Guiyang.- History :...
.
With the help of the Portuguese merchants in Canton, many of the exiles managed to make their way by bribe and stealth back to the sea coast and to Portuguese ships and off-shore bases. Pereira was one of these escapees. It is known that in mid-February 1553 he was already in the Shangchuan Island
Shangchuan Island
Shangchuan Island also written is the main island of Chuanshan Archipelago on the southern coast of China. Its name originated from São João - Saint John in Portuguese. It is part of the Guangdong province, in the South China Sea...
, assisting at the exhumation of the incorrupt
Incorruptibility
Incorruptibility is a Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox belief that supernatural intervention allows some human bodies to avoid the normal process of decomposition after death as a sign of their holiness...
remains of Francis Xavier
Francis Xavier
Francis Xavier, born Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta was a pioneering Roman Catholic missionary born in the Kingdom of Navarre and co-founder of the Society of Jesus. He was a student of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and one of the first seven Jesuits, dedicated at Montmartre in 1534...
.
Pereira's story
Several of the Portuguese survivors of the 1549 incident, imprisonment and exile wrote accounts of their experiences; the first of them was published as early as 1555. Galeote Pereira's is considered the most complete, and is the best known.It is not known when Pereira first wrote his account. While C.R. Boxer surmised that Pereira may have penned his recollections soon after his escape to safety, the earliest known manuscript of his notes dates to 1561. It is a copy made by Indian pupils of the Jesuit Saint Paul's College
Saint Paul's College, Goa
St. Paul's College was a Jesuit college founded circa 1542 at Old Goa. It was once the main Jesuit institution in India. It housed the first printing press in India, having published the first books in 1556...
in Goa, and sent to one of the Jesuits' central offices in Europe. While the original Portuguese text, entitled "Algũas cousas sabidas da China ..." ("Some things known about China ...") was not published at the time, its (slightly abridged) Italian translation appeared in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
in 1565 in a book containing a number of other reports sent by Jesuits from India. An English translation of that Italian text, made by a former English Jesuit Richard Willis
Richard Willis
Richard Willis may refer to:*Sir Richard Willis, 1st Baronet a Royalist officer during the English Civil War, and a double agent working for the Parliamentarians during the Interregnum...
was printed in 1577, in the History of Travayle in the West and East Indies, under the title "Certain reports of the province China, learned through the Portugals there imprisoned, and chiefly by the relation of Galeote Pereira, a gentleman of good credit, that lay prisoner in that country many years. Done out of Italian by R.W.". Willis' translation was reprinted a number of times.
A complete English translation of the original (i.e., the earliest known to us) Portuguese manuscript was made by C.R. Boxer and published in 1953 in Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, vol. XXII. The original Portuguese text has since been published in Portugal.
Content of the report
The organization of Pereira's account is somewhat chaotic: it is neither a strictly chronological account describing a chain of events (a "travelogue" or "memoir"), nor a treatise describing various aspects of China in some logical order (as later book-size works by Gaspar da CruzGaspar da Cruz
Gaspar da Cruz was a Portuguese Dominican friar born in Évora, who traveled to Asia and wrote one of the first detailed European accounts about China.-Biography:Gaspar da Cruz was admitted to the Order of Preachers convent of Azeitão...
, Bernardino de Escalante
Bernardino de Escalante
Bernardino de Escalante was a Spanish soldier, priest, geographer and a prolific writer. He is best known as the author of the second book on China published in Europe, and the first one to obtain wide circulation outside of Portugal.The foremost scholar of the European literature about Asia,...
or Juan González de Mendoza
Juan González de Mendoza
Juan González de Mendoza was the author of the first Western history of China to publish Chinese characters for Western delectation. Published by him in 1586, Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reyno de la China is an account of observations several Spanish travelers...
would be). Instead, both aspects are present to some extent.
Pereira's manuscript starts in the style of a geographical overview. Like most later geographical works on China, he starts with listing China's provinces
Province (China)
A province, in the context of Chinese government, is a translation of sheng formally provincial level divisions, which is an administrative division. Provinces, municipalities, autonomous regions, and the special administrative regions, make up the four types of province of administrative division...
("shire
Shire
A shire is a traditional term for a division of land, found in the United Kingdom and in Australia. In parts of Australia, a shire is an administrative unit, but it is not synonymous with "county" there, which is a land registration unit. Individually, or as a suffix in Scotland and in the far...
s", in Willis' translation), stating that there are 13 of them, giving names of 11 of them and a brief information about some, and concluding that for "Confu", Yunnan
Yunnan
Yunnan is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the far southwest of the country spanning approximately and with a population of 45.7 million . The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders Burma, Laos, and Vietnam.Yunnan is situated in a mountainous area, with...
and Sichuan
Sichuan
' , known formerly in the West by its postal map spellings of Szechwan or Szechuan is a province in Southwest China with its capital in Chengdu...
, "how many towns [those] three shires have, we are ignorant as yet, as also of the proper names of the twelfth and thirteenth shires, and the towns therein". This shows that Pereira (or his early Jesuit editors) were not in possession of the information that the Lisbon historian João de Barros
João de Barros
João de Barros , called the Portuguese Livy, is one of the first great Portuguese historians, most famous for his Décadas da Ásia , a history of the Portuguese in India and Asia.-Early years:...
had when writing the Third of his Décadas da Ásia (publsihed 1563, but written much earlier), which correctly lists all fifteen provinces of the Ming China.
He then proceeds with a brief description of Chinese cities whose "streets are wonderful to behold" and which are decorated with numerous "arches of triumph
Pailou
Pailou may refer to:*Paifang, a traditional Chinese architectural form like an archway.Towns*Pailou, Chizhou, in Guichi District, Chizhou, Anhui*Pailou, Jingmen, in Dongbao District, Jingmen, Hubei*Pailou, Haicheng, Liaoning, townTownships...
", and of the densely populated and intensively farmed countryside. He is impressed with well-paved roads and the bridges of Fujian's coastal road, built using huge stones.
Pereira is surprised that the word "China", which the Portuguese had learned in Southern and Southeastern Asia, is not known in China itself, and is curious how
Names of China
In China, common names for China include Zhonghua and Zhongguo , while Han and Tang are common names given for the Chinese ethnicity. Other names include Huaxia, Shenzhou and Jiuzhou...
Chinese people call their country and themselves, and gets the answer that "the whole country is called Tamen" (i.e., Da Ming
Ming Dynasty
The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...
), and its people, Tamenjins (i.e., Da Ming ren, 大明人, "people of the Great Ming").
Interspersed with geographical and details and references to his personal experience is a fair amount of information about the country's administration, the titles and roles of various government officials.
Description of the Ming law enforcement system
Due to the specific situation of Pereira's stay in China, it is not surprising that a significant portion of Galeote Pereira's account deals with the "inner side" of the Ming courts and prisons.He described harsh conditions inside the prisons of the time, as well as the practice of corporal punishment
Corporal punishment
Corporal punishment is a form of physical punishment that involves the deliberate infliction of pain as retribution for an offence, or for the purpose of disciplining or reforming a wrongdoer, or to deter attitudes or behaviour deemed unacceptable...
:
Their whips be bamboos, cleft in the middle, in such sort that they seem rather plain than sharp. He that is to be whipped lieth groveling on the ground. Upon his thighs the hangman layeth on blows mightily with these bamboos, that the standers-by tremble at their cruelty. Ten stripes draws a great deal of blood, twenty or thirty spoil the flesh altogether, fifty or threescore will require a long time to be healed, and if they come to the number of one hundred, then they are incurable—and they are given to whosoever hath nothing wherewith to bribe these executioners who administer them.
Despite the severity of its punishments, Pereira extols the impartiality of the Ming judicial system, with its tradition of exemplary officials such as Judge Bao. The malign accusations of two local worthies, apparently their erstwhile partners, were not enough to see the Portuguese smugglers scapegoated :
For wheresoever in any town of ChristendomChristendomChristendom, or the Christian world, has several meanings. In a cultural sense it refers to the worldwide community of Christians, adherents of Christianity...
should be accused unknown men as we were, I know not what end the very Innocents' cause would have; but we in a heathen country, having for our enemies two of the chiefest men in a whole town, wanting an interpreter, ignorant of that country's language, did in the end see our great adversaries cast into prison for our sake, and deprived of their offices and honour for not doing justice—yea, not to escape death, for as rumour goeth, they shall be beheaded. Now see if [the Ming] do justice or no.
Religion
Even in proportion to its (shorter) length, Pereira's work dwells less on religious issues than do the later books of professional Christian missionaries (such as Gaspar da Cruz, Martín de RadaMartín de Rada
Martín de Rada was one of the first members of the Order of Saint Augustine to evangelize the Philippines, as well as one of the first Christian missionaries to visit the Ming China.-Early years:When he was twelve years old, de Rada's parents sent him and his older brother to study at the...
or Matteo Ricci
Matteo Ricci
Matteo Ricci, SJ was an Italian Jesuit priest, and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China Mission, as it existed in the 17th-18th centuries. His current title is Servant of God....
). but he still gives a brief account of the religious practices of both Han
Han people
Han people may refer to:* Han Chinese , the majority ethnic group of China.* Han , an indigenous people of North America.* Koreans , whose ethnicity can also be called "Han" in the Korean language....
and Hui
Hui people
The Hui people are an ethnic group in China, defined as Chinese speaking people descended from foreign Muslims. They are typically distinguished by their practice of Islam, however some also practice other religions, and many are direct descendants of Silk Road travelers.In modern People's...
people. He notes that people refer to the supreme divine power as "Heaven", explaining that "as we are wont to say 'God knoweth it', sa say they at every word Tien xautee, that is to say 'The heavens do know it'". He did realize at least that there are several types of temples, and the divinity worshiped in some of them is referred to as Omithofom Āmítuó Fó
Amitabha
Amitābha is a celestial buddha described in the scriptures of the Mahāyāna school of Buddhism...
Pereira deems the Fujian
Fujian
' , formerly romanised as Fukien or Huguing or Foukien, is a province on the southeast coast of mainland China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, and Guangdong to the south. Taiwan lies to the east, across the Taiwan Strait...
Muslims
Hui people
The Hui people are an ethnic group in China, defined as Chinese speaking people descended from foreign Muslims. They are typically distinguished by their practice of Islam, however some also practice other religions, and many are direct descendants of Silk Road travelers.In modern People's...
to be almost entirely assimilated into the Chinese mainstream. According to him, they "knew so little of their sect, that they could say nothing else but that 'Mahomet was a Moor, my father was a Moor, and I am a Moor, with some other words of their Alcoran, wherewithal and in abstinence from swine's flesh, they live until the devil take them all". ("Moors
Moors
The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of the Maghreb region who are predominately of Berber and Arab descent. They came to conquer and rule the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years. At that time they were Muslim, although earlier the people had followed...
" was at the time a common way for the Portuguese to refer to any Muslims). He says that there arewere over 200 Muslims in a Guangxi
Guangxi
Guangxi, formerly romanized Kwangsi, is a province of southern China along its border with Vietnam. In 1958, it became the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, a region with special privileges created specifically for the Zhuang people.Guangxi's location, in...
city he visited (not quite clear whether he is talking of Wuzhou
Wuzhou
Wuzhou , historically known as Wuchow, is a prefecture-level city in China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.-Geography and climate:Wuzhou is located in eastern Guangxi bordering Guangdong province. It is at the confluence of the Gui River and the Xun River where they form the Xi River; 85% of all...
or Guilin
Guilin
Guilin is a prefecture-level city in the northeast of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of far southern China, sitting on the west bank of the Li River. Its name means "forest of Sweet Osmanthus", owing to the large number of fragrant Sweet Osmanthus trees located in the city...
), all attending the Friday prayers in their mosques. He thinks, however, "that will no longer endure", because while the older generation is still observant and remembers of its old homeland in Çamarquão (Samarkand
Samarkand
Although a Persian-speaking region, it was not united politically with Iran most of the times between the disintegration of the Seleucid Empire and the Arab conquest . In the 6th century it was within the domain of the Turkic kingdom of the Göktürks.At the start of the 8th century Samarkand came...
), "their posterity is so confused, that they have nothing of a Moor in them but abstinence from swine's flesh, and yet many of them do eat thereof privately".
Language
Several references to (Chinese) interpreters, or problems arising in their absence, indicate that few if any Portuguese prisoners spoke much Chinese, at least in the beginning. There is no explicit information on how much Chinese Pereira learned even by the end of his enforced stay in the country.Other Notable Elements of Pereira's Account
Like Gaspar da CruzGaspar da Cruz
Gaspar da Cruz was a Portuguese Dominican friar born in Évora, who traveled to Asia and wrote one of the first detailed European accounts about China.-Biography:Gaspar da Cruz was admitted to the Order of Preachers convent of Azeitão...
a few years later, Pereira is dismayed at the prevalence and common acceptance of homosexual liaisons:
The greatest fault we do find in them is sodomySodomySodomy is an anal or other copulation-like act, especially between male persons or between a man and animal, and one who practices sodomy is a "sodomite"...
, a vice very common in the meanest sort, and nothing strange among the best.
Marco Polo
Marco Polo
Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...
, too, had found the practice quite as prevalent and accepted under the Mongol-ruled Yuan.
But too like Polo, Pereira has some surprising lacunae: he makes not one reference to the widespread, customary practice of Foot binding
Foot binding
Foot binding was the custom of binding the feet of young girls painfully tight to prevent further growth. The practice probably originated among court dancers in the early Song dynasty, but spread to upper class families and eventually became common among all classes. The tiny narrow feet were...
(six hundred years old in his time, three in Polo's). Nor does he mention the use of the herb Camellia sinensis
Camellia sinensis
Camellia sinensis is the species of plant whose leaves and leaf buds are used to produce Chinese tea. It is of the genus Camellia , a genus of flowering plants in the family Theaceae. White tea, green tea, oolong, pu-erh tea and black tea are all harvested from this species, but are processed...
, nor the unique character of the Empire's writing system nor to its marvelous facilities for the Printing
Printing
Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....
thereof.
Influence of Pereira's account
According to C.R. Boxer's estimate, about one third of Galeote Pereira's account was later incorporated in Gaspar da CruzGaspar da Cruz
Gaspar da Cruz was a Portuguese Dominican friar born in Évora, who traveled to Asia and wrote one of the first detailed European accounts about China.-Biography:Gaspar da Cruz was admitted to the Order of Preachers convent of Azeitão...
's A Treatise of China, the first China-specific book published in Europe (1569). Via that book, or Bernardino de Escalante
Bernardino de Escalante
Bernardino de Escalante was a Spanish soldier, priest, geographer and a prolific writer. He is best known as the author of the second book on China published in Europe, and the first one to obtain wide circulation outside of Portugal.The foremost scholar of the European literature about Asia,...
's work largely derivative of da Cruz, much of the information conveyed by Pereira got into Juan González de Mendoza
Juan González de Mendoza
Juan González de Mendoza was the author of the first Western history of China to publish Chinese characters for Western delectation. Published by him in 1586, Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reyno de la China is an account of observations several Spanish travelers...
's History of the great and mighty kingdom of China and the situation thereof (1585), which was to become Europe's most authoritative book on China for the following three decades.
Fernão Mendes Pinto
Fernão Mendes Pinto
Fernão Mendes Pinto was a Portuguese explorer and writer. His exploits are known through the posthumous publication of his memoir Pilgrimage in 1614, an autobiographical work whose truthfulness is nearly impossible to assess...
's Peregrinação ("Pilgrimage", 1614) depends heavily on Pereira at several points.
Legacy
The 2005 English languageEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
Thai film The King Maker
The King Maker
The King Maker The King Maker The King Maker (Thai: กบฎท้าวศรีสุดาจันทร์ , or The Rebellion of Queen Sudachan, is a 2005 Thai historical drama film set during the Ayutthaya kingdom. With a storyline that shares many similarities to 2001's The Legend of Suriyothai, The King Maker's plot focuses on a...
shows similarities based upon a character similar to Galeote Pereira. Although the character is named Fernando De Gama he is known as a Portuguese soldier of fortune helping to defend the Siamese Ayutthaya Kingdom
Ayutthaya kingdom
Ayutthaya was a Siamese kingdom that existed from 1350 to 1767. Ayutthaya was friendly towards foreign traders, including the Chinese, Vietnamese , Indians, Japanese and Persians, and later the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and French, permitting them to set up villages outside the walls of the...
of which the film is based upon.