Chapter 9 under my window

To the 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 ancient times when people didn't 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:

Here the earth ends, The vicissitudes of life began 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 temptation of the sea is too great, the doubts about the "end" and "beginning" are too great, the desire to crack doubts is 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 feudal regimes, Britain and France were not interested in pursuing new waterways, but Portugal and Spain had made great progress in three-masted sailing ships and other navigation technologies.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 a 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 already made a preliminary judgment.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 to find Marco Polo's footprints, 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. Nothing could be wrong, but the Portuguese royal family thought to themselves that even though 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 Séquara to lead a fleet to Malacca, asking him to inquire there: How big is China? How tall and brave are Chinese people? It is still cowardly to believe in what religion and what weapon to use. Interestingly, at that time, the Portuguese expeditionary fleet was doing mischief in the East, but the king gave a special order 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, and then borrowed them, and they also paid taxes and rents. Chinese officials didn’t know if they would do bad things, so they specially built a city wall outside their borrowed place, grasped the power of gates, and opened regularly. 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. It’s just that arrogant; Chinese officials didn’t seem to take their arrival too seriously at first, which is related to the traditional understanding of “Fanyi”. Later, some things happened, and they also showed everywhere that they were caused by arrogance and ignorance. Ridiculous.

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, and the place where they arrived was Lingding Island outside Tuen Mun, just opposite the south window of my residence in Shenzhen; the second detail is that they It was in August 1517 that I formally contacted the Chinese administrative agency. The location was Nantouguanfang, which was just in front of the west window of my residence.

——Since you came to my window so early, I should also come to see the pier you departed from and your hometown. their trouble The Portuguese like to use small white stones to pave the sidewalks of the city.The stones of the sidewalks in the old city of Lisbon have been worn down into old dominoes.Walking along the dominoes is a mountain road with steep slopes, and trams are still running on such a mountain road. The mountain road is very narrow, and the tram almost passed the door of the houses on the side of the road. The houses are old and simple, and one end sticks out from the door. An old man with black hair and yellow skin looks like an early Chinese accountant, but he is not Chinese.

The winding mountain road paved with dominoes is very slippery. Fortunately, the trams and the old houses did not slide down.We had climbed out of breath, and finally reached the top of the hill, where there is a huge ancient castle, named after Prince St. George. The ancient castle is majestic, located high and facing the sea, obviously it is kept to the point.The Roman era is here, and later it has repeatedly become the target of military strategists.Its latest glorious record is that Prince St. George led the fight against Spanish invaders here in 1580.The resistance was heroic, and the castle held on for half a year when other places had fallen.

Counting the years, the Ming Dynasty was building a wall in Macau to restrict the activities of the Portuguese on the island, and the Portuguese had begun to pay land rent to the Chinese government.China was not weak at the time, but local Chinese officials who dealt with these foreigners were completely unaware that the Portuguese's own national sovereignty had become a serious problem. I went up and down the stone stairs of the castle, overlooking Lisbon again and again, thinking that every family has a difficult scripture to recite. If we only look at it from the perspective of us Chinese, the Portuguese are plotting to devour it step by step. Macau, but if you think about the history of Lisbon, you will know that they may not be so calm.Huge disasters have befallen them again and again, some from nature, some from man-made, but China is far away and totally unaware of it. You see, only six years after the navigator Da Gama returned to Lisbon after discovering India, the Portuguese were just enjoying the glory of discovering the East, and a great plague enveloped Lisbon.Their long-distance fleet in Malacca began to inquire about China's intelligence, but what was more anxious was to inquire about the safety of distant relatives and friends.According to what we now know about the Lisbon epidemic at that time, we can see that the news of relatives and friends inquired by the members of the fleet must be bad or bad. Not long after the epidemic, another major earthquake occurred in Lisbon. The first time, it was when their fleet requested to berth in Macau; To put it a little closer, the larger earthquake in Lisbon in the mid-eighteenth century still holds the record for the largest earthquake in Europe, and only a few thousand of the tens of thousands of buildings in Lisbon remain.Even in the 19th century when they became arrogant on the Macau issue, Lisbon was even more restless.Britain’s bullying of China came later, but Portugal’s bullying lasted much longer, and France stepped in again. In the early nineteenth century, Napoleon invaded Lisbon, and the entire Portuguese royal family fled to Brazil. What is in the world is just the most pitiful fleeing scene, and the situation is far worse than that of the Chinese court at that time.Later, bourgeois revolutions occurred again and again, and they failed again and again. The whole Portugal was gradually weakened by foreign aggression and internal strife. How did the Chinese know that so many disasters happened behind the "Portugals" in front of us. We are rubbing against them for the sovereignty of Macau, but they themselves almost become subjugated slaves again and again, wanting to cry without tears.Maybe a few Chinese officials who approach them will feel a little strange why they have a strong attitude at one time, then they are weak and pitiful, at another time they are in a hurry, and at another time they sigh there...In the age when information is far from being smooth, the distance is a layer. Thick coverage.Now that the cover is lifted, I realize that the account books in the past are so weird.There is also common sense in the grotesque: those who cause trouble to others are likely to suffer a disaster that is far more serious than others, but people are always accustomed to seeing the troublemaker as too strong.