[In the Yuen-shi (ch. 94), Shi po, Maritime trade regulations, it “is stated, among other things, that in 1277, a superintendency of foreign trade was established in Ts’uaen-chou.  Another superintendency was established for the three ports of K’ing-yuean (the present Ning-po), Shang-hai, and Gan-p’u.  These three ports depended on the province of Fu-kien, the capital of which was Ts’uean-chou.  Farther on, the ports of Hang-chou and Fu-chou are also mentioned in connection with foreign trade.  Chang-chou (in Fu-kien, near Amoy) is only once spoken of there.  We meet further the names of Wen-chou and Kuang-chou as seaports for foreign trade in the Mongol time.  But Ts’uean-chou in this article on the sea-trade seems to be considered as the most important of the seaports, and it is repeatedly referred to.  I have, therefore, no doubt that the port of Zayton of Western mediaeval travellers can only be identified with Ts’uaen-chou, not with Chang-chou....  There are many other reasons found in Chinese works in favour of this view.  Gan-p’u of the Yuen-shi is the seaport Ganfu of Marco Polo.” (Bretschneider, Med.  Res. I. pp. 186-187.)

In his paper on Changchow, the Capital of Fuhkien in Mongol Times, printed in the Jour.  China B.R.A.  Soc. 1888, pp. 22-30, Mr. Geo. Phillips from Chinese works has shown that the Port of Chang-chau did, in Mongol times, alternate with Chinchew and Fu-chau as the capital of Fuh-kien.—­H.C.]

Further, Zayton was, as we see from this chapter, and from the 2nd and 5th of Bk.  III., in that age the great focus and harbour of communication with India and the Islands.  From Zayton sailed Kublai’s ill-fated expedition against Japan.  From Zayton Marco Polo seems to have sailed on his return to the West, as did John Marignolli some half century later.  At Zayton Ibn Batuta first landed in China, and from it he sailed on his return.

All that we find quoted from Chinese records regarding T’swan-chau corresponds to these Western statements regarding Zayton.  For centuries T’swan-chau was the seat of the Customs Department of Fo-kien, nor was this finally removed till 1473.  In all the historical notices of the arrival of ships and missions from India and the Indian Islands during the reign of Kublai, T’swan-chau, and T’swan-chau almost alone, is the port of debarkation; in the notices of Indian regions in the annals of the same reign it is from T’swan-chau that the distances are estimated; it was from T’swan-chau that the expeditions against Japan and Java were mainly fitted out. (See quotations by Pauthier, pp. 559, 570, 604, 653, 603, 643; Gaubil, 205, 217; Deguignes, III. 169, 175, 180, 187; Chinese Recorder (Foochow), 1870, pp. 45 seqq.)