Quanzhou

In the last year or two, I've also, you know, now we live in Shenzhen.

Uh, I travel a lot for, you know, for research and for things like that, and just this week coming up here, you know, I s- was in, uh, Quanzhou, in Fujian, and then I was in Ningbo for a few days, now I'm up here in Beijing.

And one of the things, I think one of the biggest differences between when you arrived, when I arrived, and say the last 10 or 15 years, if I was come, moving to China today, I don't know if I would move to Beijing or Shanghai, unless I had to for work.

The, the same reason if you're gonna move to the United States, you have more options than New York-

And with the number of travelers from afar who came to China during this time, the canal also accelerated the spread of cosmopolitanism from south to north.

You know, the great foreign trading ports of Guangzhou and Quanzhou.

Get all the glamour shots in the history books.

But back then, all the real action sailed up and down the Grand Canal, supplying the China domestic market with all their necessities of life and foodstuffs.

Then I went back further, and it got worse.

March 2020, the pandemic had just started and a hotel in Quanzhou on China's southeast coast is being used to quarantine people, people who were told to stay inside for their own safety.

On the evening of March 7th, the building comes down on them.

29 dead.

At Hongxi, reviewers approved a design built on rock nobody had drilled.

In Shangxi, the tester rewrote the number himself.

In Quanzhou, the testing firm, the design firm, and the fire inspectors all said yes to a building that was about to fall.

And on September 21st, 2026, China's market regulator announced yet another crackdown on the testing industry itself.

He was apparently a very bright child, so that his parents had high hopes for him.

And then in his youth, he visited Quanzhou for the first time.

Quanzhou is the province of Fujian on China's southeastern coast, and it was for many centuries one of the greatest commercial port city in the world.

Actually, it already was 500 years before Wang Dayuan during the Tang Dynasty.

And foreign merchants, especially Middle Easterners, had already gathered there.

So remember, he was born sometime between 1308 and 1311, so at this point he was as young as 19 and no older than 22.

Perfect backpacking age.

From Quanzhou, the great port, he got on a ship that then sailed through the South China Sea, making its first stop at the Paracel Islands in the northern half of the area, what the Chinese call the Xisha Islands.

But not every country was happy to fall into line.

In 1284, the Uyghur navigator Yigmish sailed from Quanzhou to Sri Lanka.

And by the end of 1286, 10 countries from South and Southeast Asia had paid tribute to Yuan China, acknowledging its supremacy.

But not everyone was receptive.

In other words, before the grand forces could arrive, the object of their hatred, the leader they wanted to overthrow, had already been overthrown and killed.

Of course, they couldn't have known that over in China.

So they sailed out from Quanzhou and then along the coast of Vietnam toward Java.

The small states of Malaya and Sumatra submitted to the Yuan forces as they passed by, and the Yuan installed Darugachi, or viceroys, in these countries.