IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
478 TRAVELS OF IBN BATUTA IN BENGAL, CHINA,
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vated plains, orchards, and markets, just like the Nile in. Egypt ; but this country is still more flourishing, and there are on the banks a great number of hydraulic wheels. You find in China a great deal of sugar as good as that of Egypt, better in fact ; you find also grapes and plums. I used to think that the plum called Othmani, which you get at Damascus, was peerless ; but I found how wrong I was when • I became acquainted with the plum of China. In this country there is also an excellent water-melon which is like that of Khwaa,rezm and Ispahan. In short all our fruits have their match in China, or rather they are excelled. There is also great store of wheat, and I never anywhere saw it finer or better. One may say just the same of the peas and beans.
Porcelain is made in China nowhere except in the cities of ZAITTTN and SIN-KALÂN. It is made by means of a certain earth got from the mountains of those provinces, which takes fire like charcoal as we shall relate hereafter. The potters add a certain stone which is found in that country ; they burn it for three days, and then pour water on it, so that the
whole falls to powder, and this they cause to ferment. That which has been in fermentation for a whole month, neither
more nor less, gives the best porcelain ; that which has not fermented for more than ten days gives one of inferior quality. Porcelain in China is of about the same value as earthenware with us, or even less. 'Tis exported to India and elsewhere, passing from country to country till it reaches us in Morocco. 'Tis certainly the finest of all pottery-ware.1
1 Marco Polo also mentions the porcelain manufacture in connexion with his account of Zayton, as being found at Timinguy (according to Pauthier's edition Tyunguy), a city in the neighbourhood. This Pauthier supposes to be Tek-hua, a town about sixty miles north of Thsivan-chew or Zayton, where, according to the Imperial geography, vases of white china were anciently manufactured, which enjoyed a great reputation. (Marc Pol, p. 532).
The china-ware of Fokien and Canton is now of a very ordinary description, the manufacture of real porcelain being confined to Kingte-
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