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particularly tea, surpassed the trade in the spice. In 1722, when tea was enjoying brisk trade, more than nine million pounds of pepper were still being exported to Europe from Asia.
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    The Chinese had a long and enduring appetite for black pepper. The spice was first brought into China from India as early as the second century, mainly for medicinal purposes. Under the Sung Dynasty (960 to 1127) the trade in pepper expanded and the spice was often brought as tribute from visiting Southeast Asian embassies. The Chinese were trading with Java and with Sumatra at least since the tenth century.
    When Marco Polo traveled to China in 1271 during the Yuan Dynasty (1271 to 1367), tremendous quantities of pepper were being imported into the country, where the spice was used widely in cooking. In The Travels, the Venetian traveler reported: “At the end of the five days’ journey lies the splendid city of Zaiton [modern day Quanzhou], at which is the port for all the ships that arrive from India laden with costly wares and precious stones of great price and big pearls of fine quality. It is also a port for the merchants of Manzi that is, of all the surrounding territory, so that the total traffic in gems and other merchandise entering or leaving this port is a marvel to behold. From this city and its port goods are exported to the whole province of Manzi. And I assure you that for one spice ship that goes to Alexandria or elsewhere to pick up pepper for export to Christendom, Zaiton is visited by a hundred. For you must know that it is one of the two ports in the world with the biggest flow of merchandise.”
    Marco Polo was also dazzled by the city of Hang-zhou, which he called Kinsai. He commented on its stately mansions and gardens, the canals crossed by numerous stone bridges, and the traders who brought supplies by carts and boats. The crowds flocking to its enormous marketplaces especially impressed the European. “… anyone seeing such a multitude would believe it a stark impossibility that food could be found to fill so many mouths,” Polo wrote. To convey the hugh quantities of provisions, including meat, wine, and groceries, that had to be brought into the city to meet the demand, Polo quoted a customs official who told him that the amount of pepper consumed daily in the city amounted to forty-three cartloads, each weighing 223 pounds.
    Marco Polo also described the size of Chinese junks, which carried a much larger cargo than European ships. He estimated that 150 to 300 men were needed to crew the Chinese vessels, and one ship could take as much as “five or six thousand baskets of pepper.”
    The consumption of pepper in China expanded even more following the extraordinary voyages of Zheng He during the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644). In the early 1400s, this commander began his historic voyages for the Emperor Zhu Di. Pepper was one of the primary reasons for the voyages of the magnificent Chinese Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne. A man named Ma Huan accompanied the fleet on three of its seven expeditions, acting as the official translator of either Arabic or Persian. He wrote about visiting Calicut, Malacca, and the port city of Pasai in northern Sumatra, where a large number of foreign ships came to buy black pepper.
    In Calicut, pepper was extensively cultivated by the people living in the mountainous countryside who had established gardens, Ma Huan wrote in The Overall Survey of the Ocean’s Shores. “When the period of the tenth moon arrives, the pepper ripens; [and] it is collected, dried in the sun, and sold,” he wrote. “Of course, big pepper-collectors come and collect it, and take it up to the official storehouse to be stored; if there is a buyer, an official gives permission for the sale; the duty calculated according to the amount [of the purchase price] and is paid in to the authorities. Each one po-ho of pepper is sold for two hundred