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The Excavations in Quanzhou
The International Port
Quanzhou has a complex administrative history and is known by a number of names throughout the pre-Modern Era. Quanzhou Prefecture was established in the Tang Dynasty (618-907). During the Yuan dynasty (1272-1368) when China was under Mongol rule, a Maritime Trade Commission was established at the port in 1277. Causing some confusion for later scholars, the city was better known to visitors from the Middle East and from Europe as Zayton or Zaitun (Latin Cayton).
After the Mongol period, Quanzhou declined in importance as a river-port because of progressive silting of its harbor. Gone were the days when hundreds of ocean-going sailing vessels moored in its famous harbor carrying precious cargo from as far afield as Alexandria as witnessed by Marco Polo, who departed from China via Quanzhou
in 1292.
Early Excavations
Evidence of early Christian presence in Quanzhou first came to light in the West in the 17th century, when Roman Catholic missionaries noticed what appeared to be gravemarkers decorated with the typically Nestorian Lotus & Cross symbol embedded either in its medieval walls or used as rockery in gardens.
A much more significant find in the 1920s was a headstone with an angel-figure with four wings holding a Cross-on-the-Lotus symbol. During that same decade, Western scholars Paul Pelliot and P. Y. Saeki wrote volumes in
English that made the West aware of the archaeological richness of the early Christians in China.
The building of a railway in the 20th century and the decision to further demolish the medieval walls to prevent its use by the Imperial Japanese Army in 1938 led to further discoveries, mainly inscribed or decorated headstones which once formed parts of Christian sarcophagi.
Wu Wenliang’s Stones
Many of the finds were rescued by a local teacher and antiquarian by the name of Wu Wenliang who was also responsible for locating a Manichaean shrine on Huabiao Hill. Wu kept most of the finds in his backyard and began systematically to catalog them, including Christian, Islamic, and Hindu material. This he published in a seminal work Quanzhou zongjiao shike (Religious Stone Inscriptions at Quanzhou, Beijing 1957), while holding a fellowship at the Academy of Sciences in Beijing. His collection and his energy and enthusiasm eventually led to the formation of the now famous UNESCO-sponsored Quanzhou Maritime Museum.
Sadly, Wu did not live to witness this major event as he was a victim of the Cultural Revolution (he died in 1969). His son Wu Yuxiong continued his work and was able to publish a major second edition of his father’s monograph-catalogue in 2005. The artifacts collected by his father, mainly tombstones, now constitute the main collection of the Epigraphical Gallery of the Quanzhou Maritime Museum.
The Excavations Continue
It was the progressive demolition of the medieval walls of Quanzhou in the period between the two World Wars in the 20th century that led to the finds which form the main source of study for this research project. There is now no problem identifying Quanzhou with the Zayton of Marco Polo as a number of inscriptions found in Quanzhou and studied by the team contain the Western/Middle Eastern name of the city—Zayton in Syro-Turkic and Cayton in Latin.
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