Choe Bu

Choe Bu (, 1454–1504) was a Korean diarist, historian, politician, and travel writer during the early Joseon Dynasty. He was most well known for the account of his shipwrecked travels in China from February to July 1488, during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). He was eventually banished from the Joseon court in 1498 and executed in 1504 during two political purges. However, in 1506 he was exonerated and given posthumous honors by the Joseon court.

Choe's diary accounts of his travels in China became widely printed during the 16th century in both Korea and Japan. Modern historians also refer to his written works, since his travel diary provides a unique outsider's perspective on Chinese culture in the 15th century. The attitudes and opinions expressed in his writing represent in part the standpoints and views of the 15th century Confucian Korean literati, who viewed Chinese culture as compatible with and similar to their own. His description of cities, people, customs, cuisines, and maritime commerce along China's Grand Canal provides insight into the daily life of China and how it differed between northern and southern China during the 15th century.

Official career The hyanggyo of Daegu; the hyanggyo were government-run educational facilities where students were educated for civil service.

Choe Bu of the Tamjin Choe clan was born in 1454 in the prefectural town of Naju in Jeollanam-do, Korea. Choe passed the jinsa examinations in 1477, In preparation for the exams, he studied the Five Classics as Confucian students had for centuries, but he also was taught the emphasis of the Four Books of Zhu Xi (1130–1200), which was in line with the Neo-Confucian doctrine first accepted in mainstream Chinese education during the mid-13th century. He passed his first civil service examination in 1482 and a second civil service examination in 1486, qualifying him for an immediate post in government. In keeping with his Confucian values, Choe prepared to leave his post immediately and begin the period of mourning for the loss of his father. Before reaching the shores of Zhejiang, Choe wrote on the fifth day of his travel at sea during the storm:

This day a dense fog obscured everything. Things a foot away could not be made out. Towards evening, rain streamed down heavily, abating somewhat with night. The frightening waves were like mountains. They would lift the ship up into the blue sky and then drop it as if down an abyss. They billowed and crashed, the noise splitting heaven from earth. We might all be drowned and left to rot at any moment. On the sixth day, during fairer weather, their ship came upon a group of islands in the Yellow Sea where Chinese pirates were moored. The pirates robbed their ship of spare goods and rations, threw away the Koreans' oars and anchor, and left them to drift aimlessly into the sea. Through writing, he questioned these Chinese sailors on how far the nearest official road and courier route was. Employing his wit and intellect in these dangerous confrontations of being misconstrued as a coastal pirate, Choe avoided disaster for him and his crew.

The battalion commander at Taizhou ordered his officer Zhai Yong to escort Choe Bu's Korean party to the regional command centre at Shaoxing on 6 March. Choe Bu and his officers were carried in sedan chairs, an accommodation provided by the Taizhou Battalion, although in spots of rough terrain Choe Bu and his officers were forced to walk on foot like the others. At this point, water transport was the preferable means of travel for the courier agents; Choe wrote "all envoys, tribute, and commerce come and go by water. If either the water in the locks and rivers is too shallow because of drought to let boats pass or there is a very urgent matter, the overland route is taken." When the party reached Ningbo on that day, Choe Bu remarked on the beautiful scenery; when they reached Cixi City, he noted the city's many markets and cluttering of warships; upon entering Ningbo and reaching the Supreme Piracy-Defense Office, Choe wrote that the gates and crowds there were three times as great as at Cixi. Due to the hai jin laws, the Ming government was the only entity allowed to conduct foreign trade; regardless of this prohibition, Choe was informed of the rampant illegal smuggling that passed through Hangzhou, bringing in sandalwood, pepper, and perfumes from Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. Yet this was a risky pursuit, as Choe was made aware that half the ships that engaged in this business did not return.

Traveling on average per day, it would take the party 43 days from 25 March to 9 May to travel from Hangzhou to Beijing; even though the party spent a day's time in Suzhou, they still beat their deadline by two days, since was the courier system's standard traveling distance per day.

Choe Bu observed that, despite Hangzhou's greatness, it was no competition for Suzhou, while the former was merely a supplemental commercial feeder that served to enrich the Jiangnan region.

Describing the suburban sprawl around Suzhou and other cities of the Yangzi delta, Choe wrote (note, one li here is equal to 1.7 km or 1.05 miles): "Often for as much as twenty li around them, village gates crowd the ground, markets line the roads, towers look out on other towers, and boats ply stem to stern." He wrote that teams of ten oxen were used to pull their boats through the rapids, while teams of 100 men were used at the next stage of river rapids, the Xuzhou Rapids.

Choe found that people all across China, and in nearly every social strata, participated in business affairs. He wrote that even Chinese scholar officials—who were traditionally scorned if they took part in any private business venture— would "carry balances in their own sleeves and will analyze a profit for pennies". On 3 June, the officer in charge of Choe's escort notified the transport office in Beijing that three carriages plus horses and donkeys would be needed in the journey to the Korean border; when these were granted in the morning, the party swiftly departed from Beijing. Choe was not sad to leave the sights of Beijing behind, as he found the people there to be obsessed with business and cared little for agriculture or farming, a clear indication of his Confucian-oriented values.

Return to Korea The party reached the capital of Liaodong on 2 July, left four days later on 6 July, and on 12 July Choe's party finally crossed the Yalu River and entered Joseon Korea. Choe was ultimately executed in 1504 during the Second Literati Purge. A slightly abbreviated version of Meskill's translation was published as a book in 1965 by the University of Arizona Press, for the Association for Asian Studies.

Choe wrote in the usual tone of a learned Confucian scholar, which provides insight into the values and attitudes of early Joseon Confucian scholars. Choe Bu's account is unique among foreign travel accounts in China, since it is from the perspective of a castaway, not a commonplace Korean ambassador to Ming China. Historian Eugene Newton Anderson notes that, while pre-modern Koreans tended to adulate China and associate it with everything that was positive, Choe regarded it with a more objective outsider's perspective. When curious Chinese pressed Choe about Korea's rituals of ancestor worship, Choe responded, "All my countrymen build shrines and sacrifice to their ancestors. They serve the gods and spirits they ought to serve and do not respect unorthodox sacrifices." Historian Laurel Kendall writes that this was perhaps wishful thinking, but it reveals what a 15th-century Korean Confucian thought the Chinese would consider proper and in accordance with the teaching of Confucius.

However, through the written dialogue in his diary, Choe did express slight differences between the cultures of China and Korea. For example, when the Chinese asked him whether or not the Korean education system offered degrees for specialists who dealt with only one of the Five Classics, Choe wrote that a Korean student who only studied one of the Classics and not all five of them was doomed to failing his exam and never attaining the rank of a full-fledged Confucian scholar. Moreover, Choe asserted that they could describe for him the mountains, rivers, old ruins, and other places in their regions, along with the significance of dynastic changes. Choe also bothered to list items such as the generous provisions provided by regional commanders, which included in one instance a plate of pork, two ducks, four chickens, two fish, one beaker of wine, one plate of rice, one plate of walnuts, one plate of vegetables, one plate of bamboo shoots, one plate of wheat noodles, one plate of jujube fruit, and one plate of bean curd.

Similar publications A similar episode to Choe Bu's shipwrecked travels in China occurred in 1644, when three Japanese ships headed for Hokkaidō became lost in a violent storm at sea. The 15 survivors led by – those who were not murdered when they came to shore – drifted into a port in what is now Primorsky Krai, but what was then controlled by the newly established Qing dynasty of China. When they returned to Japan, they were interrogated by Tokugawa authorities, and submitted a report to Tokugawa Iemitsu (r. 1623–1651) on their experiences in China. Just like in the case of Choe Bu, this account was published as the Dattan hyōryūki ("Account of drifting into the [Land of the] Tartars", ) and as the Ikoku monogatari ("Stories from a Foreign Land", ).