There was a mosque in Fuzhou. It was said to have been founded during the Zhenguan era of the Tang dynasty, but that claim was unreliable. By the Yuan dynasty, it had nearly collapsed. An official named Zhang Xiaosi used his own salary to restore it, and it was rebuilt after a fire during the Ming dynasty, retaining the same style it had had in the Yuan dynasty.
At first glance, it had the structure of a Chinese temple, but inside it was no different from other mosques. Nick had intended to find someone to translate the Turkish in the book for him, but the admiral had already arrived in Fuzhou, so they had no choice but to continue on their way.
If Nick accepted the East India Company's assignment to chart China's coast, he would be busy every day—taking measurements to accurately map the anchorage at Dinghai and Fuqing Bay, as well as Mawu Harbor and Songshan Port. So far, Europeans had never stopped at any of those ports.
The Jishan Islands, the Yushan Islands, the Jiushan Islands—mapping them one by one was absolutely impossible. Faced with such work, even a highly confident hydrographer would lose patience and might not even remember which islands he had already charted.
After inspecting the forts in Xiangshan County, the fleet's next stop was Zhoushan Island. Its capital was Dinghai, but Putuo Mountain was more famous. Along with Mount Wutai, Mount Emei, and Mount Jiuhua, it was known as one of Buddhism's Four Sacred Mountains, a place where Guanyin Bodhisattva of the South China Sea enlightened all living beings.
Like most Chinese towns, Dinghai was enclosed by walls. It was prosperous inside, its streets paved with stone slabs, its markets filled with a dazzling array of goods, and the town stretched far into