Excerpt from China and the Open DoorWhat trade there may have been by the Chinese frontier in ancient days is not known, but probably it was considerable.China is, and has been, almost unique in its position as absolutely independent of resources from without everything the Chinese people require they have within their own territories. The trade the Chinese carried on in the ancient days, that we know about for certain, was principally on their own coasts, and a few junks went yearly to Japan, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and the islands about the Straits of Malacca, more in quest of luxuries than the necessaries of life. These junks made the voyage by one monsoon and home by the next.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.