“…… On October 24, 1519, I woke up this morning to find myself sweating profusely, and I felt that my body seemed to be much better, at least my fever had basically subsided. The small white pills (fever-reducing tablets, oral penicillin, rofloxacin capsules) and the ointment (erythromycin anti-inflammatory ointment) in a tin cartridge sent by the Chinese were indeed very effective, although they were described by Father Aguilar as devil's things.

However, the main culprits who caused us to be injured and sick and killed many people were also these Chinese who arrogantly provoked conflicts.

This fact makes people feel very mixed, I don't know whether to thank them or hate them, at least I feel a lot of resentment.

But most of my men were very happy, because although the Chinese forcibly took away our gold, silver, and jewelry, they also gave us a lot of good rewards. Many people had already cut all kinds of clothes and cloaks from the Chinese silk they had just been assigned, and they were draped with great joy and showed off, and even touched each other—it must be said that these silks were indeed gorgeous, and the colors were so brilliant that they seemed to be dreamy. ”

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“…… On October 25, 1519, although the Chinese had an amazing effect on medicine, more than thirty wounds had not yet healed, and they could not even move forward on crutches, so they could only lie groggily on stretchers, carried by horses or companions, making the team move very slowly.

Fortunately, the Chinese march is also very slow these days, because they are busy selling oriental products along the way, walking only about two or three hours a day, and the rest of the time is spent setting up camps and setting up makeshift markets. So we can easily keep up.

In the legends of the local Indians, there is a 'legendary bazaar' called 'Yiwu Small Commodity Market' in the land of Chinese, where you can trade with the gods and buy many 'artifacts' that mortals can't make or even imagine......

Indeed, according to Marco. Polo's Travels and Da. Gamma saw that the Chinese live in a rich country that lacks almost nothing, but produce something that countless Europeans are extremely envious. Hordes of European navigators traveled thousands of miles in search of the tea, silk, spices, and porcelain that intoxicated all of Europe.

And once the Chinese walk out of the house with their goods, they can immediately turn their place into a legendary bustling market.

For example, the makeshift bazaar set up by the Chinese envoys camping along the route was small in scale, with a dozen stalls at most, but it seemed legendary enough - because they sold good things unique to the East.

As far as I could see, one of the largest stalls was a dazzling array of fine porcelain such as bottles, cups, plates, pots, pots, saucers, spoons, pots, and artistic polychrome porcelain figurines. There are several large vases with extravagant glazes, which I have seen at auction houses in Venice, when each vase sold for up to 6,000 florins (gold coins minted in the city of Florence in northern Italy, Renaissance European hard currency). Here, however, we can buy a pair for about sixty florins. The price difference and windfall profits contained in this are very appealing even to me, who is not very good at business.

At another stall, the Chinese introduced thousands of steel products, ranging from axes, knives, daggers, and other weapons to spoons, cups, and other cutlery, and sold them openly, seemingly without fear that these weapons would one day be cut on their own heads—on the island of Cuba, which was already under the rule of the Kingdom of Spain, we did not allow any Indian to hold steel swords, lest they use them to start a rebellion. But here, the Chinese let people carry steel knives and axes to every village and town they saw along the way to shout and sell, lest they not sell enough! …,

This worries me that the Indians are not without warriors, but that their stone knives and axes cannot cut through the armor of European warriors, which allows our army to fight all the way from the sea. But Chinese brazenly sold steel knives and axes to the Indians everywhere, and the quality was even better than the long swords and axes in our hands......

In addition to this, to our surprise, the Chinese also sell a lot of rather delicate glass products. They are completely transparent and colorless, as well as red, green, gold and blue, as well as a variety of stained glass vessels, each of which is intricately decorated and has an extremely luxurious shape. There are also glass mirrors that are sold together, also better than their counterparts by Venetian craftsmen, and sold for much cheaper. The glass beads we brought from the island of Cuba could be exchanged for jade and gold in the Mayan tribes, but only for a few fruits and vegetables here.

While these oriental specialties are impressive, the most popular items in the Chinese bazaars are pure refined salt, crystalline white sugar, small wooden sticks called 'matches', and a strong shochu sold by the Chinese in clear glass bottles. Although it was very different from the whiskey and brandy I had drunk (rum had not yet been invented in this era), it tasted something special.

What's even more crazy is that in Spain it is usually necessary to sell grain by grain, and even nobles are only willing to use a small pinch of fine pepper at the feast, which is actually ground into a very fine white or black powder by the Chinese at the moment, packed in small transparent glass bottles, and sold with white sugar and refined salt. There are also a variety of other spices such as cloves, peppercorns, nutmeg and cinnamon, and the prices are staggeringly cheap.

These dazzling array of gorgeous goods make every one of our soldiers drool. But the Indians of this wild land of Mexico don't seem to know much about goods. The Chinese sold a lot of steel knives and axes, silk cloth, matches, salt, sugar, ceramics and glass cutlery, as well as shochu and small mirrors. But spices and tea are rarely interested, and even if the Chinese cut prices several times, they can't sell them.

Seeing this, some Spanish soldiers exchanged all the gold and silver they had secretly hidden in the city of Giorula for tea, pepper, cloves, and other oriental spices, and a finger-sized piece of gold could be exchanged for a large bag (70 yuan per kilogram for cloves and 40 yuan per kilogram for pepper in the modern Chinese market), which was a fraction of the price offered by Venetian and Portuguese merchants.

Unfortunately, the Chinese did not seem to have many spices, and they were sold out quickly, leaving the unresponsive people feeling remorseful.

I also bought some fairly pure fine salt from the Chinese and sprinkled it with pepper in the polenta and chicken broth for dinner today, and it felt like it had become much more delicious. ”