Shuangyu

Shuangyu () was a port on () off the coast of Zhejiang, China. During the 16th century, the port served as an illegal entrepôt of international trade, attracting traders from Japan, Southeast Asia, and Portugal in a time when private overseas trade was banned by China's ruling Ming dynasty. Portuguese sources called the place Liampó, taking the name of the nearby city of Ningbo on the mainland. Shuangyu's days as a smuggling hub and pirate haven began as early as 1524 and lasted until its destruction by the Ming navy in 1548, an event that was greatly exaggerated (and wrongly dated) by the 16th-century Portuguese travel writer Fernão Mendes Pinto.

==Illegal trade in the 16th century== In the 16th century, a global demand for Chinese products like silk and porcelain coincided with a high demand of silver in China. However, the premier suppliers of silver in East Asia, the Japanese and the Portuguese, could not legally trade in China to meet the massive demand. At the same time, Chinese merchants were prevented from trading with foreigners due to the Ming dynasty's maritime prohibition laws. To conduct private trade in China, the Japanese and Portuguese traders collaborated with smugglers on island ports along the Zhejiang and Fujian coast. Among these ports, Shuangyu emerged as the primary emporium of clandestine trade, since it was at a reasonable distance from the markets of Ningbo and Hangzhou, but also sufficiently far away from the Ming coast authorities.