Chinese envoys have been sailing through the Indian Ocean to India since perhaps the 2nd century BC , yet it was during the Tang dynasty that a strong Chinese maritime presence could be found in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea , into Persia , Mesopotamia ( sailing up the Euphrates River in modern-day Iraq ) , Arabia , Egypt in the Middle East and Aksum ( Ethiopia ) , and Somalia in the Horn of Africa . During the Tang dynasty , thousands of foreign expatriate merchants came and lived in numerous Chinese cities to do business with China , including Persians , Arabs , Hindu Indians , Malays , Bengalis , Sinhalese , Khmers , Chams , Jews and Nestorian Christians of the Near East , among many others . In 748 , the Buddhist monk Jian Zhen described Guangzhou as a bustling mercantile business center where many large and impressive foreign ships came to dock . He wrote that " many big ships came from Borneo , Persia , Qunglun ( Indonesia/Java ) ... with ... spices , pearls , and jade piled up mountain high " , as written in the '' Yue Jue Shu '' ( Lost Records of the State of Yue ) . During the An Lushan Rebellion Arab and Persian pirates burned and looted Guangzhou in 758 , and foreigners were massacred at Yangzhou in 760 . The Tang government reacted by shutting the port of Canton down for roughly five decades , and foreign vessels docked at Hanoi instead . However , when the port reopened it continued to thrive . In 851 the Arab merchant Sulaiman al-Tajir observed the manufacturing of Chinese porcelain in Guangzhou and admired its transparent quality . He also provided a description of Guangzhou 's mosque , its granaries , its local government administration , some of its written records , the treatment of travelers , along with the use of ceramics , rice-wine , and tea . However , in another bloody episode at Guangzhou in 879 , the Chinese rebel Huang Chao sacked the city , and purportedly slaughtered thousands of native Han Chinese , along with foreign Jews , Christians , Zoroastrians , and Muslims in the process . Huang 's rebellion was eventually suppressed in 884
bloody episode at Guangzhou in 879
Guangzhou massacre
Tang dynasty