China is fragile and the sea is bumpy. How did China's ancient porcelain reach Europe safely?

The ancients also tried to avoid collision and damage between porcelain in packaging. They mainly use two methods: wrapping with grass and wrapping with paper. Cotton is used to make more advanced porcelain. The main purpose is to separate porcelain from porcelain to prevent electric shock. This is similar to the way we transport fragile goods now, and the basic principle is the same. It's just that there were no cheap foam products and cartons in ancient times.

Straw packaging is to transport porcelain in containers, and then fill the gaps between porcelain with a lot of hay, thus initially solving the collision problem caused by road bumps. However, this method also has obvious shortcomings, that is, packing with grass, a ubiquitous material, is cheap, but it can't get on the table. We should know that ceramics can be compared with today's luxury goods in ancient times, so grass packaging is only suitable for cheap and low-grade ceramic products.

There is not much difference between paper packaging and straw packaging, including later cotton packaging, but the change of packaging materials. Generally, high-grade porcelain used for export or supply is made of cotton, which is very high-grade at first glance because of its good earthquake resistance. Paper packaging is between grass and cotton, and grass comes last. After packaging, the next step is to put these porcelain into larger containers and transport them for a long distance.

According to ancient records, ancient people often used barrels to store and transport porcelain, and barrels are wooden barrels, which are no different from our common wooden barrels now. In order to prevent bumping, grass will be put in the bucket for isolation. Moreover, if it is shipped by sea, it is necessary to arrange the barrels very close. First, in order to save space, the cost of shipping in ancient times was still very high; Second, in order to reduce the gap, it is not easy to collide when the gap is small.