15 Facts About Galeote Pereira

Galeote Pereira was a 16th-century Portuguese soldier of fortune.

Galeote Pereira spent several years in China's Fujian and Guangxi province after being captured by the Chinese authorities in an anti-smuggling operation.

Galeote Pereira engaged in smuggling along the Ming Empire's South China Sea coast, for which enterprise one notorious centre was the Taishan islet of Wuyu in Xiamen Bay.

However, Galeote Pereira's is considered the most complete, and is the best known.

Organization of Galeote Pereira's account is somewhat chaotic: it is neither a strictly chronological account describing a chain of events, nor a treatise describing various aspects of China in some logical order.

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Galeote Pereira's manuscript starts in the style of a geographical overview.

Galeote Pereira is impressed with well-paved roads and the bridges of Fujian's coastal road, built using huge stones.

Galeote Pereira is surprised that the word "China", which the Portuguese had learned in Southern and Southeastern Asia, is not known in China itself, and is curious how Chinese people call their country and themselves.

Galeote Pereira described harsh conditions inside the prisons of the time, as well as the practice of corporal punishment:.

Galeote Pereira that is to be whipped lieth groveling on the ground.

Galeote Pereira did realize at least that there are several types of temples, and the divinity worshiped in some of them is referred to as Omithofom.

Galeote Pereira deems the Fujian Muslims to be almost entirely assimilated into the Chinese mainstream.

Galeote Pereira says that there were over 200 Muslims in a Guangxi city he visited, all attending the Friday prayers in their mosques.

Galeote Pereira thinks "that will no longer endure", because while the older generation is still observant and remembers of its old homeland in Camarquao, "their posterity is so confused, that they have nothing of a Moor in them but abstinence from swine's flesh, and yet many of them do eat thereof privately".

Via that book, or Bernardino de Escalante's work largely derivative of da Cruz, much of the information conveyed by Galeote Pereira got into Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza's History of the Great and Mighty Kingdom of China and the Situation Thereof, which was to become Europe's most authoritative book on China for the following three decades.