Introduction of the Sweet Potato to the Ming Dynasty

Timeline

1. 1582–1592Guangdong coast · GuangdongAmerican sweet potatoes were first cultivated in the Spanish Philippines and elsewhere. South Guangdong maritime traders and Annam border peoples had already brought back tubers in the early Wanli years; the Chen Yi line is often cited by agricultural historians as the earliest verifiable record. Local gazetteers of Zhangzhou and Quanzhou in southern Fujian also recall tubers 'brought from overseas by unknown persons.' These early scattered introductions prove Ming contact with the sweet potato predates 1593, but province-wide official promotion had not yet formed.
2. 1593Shamaochi, Fuzhou · FuzhouThe Changle merchant Chen Zhenlong, seeing in Luzon that the red sweet potato was drought-tolerant and high-yielding, defied the Spanish ban on exporting tubers by twisting vines into rope or hiding them in bamboo tubes, sailed seven days back to Fuzhou, and trial-planted them beside his residence using Luzuan methods. His son Chen Jinglun petitioned Governor Jin Xuezeng with 'six benefits and eight advantages, its merit equal to the five grains.' That year's trial crop produced 'some as small as an arm, some as large as a fist,' providing physical evidence for official promotion the following year.
3. 1594–1600Fujian · FujianIn the great Fujian drought of 1594, when rice could hardly be sown, Jin Xuezeng ordered all counties to plant sweet potatoes in place of grain, and the people did not lack food, hence the name 'Jin sweet potato.' The Wanli-era Fuzhou Prefecture Gazetteer and other sources can be cross-verified with the Qing writer Chen Shiyuan's Jinshu Chuanxilu; He Qiaoyuan's Min Shu omitting the event is not enough to negate it. From then on the sweet potato changed from a privately planted crop into a famine-relief policy tool in the southeast, spreading by coastal routes to neighboring prefectures and counties in Zhejiang and Guangdong.
4. 1600Jiangnan and North China · JiangnanDescendants of the Chen family and Fujian merchants continued to spread seed to Zhejiang, Shandong, and Taiwan. Xu Guangqi systematically introduced sweet potato cultivation and its famine-relief value in his Nongzheng Quanshu, bringing the crop into the scholarly tradition of agricultural treatises. After the Qing conquest, the sweet potato became one of the staple crops of hilly drylands, supporting population growth together with American crops such as maize. Fuzhou later built Xianshu Pavilion to commemorate Chen Zhenlong and Jin Xuezeng.