Not content with these revelations Zadig Bey produced another, still more surprising.

Why, he asked me, do you know how the Pearl River got its name?

No, I said, so then he pointed his spyglass at an island in the river, not far from the foreign enclave: it is but a small outcrop of rock, with some crumbling ruins on it. Fanquis speak of it as ‘the Dutch folly’.

‘But the Chinese have another name for it,’ said Zadig Bey. ‘They call it Pearl Island. It’s said that there was nothing there until a jewel merchant from across the sea (whether he was an Arab or an Armenian or a Hindusthani, no one knows) but wherever he was from he was clumsier than a jewel merchant ought to be – he dropped the best of his pearls in the river. Now you’ve seen how muddy that water is? How quickly things disappear? Most things maybe, but not that pearl. It lay at the bottom, glowing like a lantern and slowly growing larger until it grew into an island. And from then on that waterway, which is properly spoken of as the “West River”, became famous as the Choo Kiang or “Pearl River”.’

You will understand how dumbfounded I was.

‘I cannot credit it, Zadig Bey,’ I cried. ‘Surely you do not expect me to believe that the Pearl River may owe its name to an Achha?’

He answered with a nod. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is quite likely.’

‘So what happened then?’ I asked. ‘Why did they go away? The Arabs, the Persians and the Achhas?’

‘It is a familiar story,’ said Zadig Bey. ‘The Tang went into decline and people became discontented. There was hunger and unrest, and as is common at such times, the troublemakers looked to place the blame on the foreigners. One day a rebel army stormed into the city and killed them all – men, women and children, over a hundred thousand of them were slaughtered, in a great river of blood. The memory of it was so bitter and lingered so long, that for centuries afterwards no visitors would venture here from overseas.’ Here he paused, with a proud smile. ‘But when the foreigners did return it was my own people who were in the lead.’

‘Armenians?’ said I, and he nodded: ‘Yes. Some came overland from Lhasa, where a large Armenian community has existed since late Roman times. Some came by sea, through Persia and Hindusthan. By the fourteenth century there were hundreds of them living here in Canton. One of them, a woman, even built an Armenian church.’

‘Inside the walled city?’

‘Possibly. But this was almost five hundred years ago, you understand. The walls were not where they are now.’

‘But it was still possible, was it, for foreigners to venture inside the city?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Zadig Bey, ‘it was only about a hundred years ago that foreigners were banned from entering the city.’