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[[underlined]] APPENDIX II [[underlined]] 18. 

inveterate traders, and it is therefore not strange to find great commercial activity in ancient Ch'u. One of its later kings was referred to as "lord of the commerce of the Yangtze River and of the Eastern Sea". Among the articles exported from the Yangtze valley to China proper are mentioned slaves, the "three metals", [[superscript]] (48) [[/superscript]], hides for armor, yak-tails for standards [[superscript]] (49) [[/superscript]], ivory, "musical" ([[underlined]] i.e.,[[/underlined]] resonant) stones, precious woods, and cinnabar. To the ancient Chinese nobles of the Yellow River basin, the south 
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(48)
   The "three metals" are said by much later commentators to have been gold, silver, and copper; but the query suggests itself, whether they were not in reality gold, copper and tin? The latter mental was of vast importance to the Bronze Age, in China just as elsewhere, and deposits of it existed in the Yangtze basin; while silver production in China has always been slight. 
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(49)
    The yak is mentioned in the [[underlined]] Kuo Yü [[/underlined]] as inhabiting Pa (Ch'u's next neighbor upstream) in Chou times, although of course quite extinct in that region today. 
    Yak-tails as standards have long been known in the Far East and in central and southern Asia; and they^[[|]]appear to have been used in China also. For references to them, [[underlined]] cf. [[/underlined]] the [[underlined]] Shu ching [[/underlined]], V, ii, 1. and the [[underlined]] Shih Ching [[/underlined]], IV, iii, 4, (6).
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was a region of fabulous riches, and to the demand for its products must be ascribed no small part of that widespread cultural diffusion which we know went on through the Chinese Bronze Age. We hear, for example, of the palaces of Ch'u being copied in northern China; [[superscript]] (50) [[/superscript]] an indication that there 
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(50)
   For an instance, see the [[underlined]] Tso chuan [[/underlined]], IX, xxxi, 2. 
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had been in the Yangtze valley a considerable independent development of architecture---in all probability of the rather flamboyant style that has found its most extreme expression in Indo-China and in some of the East Indian islands. 
    But Ch'u had something more to offer than mere perishable material wealth. Her influence on the Yellow River states was strongest precisely during the formative period of the Chinese national character. It