3 ideas
At Calicut, the fleet's envoy, the king's Muslim chief officials and local brokers met on an agreed day to value the Chinese silks and goods one by one. The price was sealed by a public clasping of hands, after which neither side could revise it. Local merchants then brought pepper and gems to be priced against that fixed standard, reckoning by fingers and toes rather than an abacus, a process that could take one to three months.
Ma Huan divides Java's port population into three groups: Muslims from the western lands who settled to trade, Chinese emigrants from Guangdong and Fujian (many of them Muslim), and native Javanese, whom he describes as unconverted. The categories are defined by origin, religion and trade role, so the port reads as a layered diaspora society rather than a single people.
For each country, Ma Huan records its currency, weights and measures and converts them into Chinese jin, liang and fen, noting coin metal and weight. This makes every society legible through the questions a Ming trading and tribute mission needed answered: what money is used, how goods are weighed, and what can be bought. The survey thereby turns ethnography into a working exchange-rate manual, where commensurability matters more than exotic detail.