A junk is an ancient Chinese sailing vessel design still in use
today. Junks may have developed from very early bamboo rafts which had a high
stern. Cromagnon cave paintings on the Indo China coast show junk shaped
doublehull vessels. Junks were developed during the Han
Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD) and were
used as sea-going vessels as early as the 2nd century AD. They evolved in the
later dynasties, and were used throughout Asia for extensive ocean voyages. They were
found, and in lesser numbers are still found, throughout South-East
Asia and India, but primarily in China, perhaps most
famously inHong Kong.
Found more broadly today is a growing number of modern recreational junk-rigged
sailboats.
The term junk may be used to cover many kinds of
boat—ocean-going, cargo-carrying, pleasure
boats, live-aboards. They vary
greatly in size and there are significant regional variations in the type of
rig. To Western eyes, however, they all appear to
resemble one another due to their most significant shared feature, their fully battened sails. My
friend Iris
sent me this wonderful card from Hong Kong. Besides the junk you can see the
Victoria Peak on the Hong Kong Island and on the other side the commercial
District of Kowloon on the mainland.