than a year into his rule. Nine years passed between the sixth and the seventh expeditions, probably because the emperor poured his efforts into stabilizing the internal government and solidifying the country's power during a period of social unrest. Then once again he ordered Zheng He off on another expedition. When we consider his shift of the dispatch of Zheng He to five years after he ascended the throne, we can surmise that the ceramic wares in that fleet's cargo essentially retained the Yongle style. This may be one of the reasons for the somewhat obscure differences between the Yongle and Xuande styles. However, the imperial reign marks allow us to clearly distinguish between the imperial kiln wares of the Yongle era and the Xuande era. While undoubtedly there were unmarked works at the very beginning of the Xuande era, eventually they implemented the mark system used on lacquerware and standardized the marking of imperial kiln wares. When we consider this standardization of the imperial reign marks, we note textual references in such historical records as the Mingshilu (明実録). This history recounted an incident that began in 1425 (Hongxi 1, right after the accession of emperor Xuande), when emperor Xuande dispatched the court eunuch Zhang Shan to Jingdezhen to supervise the making of the white porcelain ritual wares that emperor Xuande would use in the ceremonies performed to pray for the souls of his grandfather and father. Zhang Shan, however, overworked the potters and siphoned off imperial use ware for sale in the black market. He was arrested in 1427 (Xuande 2) and beheaded. We can thus consider that such incidents set off an effort to prevent this imperial ware black market, whereby they selected this method of placing the imperial reign mark on works in order to clearly differentiate those for imperial use. The excavated works from Zhushan reveal several different ways the imperial reign marks were written. According to an article by Liu Xinyuan of the Jingdenzhen Ceramic Archaeological Research Institute, there were cricket jars said to have been used in the cricket competitions which were a favorite pastime of emperor Xuande. Judging from the strata layers where the cricket jars were excavated in the dig, first there were unmarked examples, then those with a single vertical line stating "Da Ming Xuande Nian Zhi," followed by those with a six-character two-line mark written inside a double circle. Liu said that they employed the lacquerware mark style, first using an unframed, single-line mark, and then standardizing it to a two-line mark within a double circle. He
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