[1] Shuangyu's days as a smuggling hub and pirate haven began as early as 1524 and lasted until its destruction by the Ming navy in 1548, an event that was greatly exaggerated (and wrongly dated) by the 16th-century Portuguese travel writer Fernão Mendes Pinto.
Among these ports, Shuangyu emerged as the primary emporium of clandestine trade,[2] since it was at a reasonable distance from the markets of Ningbo and Hangzhou, but also sufficiently far away from the Ming coast authorities.
Attracted by the growing trade on the Zhejiang coast, the syndicate led by Xu Dong (許棟) and his brothers moved their base of operations from the Malay Peninsula to Shuangyu.
The existing clout of the Xu syndicate and its close partnership with the Portuguese made it the foremost smuggling bloc by 1542 after a series of mergers among the merchant-pirates in Shuangyu.
Hardened by their victories against the Ming navy, the smugglers expanded their network of activities down the coast of China all the way to Guangdong and inland to the metropolis of Nanjing, with Shuangyu being their hub.
"[9] In 1547, the Ming court appointed the veteran general Zhu Wan as the Grand Coordinator of Zhejiang to deal with the illicit trade and piratical activities centred at Shuangyu.
Recent research tends to dismiss Pinto's description of the "blood-bath" as an exaggeration or a fabrication, and suggests that only a small number of Portuguese were caught in the Shuangyu incident.