17 世纪初的一天， 马尔代夫的国王发现了一只在印度洋上捕鱼的大鸟， 可是谁也不知其来源。 最终有人告诉国王， 这是一只 “从中国来的鱼鹰”。 通过爬梳 14 世纪以来的中外文献中的 “中国的鱼鹰 (鸬鹚)”， 辅之以欧人笔下关于中国鱼苗的记录，来讨论近代欧洲之中国知识的生成、 传播与流转， 藉之管窥中外文化交流不易察觉之途径与内容， 其中海洋亚洲是其重要通道与参与者。

One day in the early years of the seventeenth century, the king of Maldives saw a big fishing bird in the Indian Ocean. When he asked where it came from, he was told it was “a fishing bird from China.” This article examines the descriptions of cormorant, the so-called China's fishing bird, supplemented with European records on China’s fish fry, and thus illustrates the production, reproduction, and circulation of China’s knowledge about modern Europe by collecting and connecting various texts(both Chinese and Western ones)spanning more than 500 years. The descriptions present an excellent opportunity to get a glimpse of the details of Sino-foreign cultural interactions. Maritime Asia, as illustrated in the paper, was an important maritime route which facilitated such interactions.