- In the graceful East Asian reading room at the Library
of Congress (news - web sites), one can view a 21-foot-long map--a series
of coastlines and Chinese place names traced in black ink on thin, almost
translucent paper. This is the Wu Bei Zhi, a copy of the actual map used
by Zheng He, the famed 15th-century Chinese explorer who made seven voyages
from Asia to Africa at the height of Chinese maritime dominance.
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- Zheng He (pronounced jung huh) was a skilled commander
who may have stood nearly 7 feet tall. He was also a eunuch and a devout
Muslim--in short, an unlikely commander of the largest maritime expedition
the world had ever seen: 28,000 people sailing on 300 ships. It was a fleet
whose size and grandeur would not be matched until World War I. Zheng He
himself rode in the jewel of the fleet, an enormous hardwood treasure ship
filled with porcelain, silks, books, musical instruments--the finest material
and cultural exports China had to offer. The ship boasted nine masts and
12 enormous red sails and measured some 400 feet--about the size of a small
aircraft carrier. For comparison's sake, when Christopher Columbus sailed
to America nearly a century later, his three ships held 90 men each, and
the longest of them was the 85-foot Santa Maria.
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- But while Columbus and other European explorers are celebrated
in every American child's history books, Zheng He remains relatively uncelebrated
even in his home country. After his last expedition, in 1433, the Chinese
ruling class went through a major philosophical shift, gradually turning
inward to deal with famine, plague, and military threats. Confucian court
officials closed down ports, forbade sea voyages of almost any kind, and
systematically suppressed all traces of the Zheng He journeys. "China
never even claimed that Zheng He was a great explorer," says Chi Wang,
head of the Chinese section at the Library of Congress.
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- Yet here in the West a sort of Zheng He craze is going
on. It's attributable largely to the 2002 bestseller 1421: The Year China
Discovered America, in which British writer Gavin Menzies claims to have
irrefutable evidence that Zheng He's fleet didn't turn back after reaching
the east coast of Africa as previously believed. Menzies argues that the
fleet actually continued around the Cape of Good Hope, discovered the Americas
some 70 years before Columbus, and went on to circumnavigate the world,
100 years before Magellan. The fleet probably had the seamanship and resources
to complete such a voyage. Menzies's scholarship has been attacked by academics,
but if book sales are any indication, the theory has struck a nerve.
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- How did a Muslim eunuch come to command such a powerful
force and accomplish these feats at sea? Zheng He was one of thousands
of Muslims living in a surprisingly diverse China of six centuries ago.
Both his grandfather and father were known as hajji, meaning that they
had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, a journey that Zheng also later completed.
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- In 1381, when Zheng He was 10 years old, the imperial
Army attacked his province, an isolated area on China's lawless southwestern
border that was a hideout for outlaws from the ousted Mongol regime. Zheng's
father was killed in the fighting. As was the custom in times of war, young
male children of the enemy were castrated. (Survivors of the brutal procedure
were sometimes handed their preserved genitals in a jar, which they would
keep with them throughout their lives in the hope that after burial they
would be made whole in the afterlife.)
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- Zheng's castration had historical reverberations. As
a eunuch, he was taken as a servant into the household of his enemy, Zhu
Di, the emperor's fourth son. Though robbed of a family, he was well cared
for and educated--in fact, given advantages that he probably never would
have received otherwise.
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- Eunuch power. Though the custom of castration seems bizarre
today, eunuchs were actually a powerful force in the society of imperial
China. Part of their power came from their intimate access to powerful
women and their children. Child eunuchs often grew up with future princes
and emperors. Indeed, eunuchs garnered so much wealth and political influence
from their close contact with royal families that commoners sometimes had
their sons castrated in the hopes of improving the family lot.
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- Zheng He grew up strong and intelligent, apparently impressing
his young master, Zhu Di. In short order he went from houseboy to right-hand
man, plotting strategies with the prince and riding next to him in battle.
He later assisted Zhu Di in a brilliant and bloody coup to usurp the throne.
When Zhu Di became the third Ming emperor of China in 1402, he soon named
his loyal eunuch and friend admiral and commander in chief of the huge
treasure fleet.
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- The admiral's ships sailed to many lands in Southeast
Asia, where the admiral not only collected cultural observations but also
used his influence and military strength to manipulate regimes. Although
China was a lone superpower at the time, with the military force to crush
almost any opposition, the foreign policy of 15th-century China was oddly
modern. Unlike other warlike invaders and colonizers, the Chinese preferred
trade sanctions. Trade-friendly regimes were rewarded, while fractious
states were undermined--not through direct confrontation but through aid
to enemy states. Siam and Sumatra, for example, which were growing powerful,
were subdued when China decided to recognize Malacca, an upstart city-state
in Siamese (modern Thai) territory. Standing between Siam and Sumatra,
Malacca became the precursor to present-day Malaysia.
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- "The Chinese had no desire to establish colonies,"
says Louise Levathes, author of When China Ruled the Seas. "Their
focus was trade--acquiring things the empire needed, such as medicinal
herbs and incense, hardwoods, pepper, precious stones, African ivory, Arabian
horses for the imperial cavalry," she says. "They clearly knew
about Europe from Arab traders but thought that the wool and wine, all
they heard Europe had to offer, were not very interesting."
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- Zheng's fleet made seven voyages in all, and the commander
probably died near Calicut, in present-day India, at about age 62. Upon
returning to China, Zheng's crew found that the expeditions, rather than
being celebrated as heroic, were slandered by the Confucian court officials
as indulgent adventures that wasted the country's resources. Zheng He's
trip logs were "lost" by officials seeking to suppress further
overseas travels.
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- In many respects, Zheng He stood at a pivotal point in
world history, according to many scholars of the colonial period. Had his
magnificent fleets been maintained and had China not turned inward and
willingly lost its vast scientific and military advantage, Europeans most
likely could not have taken over the spice trade and subjugated the Asian
and African continents. And had China had the interest, it could have colonized
Australia and the Americas before the Europeans.
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- That, of course, is an alternative history that didn't
happen. Although there is compelling evidence that the Chinese reached
Australia and South America before Cook and Columbus, contact probably
occurred centuries before Zheng He set sail. Zheng He's greatest legacy
is the vast diaspora of Chinese entrepreneurs who, with Zheng He as inspiration,
broke with imperial edicts and the classical Confucian custom of staying
near home and ancestry to seek out lives of commerce in foreign lands.
The trickle of deserting sailors from the fleet opened a floodgate of emigration
that continues to this day: Ethnic Chinese still dominate the economies
of many Southeast Asian countries. In Indonesia, Zheng He is revered as
a local god; thousands visit a temple dedicated to him every year. Even
in Africa, there are many who claim Chinese heritage. Indeed, some believe
they are descendants of Zheng He's shipwrecked sailors.
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- Today, more than 34 million Chinese live overseas in
140 countries, spreading over all the known lands depicted in the 21-foot
scroll map, the Wu Bei Zhi, and beyond. A beguiling passage on a 1432 stone
tablet erected by Zheng He survives in Fujian province, a maritime area
that has provided much of the Chinese diaspora. It reads: "We . .
. have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising sky high, and
we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency
of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds day and
night, continued their course [as rapidly as] a star, traversing those
savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare."
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- DID YOU KNOW?
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- The first European to see North America may have been
Bjarni Herjolfsson. According to Norse sagas, the Viking trader was sailing
from Iceland to Greenland in 986 when he got lost in the fog. He made his
way to "a flat and wooded country"--Canada, no doubt--but never
left the boat. The sagas tease him for his timidity. But he did share his
news with (and sell his ship to) the next Euro-visitor to the Americas,
Leif Ericson.
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