Admiral to retrace voyages that put China on the map
Clifford Coonan
28 February 2005
The Times of London

Explorer known as the Three-Jewelled Eunuch is now being rediscovered at home, Clifford Coonan reports from Beijing.

SIX HUNDRED years after Admiral Zheng He, the intrepid naval explorer, took to the high seas, a modern-day Admiral Zheng has embarked on a mission to retrace seven voyages that reached as far as the east coast of Africa.

The original Zheng He, who was known as the "Three-Jewelled Eunuch", sailed to South East Asia, India, the Gulf and the Red Sea. Some historians claim that he even made it to America.

Now Rear-Admiral Zheng Ming, retired, of the People's Liberation Army navy, is building a replica of one of Zheng He's "treasure ships" and plans to follow his routes across the world.

"Zheng He's route is the Silk Road of the sea," said the admiral, who is a member of a group devoted to studying Zheng He's achievements.

In 1405 Emperor Yongle, the first ruler of the Ming Dynasty, wanted to show China's naval power and commissioned Admiral Zheng, a Muslim eunuch from Yunnan province, to go on a daring mission to the seas known to the Chinese as the "Western Oceans".

A bestselling book by the British author Gavin Menzies claims that Zheng reached the Americas in 1421. Other historians dispute this, but his achievement was certainly considerable, taking him to 37 countries over 28 years.

The replica being built by Admiral Zheng will be 61m (200ft) long, but lack of information about the original flagship, which was double the length, means making a bigger ship is technically too difficult.

Zheng He has become a focal point for Chinese nationalism. In the days when the intrepid admiral roamed the high seas, China was far more technologically advanced than any other culture on Earth. It had no equal on the high seas.

His fleet was the mightiest that had ever sailed, with 300 ships and 37,000 sailors. The pride of the fleet were the treasure ships and it is a replica of one of these that Admiral Zheng's group wants to build. Once the ship is built, the first step will be to take it up and down the Chinese coast, which will hopefully happen this year. The second step is to travel around South-East Asia, before taking the ship further by the end of the decade.

China has been keen to push the Zheng He story as a symbol of Chinese ingenuity, but also of its benign foreign policy. Admiral Zheng points out that Zheng was not a colonising conquistador. He never built a fort and was more interested in trade than theft, although the fleet was also supposed to spread the word -with the peoples of southern Asia in particular -that China was a mighty power.

Born Ma He in 1371 to poor parents, as a boy he was captured by Ming soldiers and castrated. He was forced into the army, where he excelled, and also studied languages and philosophy. He died aged 62 in 1433.

He sailed for nearly 30 years, but after the emperor died in 1424 China began a policy of isolationism.

"The Ming Dynasty was the peak of China's power and we want to awaken Chinese pride and show the importance of openness," said Admiral Zheng. "After the Ming Dynasty, China turned its back on foreign countries. In the 15th and 16th centuries, some small European countries like Spain and Portugal developed a lot, while China went backwards. It is worth thinking about."

Events to commemorate the 600th anniversary in July include conferences, special TV programmes and fairs, in China and elsewhere, including Britain. Admiral Zheng added: "We're not related but we do share a lot of experiences -he spent 28 years on the sea, I spent 50 years at sea. We both have a very great feeling for the sea."

His work now is to raise awareness of Zheng He in China. "I was very disappointed during a recent beauty contest when a contestant was asked to name a famous explorer and she said Columbus rather than Zheng He."

wow i liked Zheng He!

Ship to re-navigate 600-year-old maritime route
14 March 2005
Hindustan Times

Qingdao (China), March 14 -- A replica of an ancient ship used by a Chinese sea voyager who discovered a maritime silk route 600 years ago will set sail Tuesday from this port city, Xinhua reported.

The event will commemorate the 600th anniversary of the seven voyages of Zheng He, a Muslim eunuch in the imperial Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) who travelled to the Middle East and East Africa between 1405 and 1433.

Zheng pioneered the first express sea-route through the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean. His voyages came several decades before those of Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Magellan.

A ceremony will be held Tuesday in Qingdao City in China's eastern Shandong province to mark the start of the voyage.

The ship, 31 metres long and 6.8 metres wide with three masts and four sails, will re-navigate Zheng's seven voyages which are considered early demonstrations of China's peaceful diplomacy.

Dubbed "Lu Meimao", or "Green Eyebrow", the ship is said to be China's largest imitation of an ancient ship dating back 800 years ago that was used in Zheng's fleet during his legendary voyages.

Published by HT Media Ltd. with permission from Indo-Asian News Service.

Modern China revels in tale of long-ago voyager
Joseph Kahn
21 July 2005
International Herald Tribune

The captivating tale of Zheng He, a Chinese eunuch who explored the Pacific and Indian oceans with a mighty armada a century before Columbus discovered America, has long languished as a tantalizing footnote in China's imperial history.

Zheng He (pronounced jung huh) fell into disfavor before he completed the last of his early-15th century voyages, and most historical records were destroyed. The authorities protected his old family home in Nanjing, but it was often shuttered, its rooms used to store unrelated items.

Now, on the 600th anniversary of Zheng He's first mission in 1405, all that is changing. Zheng He's legacy is being burnished some critics say glossed over to give rising China a new image on the world stage.

Books and television shows, copies of Zheng He's ships and a new $50 million museum in Nanjing promote Zheng He as a maritime cultural ambassador for a powerful but ardently peaceful nation.

Officials have even endorsed the theory, so far unproven, that one of Zheng He's ships foundered on the rocks near Lamu island, off the coast of today's Kenya, with survivors swimming ashore, marrying locals and creating a family of Chinese-Africans that is now being reunited with the Chinese motherland.

The message is that Zheng He foreshadowed China's 21st-century emergence as a world power, though one that differs in crucial respects from Spain, Britain, France, Germany, Japan and, most pointedly, the United States.

"In the heyday of the Ming dynasty, China did not seek hegemony," said Wan Ming, a leading scholar of the era. "Today, we are once again growing stronger all the time, and China's style of peaceful development has been welcomed all over the world."

The Communist Party hopes to signal to its own people that it has recaptured past glory, while reassuring foreign countries that China can be strong and nonthreatening at the same time.

Even within China, though, the use of poorly documented history as modern propaganda has generated a backlash.

Several scholars have publicly criticized the campaign as a distortion, saying Zheng He treated foreigners as barbarians and most foreign countries as vassal states. His voyages amounted to a wasteful tribute to a maniacal emperor, some argue.

Pro or con, Zheng He resonates in Asia. Arguably for the first time since his final voyage in 1433, China is vying to become a major maritime power, adding to its navy Russian-built guided missile destroyers, diesel submarines and a new nuclear submarine equipped to carry intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Zheng He was a Chinese Muslim who, following the custom of the day, was castrated so he could serve in the household of a prince, Zhu Di.

Zhu Di later toppled the emperor, his brother, and took the throne for himself. He rewarded Zheng He, his co-conspirator, with command of a great naval expedition. Beginning in July 1405, Zheng He made port calls all around Southeast Asia, rounded India, explored the Middle East and reached the eastern coast of Africa.

The three ships that Columbus guided across the Atlantic 87 years later, the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria, could have fit inside a single large vessel in Zheng He's armada, which at its peak had as many as 300 ships and 30,000 sailors. Some of China's maritime innovations at the time, including watertight compartments, did not appear in European vessels for hundreds of years.

He was China's first big ocean trader, presenting gifts from the emperor to leaders in foreign ports and hauling back crab apples, myrrh, mastic gum and even a giraffe.

In time, though, the emperor turned against seafaring, partly because of the exorbitant cost, partly because of China's steadfast certitude that it had nothing to learn from the outside world. By the latter part of the 15th century the country had entered a prolonged period of self-imposed isolation that lasted into the 20th century, leaving European powers to rule the seas.

For Chinese officials today, the sudden end of China's maritime ambitions 600 years ago conveniently signals something else: That China is a gentle giant with enduring good will. Zheng He represents China's commitment to "good neighborliness, peaceful coexistence and scientific navigation," government-run China Central Television said during an hourlong documentary on the explorer last week.

Earlier this month, the authorities opened a $50 million memorial to Zheng He. Tributes to him fill courtyard-style exhibition halls, painted in stately vermilion and imperial yellow. A hulking statue of Zheng He, his chest flung forward as in many likenesses of Mao, decorates the main hall.

As the Zheng He anniversary approached, Chinese delegations also traveled to Kenya to investigate islanders' links to Zheng He's sailors.

On one remote island, called Siyu, the Chinese found a 19-year- old high school student, Mwamaka Sharifu, who claimed Chinese ancestry. She attended the Zheng He celebrations and now Beijing has invited her back to study, tuition-free, this fall.

"My family members have round faces, small eyes and black hair, so we long believed we are Chinese," Sharifu said by telephone. "Now we have a direct link to China itself."

The outreach effort has generated positive publicity for China in Kenya and some other African countries, as well as around Southeast Asia, where Zheng He is widely admired.

But Zheng He has been more coolly received by some scholars in China and abroad.

Ye Jun, a Beijing historian, said the official contention that Zheng He was a good-will ambassador is a "one-sided interpretation that blindly ignores the objective fact that Zheng He engaged in military suppression" to achieve the emperor's goals.

"These matters should be left to scholars," Ye said.

He was a great muslim commader, those were the days for muslims, know we have been reduced to just being terrorists.

He was a great muslim commader, those were the days for muslims, know we have been reduced to just being terrorists.

never knew this, nice to know.

never knew hes muslim. but still 1 of the greatest admirals ever!

National Geographic had an article about him in a recent issue.

China showcases nautical hero Zheng He's shipyard in Nanjing

NANJING, China, Nov 6 (AFP) - As China and the world marks the 600th anniversary of the voyages of famed navigator Zheng He, a newly excavated shipyard where much of his ancient fleet was built has finally opened to the public.

The new park surrounding the Treasure Boat Factory Ruins is part of Nanjing's commemoration of the adventurous admiral who set sail from the city and whose footprints still mark this ancient capital.

Many of Zheng's maiden fleet of 62 ships were built in the shipyard that sits in Nanjing's central Gulou district near the Yangtze River, including his huge 136-meter-long (448-foot) flagship vessel, experts say.

"Not all the boats were made in Nanjing but we are sure that most of them were, including the treasure boats," Ma Guangru, head of Nanjing's Zheng He Research Society, told AFP, referring to the most prestigious vessels in the fleets.

"At the time Nanjing was the capital of China, the capital of the Ming Dynasty, and it was the Ming emperor who ordered the voyages, so that is why the boats were made in Nanjing and why the voyages began here."

Other boats were made in the eastern provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Fujian provinces, he said.

Today only three of Nanjing's seven ship docks where the boats were built remain, and only one has been excavated.

During his seven voyages, the eunuch Zheng travelled as far as northern Australia and the western coast of Africa with fleets growing to more than 300 ships, many of which dwarfed the boats that Christopher Columbus would use to discover America nearly 100 years later.

By comparison, maritime historians have marvelled at how the three ships that Columbus navigated to America could all have fit snuggly on deck of Zheng's command ship, his nine-mast treasure boat.

Zheng's fleet was made up of many types of boats of differing sizes. Besides the bigger and more comfortable treasure boats, there were smaller vessels for soldiers, grain, supplies and horses, Ma said.

Up to 27,800 men, including sailors, clerks, officers, soldiers, artisans and doctors sailed on the voyages that visited 37 countries from Vietnam to Africa from 1405 to 1433.

Zheng also transported princesses for marriage abroad and brought diplomatic emissiaries back to China.

-- Last voyage --

The excavated site was opened to the public this summer as part of Nanjing's Zheng He commemorations that also included the rebuilding of the Tianfei Temple, dedicated to the sea goddess Mazu, that was built in 1407 after Zheng returned from his first voyage.

The temple, which was destroyed by Japanese artillery in 1937, sits next to the Jinghai Temple, or temple to the calm seas, which was also built in Zheng He's time and where Zheng lived late in his life when not at sea.

Testament to this is the renaming this year of Zheng He Avenue, a road that parallels the Yangtze River and stretches from the boat yard to the temples -- a route Zheng probably took regularly.

Excavations of the ship yard took place in 2003 and 2004 with many of the 1,500 artifacts found kept at a museum in the park or in other museums in Nanjing and around China.

Included in the display is a 600 year-old wooden mast that stands about 11 meters tall, several iron and bronze anchors, wooden and iron tools and plenty of old rope, wooden planks, nails and metal clasps.

Caches of tung oil were also found. The oil, when mixed with lime mortar, became one of the world's first waterproofing agent for boats.

The boats were built upon wooden scaffolding in a dry dock that was flooded with water when the boat was completed and then floated onto the Yangtze river.

The ruins of the scaffolding can still be seen in the excavated pits.

The park plans to build a replica of one of the treasure boats which should be completed by next spring, park administrators said.

China's government has largely commemorated the 600th anniversary of Zheng's voyages -- and his apparent disinterest in the conquest of faraway lands despite overwhelming naval superiority -- as proof that China's 21st century rise as a global economic and political power will come peacefully.

But for many, Zheng's exploits are also a reflection of China's long-standing closed door mentality and its failure to make better use of its powerful navy and innovations such as the compass and boat building to strengthen its global influence.

After the death of the Ming Yongle emperor, the mover behind the voyages, Zheng was allowed one final voyage before his fleet was grounded and Chinese maritime exploits came to a halt.

"Zheng's voyages were the result of the will of the Yongle emperor to explore the high seas, but as soon as the emperor died, exploration of the sea ended in a rather dramatic way," Feng Xiangxiang, a curator at the Jinghai Temple said.

Inward looking bureaucrats at the time stifled the maritime industry throughout the nation and boats built over a certain size became punishable by death.

"Today we say that going into the sea was not a mistake, but due to China's feudal bureaucratic system maritime travel was stopped and from then on the nation fell behind in navigation sciences and the country became weak," Feng said.

China's failure to take advantage of its powerful navy would come back to haunt the nation several hundred years later during the Opium Wars of the 19th century.

At that time British gunboats forced their way up the Yangtze River and anchored not far from the site of Zheng He's boat yards.

Ironically, it was in the Jinghai Temple that Great Britain negotiated the 1842 Treaty of Nanking ending the first opium war and ceding Hong Kong to Britain.

COLUMBUS OR ZHENG HE? DEBATE RAGES ON
19 July 2007
China Daily

Like all famous historical figures, Zheng He, the greatest navigator in Chinese history, has not escaped controversy. The size of his fleet ships and the routes his voyages took continue to ignite heated debates worldwide.

At last week's first international forum on Zheng He's voyages held in Qingdao in East China's Shandong Province to mark the country's third Navigation Day, which coincided with Zheng's historic maiden overseas voyage 600 years ago, scholars and some diplomatic officials to China from the countries which Zheng He's fleet visited, sat together to explore the historic resources of his voyages.

1421, The Year China Discovered The World, a controversial book published in 2003 outlining the voyages of Zheng He during the time of Emperor Zhu Di of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), made Gavin Menzies, a retired British Royal Navy captain, known to the world. The book put forward a theory that Zheng He discovered America 70 years before Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) did in 1492.

Now the old man is preparing his next book about Zheng He's visits to Europe. "He sailed all around Europe. It is all there in European records," he says.

He presented at the international forum a piece of powerful evidence he has collected, an Italian record of the Pope meeting Zheng He's representatives, which was drafted by a friend of the Pope.

Menzies believes Zheng He led three major expeditions to Europe and brought maps, mathematics, architecture, art and steel weapons to Europeans.

Menzies' book has been sold in 135 countries and is even taught in American and English schools.

Every single day, there are about 3,500 visits to his website ( www.1421.tv ) and he gets hundreds of thousands of emails from all around the world, 99 percent of which, he claims, says it is obvious that Menzies is right.

"Actually, there is nothing new in what I am saying. I am just incredibly lucky with the timing of my book's publication as everyone had begun to show interest in China, a booming and fascinating country. If I'd written it ten years earlier, nobody would have been interested in it," he says.

Menzies' conclusions that Zheng He's seven voyages reached all corners of the world did win some support from Chinese scholars.

In early 2006, Liu Gang, a Chinese lawyers who spent a lot of time collecting ancient Chinese maps, unveiled to the public a world map in the form of double hemispheres that he bought in 2001. He believes it to be a 1763 copy of a 1418 Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) original, after he read Menzies' book. The map gives credence to Menzies' theory that Chinese sailors traversed the globe long before their European counterparts.

However, although carbon dating has shown that the paper is real, many people doubt modern technology could have identified the date of the ink put on the map and believe it a 21st-century fake as many of the names of places recorded on it began to be used only in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

But Liu Gang still believes the bi-hemispherical, world map originated in China and even concludes that the first map of the kind was made by a scholar named Zhu Siben in the early 14th century during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368).

He says ancient Chinese scholars already knew the world was round and later Zheng He sailed the oceans and mapped the world.

However, Menzies' opinions are not accepted by mainstream Chinese historians, who believe all of his conclusions are based on subjective deductions.

Now a dominating opinion shared by most scholars is that from 1405 to 1433 Zheng He commanded seven voyages mainly around the Indian Ocean region ranging from India, Sri Lanka and Arabia to East Africa.

"Menzies' logic in the whole book is wrong. How could he draw the conclusion that the world's geographic knowledge must have come from Zheng He's fleet since Europeans did not have the knowledge at that time? He ignores the fact that Arabians had better navigation techniques than the Chinese for quite a long time before the Ming Dynasty," says Ge Jianxiong, professor of Fudan University and chairman of the Committee for Historical Geographic Studies under the Geography Society of China.

Du Huan of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907), once captured by the Arabs for 11 years, clearly recorded when he came back to China that he boarded an Arabian commercial boat, which shows that the Arabs had opened a navigation line from the Indian Ocean and Arabian Peninsula to China much earlier, Ge says.

According to Ge, Zheng He was a descendent of the Hui nationality (Chinese Muslim), whose ancestors migrated to China during the Yuan Dynasty. At that time, Quanzhou of East China's Fujian Province had become a city of Arabian migrants and culture. His grandfather and father had been to the holy place of Islam, Mecca, on a pilgrimage. So Zheng could have had access to Arabian geographical and navigational knowledge.

"As far as we know, no navigating lines and places Zheng He's fleet had been to on the Indian Ocean went beyond Arabian areas," says Ge.

He agrees that Zheng He could possibly have reached east Africa, but those areas were actually within the areas covered by Arabian navigation.

As for Menzies' theory that Zheng He's 1418 world map enabled Columbus and Magellan to reach the New World, Ge believes that including certain places on the map did not necessarily prove that Zheng himself had been there as knowledge of the map could have been obtained from the Arabs.

It is believed that apart from the emperor's support, Zheng He's voyages at that time were largely opposed by officials and the common people as each voyage cost a lot. So after Zheng died, most of his records were destroyed by the ministers for fear that the new emperor would demand a new voyage.

"That adds to current difficulties of understanding that period of Chinese history. I have observed that despite more and more people enthusiastic in studying Zheng He, there has actually not been much progress in past decades," says Ge.

He believes that scholars with a sound history and culture knowledge as well as navigation techniques are the need of the hour.

He welcomes more scholars such as Menzies to join the research on Zheng He, searching for more evidence on his voyages.

Though the arguments on how many places Zheng He actually reached continue to rage in academic circles, scholars worldwide share exactly the same view of the peaceful and friendly nature of the voyages.

According to Ge, Zheng He's seven voyages carried a political mission from the emperor to parade the glory of the Ming Dynasty or to ally with Arabian countries to strike the surviving forces of the Yuan Dynasty, rather than to discover new continents, rob overseas wealth, establish colonies and extend foreign trade as the early Western navigators had done.

Chinese people had long regarded their place of residence as the center of the world and believed that those who did not belong to the Han nationality were "barbarians". So the rulers of China in the Ming Dynasty did not have an ambition of expanding the territory, notes Ge.

This can be seen on the deeds of Zheng He's fleets, which simply gave rewards to local people and accepted their gifts to the emperor.

Menzies believes that Zheng He took rice from China to America, brought back maize from America, took sweet potato from South America to New Zealand and Australia, and took Indian cotton to America and then brought a better strain of cotton to Europe. Besides, all sorts of fruits and animals were also transferred from one country to another.

Zaman Mehdi from the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan says the most noteworthy aspect of these voyages is the religious tolerance, cross-cultural understanding and respect for local traditions shown by Zheng He.

Indonesian scholars credit Zheng He for building many mosques in Java and Malacca. There are also Zheng He temples in these islands, where festivals are held to commemorate his visit. In Sri Lanka while making offerings at a Buddhist Temple in 1410, Zheng erected large prayer inscriptions to Lord Buddha, Allah and the Tamil god Tenayari Nayanar in Chinese, Persian and Tamil languages, which was a remarkable show of religious tolerance.

"It is this spirit of harmonious socio-cultural globalization about Zheng He's maritime voyages that has to be understood," says Mehdi.