Zheng He (1371-1435)
was prominent for his oceangoing voyages afar and communicating
with China’s outside world 600 years ago. With the development
of science and technology, the whole world seems to be getting
smaller and smaller. Perhaps today nobody would like to
take too much time to travel far away across the sea by
great wooden ship without electric power and do the same
thing as Zheng He did. However, it’s still significant
for us to recall what happened to him as a great navigator
in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Not only we Chinese young
people are interested in Zheng He’s oceangoing voyages
but also some old foreign historians.
The following are some detailed information about such a
great Chinese navigator with a piece of surprising news
about him.
Zheng’s original family name was Ma as a Hui nationality’s
popular one. His another name was Sanbao. He turned a eunuch
in the early Ming Dynasty so he was called Sanbao-Taijian
(Sanbao-Eunuch), too. As a nationwide famous family name,
Zheng was given by Yanwang (Yan-Kingdom King) who late was
an emperor (i.e. Zhu Di, the fourth prince of the Ming-Dynasty
Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang) and took Beiping city (Peking) as
his national capital.
Zheng He was born in China’s west-south border region where
he could have more opportunities to go both by land and
by sea to some Islam holy cities such as Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
He had a good command of navigation knowledge and learnt
much more experience from his father and grandfather going
overseas during his childhood.
Emperor Zhu Di was the brightest one in the Ming Dynasty.
He made great achievements in politics, economy, culture
and navigation. It was he that ordered to rebuild the Great
Wall, the Imperial Palace (today’s Imperial Palace Museum,
Beijing), organizes versatile and sophisticated scholars
to compose a magnum opus entitled Yongle Dadian (Encyclopedia).
Yongle meant Ever-Lasting Joy in English as the title of
a reigning dynasty. The great book consisted of 22,936 volumes
to be classified into 7000 or 8000 various categories with
370,000,000 Chinese characters. All the great historical
and cultural events were included from the Qin Dynasty (221BC-206BC)
till the early Ming Dynasty. It took six years to complete
such a great classic encyclopedia. Emperor Zhu Di took Emperor
Hanwudi (150BC-87BC) as his good example to expand his realm
or territory. Simultaneously, he would like to learn much
more from foreign countries with a strong desire to influence
China’s outside world. Therefore he commanded Zheng He
with a great fleet to sail far away, crossing the so-called
West Ocean to visit a series of foreign countries or areas
for eight times during 28 years. China’s more and more
silk product and high-quality porcelain, ceramic ware or
earthenware and other special commodities were transported
to the outside world in large scale since then. Perhaps
as a daily or artistic article, chinaware left the world
people deep impression; China was to be easily accepted
as our national name. Even right now some high-quality porcelain
or chinaware is still associated with China.
We Chinese people are always proud of our great navigator
Zheng He for he was of brave quality and he dared to do
what his forefather did not do. No venture, no gain. That’s
true.
At his age, there was no electricity and no computer-control
machine; however, he organized skillful craftsmen to build
gigantic oceangoing-voyage ships, which was an extremely
arduous task. Even today it’s still too hard for us to
do so. Making the first oceangoing ship could be compared
favorably with making the first flying machine. On the other
hand, Zheng He needed to direct and manage his fleet with
the crew.
For a long time some traditional historians just wrote that
Zheng He with his great fleet got to Africa, but few people
asked whether he used to sail to America. To our surprise,
we learnt the news that “Historian Gavin Menzies on Pre-Columbus
Voyage by Chinese” (By Robert Roy Brit. Senior Science
Writer posted: 07:00 am ET posted 21 March 2002 < SPACE.com>
Inc. )
“British amateur historian Gavin Menzies received a book
contract Tuesday for the publication of new theory that
a Chinese admiral with a fleet of 100 ships beat Columbus
to America and circumnavigated the globe almost a century
before Magellan.”
The book is based on 14 years of research that included
secret maps, evidence of artifacts, and apparent proof of
the voyage provided by the modern astronomy software program
Starry Night. Menzies created a stir among historians. The
64-year-old described how he used the software to help solidify
his theory. As key evidence for a voyage that will remake
history if the theory proves out, Menzies says he obtained
ancient Chinese navigation charts associated with the travels
of Zheng He, an admiral in the emperor's Navy. The journey
ran from 1421 to 1423. Menzies maintains that the ships
sailed around the Southern tips of both Africa and South
America. Menzies found that in two separate locations of
the voyage, easily recognizable stars were directly above
Zheng He's fleet. Earth's axis carves a circle on the sky
every 26,000 years. The phenomenon, called precession, means
that each pole points to different stars as time progresses.
Menzies used the software program to recreate the sky, as
it would have looked in 1421.
"From that I was able to determine the apparent shift
of Polaris (due to precession). I could therefore date the
chart to 1421, "I had Chinese star charts, and I needed
to date the charts," he said. "By an incredible
bit of luck, one of the courses they steered, between Sumatra
and Dondra Head, Ceylon, was due west."plus or minus
30 years." Phillip Sadler, a celestial navigation expert
at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, says
the estimation of a map's age based on star positions is
possible. He said an estimate within 30 years, as Menzies
claims, is possible. From this, Menzies figures Zheng He's
fleet, which numbered more than 100 ship when it set sail,
was skirting the ice of Antarctica.
Menzies had found celestial clues in multiple charts were
a good sign. "The more stuff that fits, the better."
Transworld Publishing will publish Menzie’s book.
From the above news I’d like to say that it’s more significant
for a scholar to rinse his / her first strong impressions
while making any research on a subject with no prejudice.
We Chinese people have every reason to learn all the foreign
scholars with open mind as the ocean that could receive
myriad rivers in modest manner. We should follow Zheng’s
good quality to go abroad and communicate with the world
friends by exchanging mutual materialist and spiritual products
and let the whole global people be full of love and friendship
and live in great harmony. I don’t think it’s so important
for us to find where Zheng’s footprint is but more important
thing for us is to be a peace emissary. Let ’s always say
yes to peace!
[朱曼华 03/05/2003]
