Zheng He
Zheng He
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Born
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Died
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1433 (aged 61–62)At sea
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Other names
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Ma He
Sanbao |
Occupation
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Admiral, diplomat, explorer, and palace eunuch
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Zheng He
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鄭和
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郑和
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Ma He
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馬和
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马和
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Sanbao
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三寶
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三宝
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Literal meaning
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Three Jewels
Three Treasures | |
Zheng He (1371–1433), formerly romanized as Cheng Ho, was a Hui-Chinese court eunuch, mariner, explorer, diplomat and fleet admiral, who commanded voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Somalia and the Swahili coast, collectively referred to as the "Voyages of Zheng He" from 1405 to 1433.
As a favorite of the Yongle Emperor, whose usurpation he assisted, he rose to the top of the imperial hierarchy and served as commander of the southern capital Nanjing.
These voyages were long neglected in official Chinese histories but have become well known in China and abroad since the publication of Liang Qihao's "Biography of Our Homeland's Great Navigator, Zheng He"in 1904. Life
Zheng He was the second son of a family from Kunyang, Yunnan. He was originally born with the name Ma He. His family were Hui people. He had four sisters and one older brother.
Zheng He was initially born into a Muslim upbringing. However, his religious beliefs became all-embracing and eclectic in his adulthood.
The true faith of his treasure fleet centered around Tianfei, the "Heavenly Princess", who was the patron goddess of sailors and seafarers.
The Liujiagang and Changle inscriptions suggest that Zheng He's life was mostly defined by the treasure voyages.
Consequently, it also suggest that his devotion to Tianfei was the dominant faith that he adhered. He was the great-great-great-grandson of Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, a Persian who served in the administration of the Mongol Empire and was the Governor of Yunnan during the early Yuan Dynast.
His great-grandfather was named Bayan and may have been stationed at a Mongol garrisons in Yunnan.
His grandfather carried the title hajji His father had the surname Ma and the title hajji. The title suggest that they had made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
In the autumn of 1381, a Ming army invaded and conquered Yunnan, which was then-ruled by the Mongol prince Basalawarmi, Prince of Liang.
On March 2, 1390, Zheng He accompanied Zhu Di when he commanded his first expedition, which was a great victory as the Mongol leader Naghachu surrendered as soon as he realized he had fallen for a deception.
Eventually, he would gain the confidence and trust of the prince. Zheng He was also known as "Sanbao" during the time of service in the household of the Prince of Yan.
This name was a reference to the Three Jewels (triratna) in Buddhism.
He received a proper education while at Beiping, which he would not had if he had been placed in the imperial capital Nanjing as the Hongwu Emperor did not trust eunuchs and believed that it was better to keep them illiterate.
Meanwhile, the Hongwu Emperor exterminated many of the original Ming leadership and gave his enfeoffed sons more military authority, especially those in the north like the Prince of Yan.
Zheng He's appearance as an adult was recorded: he was seven chitall, had a waist that was five chi in circumference, cheeks and a forehead that were high, a small nose, glaring eyes, teeth that were white and well-shaped as shells, and a voice that was as loud as a bell. It is also recorded that he had great knowledge about warfare and was well-accustomed to battle.
The young eunuch eventually became a trusted adviser to the prince and assisted him when the Jianwen Emperor's hostility to his uncle's feudal bases prompted the 1399–1402 Jingnan Campaign which ended with the emperor's apparent death and the ascension of the Zhu Di, Prince of Yan, as the Yongle Emperor.
In 1393, the Crown Prince had died, thus the deceased prince's son became the new heir apparent.
By the time the emperor had died (24 June 1398), the Prince of Qin and the Prince of Jin had perished, which left Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan, as the eldest surviving son of the emperor.
However, Zhu Di's nephew succeeded the imperial throne as the Jianwen Emperor.
In 1398, he issued a policy known as xiaofan, "reducing the feudatories", which entails eliminating all the princes by stripping their power and military forces.
In August 1399, Zhu Di openly rebelled against his nephew.
In 1399, Zheng He successfully defended Beiping's city reservoir Zhenglunba against the imperial armies.
\In January 1402, Zhu Di began with his military campaign to capture the imperial capital Nanjing.
Zheng He would be one of his commanders during this campaign
In 1402, Zhu Di's armies defeated the imperial forces and marched into Nanjing on 13 July 1402.
Zhu Di accepted the elevation to emperor four days later.
After ascending the throne as the Yongle Emperor, he promoted Zheng He as the Grand Director (Taijian) of the Directorate of Palace Servants.
During the New Year's day on 11 February 1404, the Yongle Emperor conferred the surname "Zheng" to him (his original name was still Ma He), because he had distinguished himself defending the city reservoir Zhenglunba against imperial forces in the Siege of Beiping of 1399,
Another reason was that the eunuch commander also distinguished himself during the 1402 campaign to capture the capital Nanjing.
It is believed that his choice to confer the surname "Zheng" was because the eunuch's horse had been killed during the battle at Zhenglunba near Beiping at the onset of his rebellion
He was initially, called Ma Sanbao: either 三寶 (s 三宝, lit. "Three Gifts") or 三保 (lit. "Three Protections", both pronounced sān bǎo)
In the new administration, Zheng He served in the highest posts, as Grand Director and later as Chief Envoy (正使, zhèngshǐ) during his sea voyages.
After the ascension of Zhu Di's son as the Hongxi Emperor, the ocean voyages were discontinued and Zheng He was instead appointed as Defender of Nanjing, the empire's southern capital.
In that post, he was largely responsible for the completion of the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, an enormous pagoda still described as a wonder of the world as late as the 19th century.
The Hongxi era was quite short and, in 1430, the new Xuande Emperor appointed Zheng He to command over a seventh and final expedition into the "Western Ocean".
In 1431, Zheng He was bestowed with the title "Sanbao Taijian"
It is generally believed that Zheng He died during the return trip following the fleet's visit to Hormuz in 1433.
Expeditions
The Yuan Dynasty and expanding Sino-Arab trade during the 14th century had gradually expanded Chinese knowledge of the world: "universal" maps previously only displaying China and its surrounding seas began to expand further and further into the southwest with much more accurate depictions of the extent of Arabia and Africa.
Between 1405 and 1433, the Ming government sponsored seven naval expeditions.
The Yongle Emperor – disregarding the Hongwu Emperor's expressed wishes– designed them to establish a Chinese presence and impose imperial control over the Indian Ocean trade, impress foreign peoples in the Indian Ocean basin, and extend the empire's tributary system.
It has also been inferred from passages in the History of Ming that the initial voyages were launched as part of the emperor's attempt to capture his escaped predecessor, which would have made the first voyage the "largest-scale manhunt on water in the history of China".
Zheng He was placed as the admiral in control of the huge fleet and armed forces that undertook these expeditions. Wang Jinghong was appointed his second in command.
Preparations were thorough and wide-ranging, including the use of such numerous linguists that a foreign language institute was established at Nanjing.
Zheng He's first voyage departed July 11, 1405, from Suzhou and consisted of a fleet of 317 ships holding almost 28,000 crewmen.
Zheng He's fleets visited Brunei, Thailand and Southeast Asia, India, the Horn of Africa, and Arabia, dispensing and receiving goods along the way.
Zheng He presented gifts of gold, silver, porcelain, and silk; in return, China received such novelties as ostriches, zebras, camels, and ivory from the Swahili.
The giraffe he returned from Malindi was considered to be a qilin and taken as proof of the favor of heaven upon the administration
While Zheng He's fleet was unprecedented, the routes were not. Zheng He's fleet was following long-established, well-mapped routes of trade between China and the Arabian peninsula employed since at least the Han Dynasty.
This fact, along with the use of a more than abundant amount of crew members that were regular military personnel, leads some to speculate that these expeditions may have been geared at least partially at spreading China's power through expansion.
During the Three Kingdoms Period, the king of Wu sent a diplomatic mission along the coast of Asia, which reaching as far as the Eastern Roman Empire.
After centuries of disruption, the Song Dynasty restored large-scale maritime trade from China in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, reaching as far as the Arabian peninsula and East Africa.
When his fleet first arrived in Malacca, there was already a sizable Chinese community.
The General Survey of the Ocean Shores (瀛涯勝覽, Yíngyá Shènglǎn) composed by the translator Ma Huan in 1416 gave very detailed accounts of his observations of people's customs and lives in the ports they visited.
He referred to the expatriate Chinese as "Tang" (唐人, Tángrén).
The Kangnido map (1402) predates Zheng's voyages and suggests that he had quite detailed geographical information on much of the Old World.
Zheng He generally sought to attain his goals through diplomacy, and his large army awed most would-be enemies into submission. But a contemporary reported that Zheng He "walked like a tiger" and did not shrink from violence when he considered it necessary to impress foreign peoples with China's military might.
He ruthlessly suppressed pirates who had long plagued Chinese and southeast Asian waters. For example, he defeated Chen Zuyi, one of the most feared and respected pirate captains, and returned him back to China for execution.
He also waged a land war against the Kingdom of Kotte on Ceylon, and he made displays of military force when local officials threatened his fleet in Arabia and East Africa.
From his fourth voyage, he brought envoys from thirty states who traveled to China and paid their respects at the Ming court
In 1424, the Yongle Emperor died. His successor, the Hongxi Emperor (r. 1424–1425), stopped the voyages during his short reign.
Zheng He made one more voyage during the reign of Hongxi's son, the Xuande Emperor (r. 1426–1435) but, after that, the voyages of the Chinese treasure ship fleets were ended.
Xuande believed his father's decision to halt the voyages had been meritorious and thus "there would be no need to make a detailed description of his grandfather’s sending Zheng He to the Western Ocean."
The voyages "were contrary to the rules stipulated in the Huang Ming Zuxun" (皇明祖訓), the dynastic foundation documents laid down by the Hongwu Emperor:
Some far-off countries pay their tribute to me at much expense and through great difficulties, all of which are by no means my own wish.
Messages should be forwarded to them to reduce their tribute so as to avoid high and unnecessary expenses on both sides.
They further violated longstanding Confucian principles. They were only made possible by (and therefore continued to represent) a triumph of the Ming's eunuch faction over the administration's scholar-bureaucrats.
Upon Zheng He's death and his faction's fall from power, his successors sought to minimize him in official accounts, along with continuing attempts to destroy all records related to the Jianwen Emperor or the manhunt to find him.
Although unmentioned in the official dynastic histories, Zheng He probably died during the treasure fleet's last voyage.
Although he has a tomb in China, it is empty: he was buried at sea.
Voyages
Detail of the Fra Mauro map relating the travels of a junk into the Atlantic Ocean in 1420. The ship also is illustrated above the text.
Order
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Time
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Regions along the way
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1st voyage
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1405–1407
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2nd voyage
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1407–1409
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Champa, Java, Siam, Cochin, Ceylon, Calicu
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3rd voyage
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4th voyage
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1413–1415
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5th voyage
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6th voyage
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1421–1422
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Champa, Ceylon, Calicut, Cochin, Maldives, Hormuz, Djofar, Aden, Mogadishu, Brava
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7th voyage
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1430–1433
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Champa, Java, Palembang, Malacca, Semudera, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Bengal, Ceylon, Calicut, Hormuz, Aden, Ganbali (possibly Coimbatore), Bengal, Laccadive and Maldive Islands, Djofar, Lasa, Aden, Mecca, Mogadishu, Brav
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Zheng He led seven expeditions to the "Western" or Indian Ocean .
Zheng He brought back to China many trophies and envoys from more than thirty kingdoms – including King Vira Alakeshwara of Ceylon, who came to China as a captive to apologize to the Emperor for offenses against his mission.
Zheng He brought back to China many trophies and envoys from more than thirty kingdoms – including King Vira Alakeshwara of Ceylon, who came to China as a captive to apologize to the Emperor for offenses against his mission.
There has been speculation that at least some of Zheng's ships may have traveled beyond the Cape of Good Hope.
In particular, the Venetian monk and cartographer Fra Mauro in his 1459 map described the travels of a huge "junk from India" 2,000 miles into the Atlantic Ocean in 1420.
What Fra Mauro meant by 'India' is uncertain and some scholars believe he meant an Arab ship.
Others, most famously Gavin Menzies, propose Zheng He may have discovered America 70 years before Christopher Columbus.
Zheng himself wrote of his travels:
We have traversed more than 100,000 li of immense water spaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, 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…
A section of the Wubei Zhi oriented east: India in the upper left, Sri Lanka upper right, and Africa along the bottom.
Zheng He's sailing charts were published in a book entitled the Wubei Zhi (A Treatise on Armament Technology) written in 1621 and published in 1628 but traced back to Zheng He's and earlier voyages.
It was originally a strip map 20.5 cm by 560 cm that could be rolled up, but was divided into 40 pages which vary in scale from 7 miles/inch in the Nanjing area to 215 miles/inch in parts of the African coast.
There is little attempt to provide an accurate 3-D representation; instead the sailing instructions are given using a 24-point compass system with a Chinese symbol for each point, together with a sailing time or distance, which takes account of the local currents and winds. Sometimes depth soundings are also provided.
It also shows bays, estuaries, capes and islands, ports and mountains along the coast, important landmarks such as pagodas and temples, and shoal rocks.
Of 300 named places outside China, more than 80% can be confidently located. There are also fifty observations of stellar altitude.
Size of the ships
Traditional and popular accounts of Zheng He's voyages have described a great fleet of gigantic ships, far larger than any other wooden ships in history. Some modern scholars consider these descriptions to be exaggerated.
Chinese recordsstate that Zheng He's fleet sailed as far as East Africa. According to medieval Chinese sources, Zheng He commanded seven expeditions.
The 1405 expedition consisted of 27,800 men and a fleet of 62 treasure ships supported by approximately 190 smaller ships. The fleet included:
- "Chinese treasure ships" (宝船, Bǎo Chuán), used by the commander of the fleet and his deputies (nine-masted, about 127 metres (416 ft) long and 52 metres (170 ft) wide), according to later writers[. This is more or less the size and shape of a football field.
- Equine ships (馬船, Mǎ Chuán), carrying horses and tribute goods and repair material for the fleet (eight-masted, about 103 m (339 ft) long and 42 m (138 ft) wide).
- Supply ships (粮船, Liáng Chuán), containing staple for the crew (seven-masted, about 78 m (257 ft) long and 35 m (115 ft) wide).
- Troop transports (兵船, Bīng Chuán), six-masted, about 67 m (220 ft) long and 25 m (83 ft) wide.
- Fuchuan warships (福船, Fú Chuán), five-masted, about 50 m (165 ft) long.
- Patrol boats (坐船, Zuò Chuán), eight-oared, about 37 m (120 ft) long.
- Water tankers (水船, Shuǐ Chuán), with 1 month's supply of fresh water.
Six more expeditions took place, from 1407 to 1433, with fleets of comparable size.
If the accounts can be taken as factual, Zheng He's treasure ships were mammoth ships with nine masts, four decks, and were capable of accommodating more than 500 passengers, as well as a massive amount of cargo.
Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta both described multi-masted ships carrying 500 to 1000 passengers in their translated accounts.
Niccolò Da Conti, a contemporary of Zheng He, was also an eyewitness of ships in Southeast Asia, claiming to have seen 5 masted junks weighing about 2000 tons.
There are even some sources that claim some of the treasure ships might have been as long as 600 feet.
On the ships were navigators, explorers, sailors, doctors, workers, and soldiers along with the translator and diarist Gong Zhen.
The largest ships in the fleet, the Chinese treasure ships described in Chinese chronicles, would have been several times larger than any other wooden ship ever recorded in history, surpassing l'Orient, 65 metres (213.3 ft) long, which was built in the late 18th century.
The first ships to attain 126 m (413.4 ft) long were 19th century steamers with iron hulls.
Some scholars argue that it is highly unlikely that Zheng He's ship was 450 feet (137.2 m) in length, some estimating that they were 390–408 feet (118.9–124.4 m) long and 160–166 feet (48.8–50.6 m) wide instead while others put them as small as 200–250 feet (61.0–76.2 m) in length, which would make them smaller than the equine, supply, and troop ships in the fleet.
One explanation for the seemingly inefficient size of these colossal ships was that the largest 44 Zhang treasure ships were merely used by the Emperor and imperial bureaucrats to travel along the Yangtze for court business, including reviewing Zheng He's expedition fleet.
The Yangtze river, with its calmer waters, may have been navigable by these treasure ships. Zheng He, a court eunuch, would not have had the privilege in rank to command the largest of these ships, seaworthy or not.
The main ships of Zheng He's fleet were instead 6 masted 2000-liao ships
Imperial China
In the decades after the last voyage, Imperial officials minimized the importance of Zheng He and his expeditions throughout the many regnal and dynastic histories they compiled. The information in the Yongle and Xuande Emperors' official annals was incomplete and even erroneous; other official publications omitted them completely. Although some have seen this as a conspiracy seeking to eliminate memories of the voyages, it is likely that the records were dispersed throughout several departments and the expeditions – unauthorized by (and in fact, counter to) the injunctions of the dynastic founder – presented a kind of embarrassment to the dynasty.]
State-sponsored Ming naval efforts declined dramatically after Zheng's voyages. Starting in the early 15th century, China experienced increasing pressure from the surviving Yuan Mongols from the north.
The relocation of the capital north to Beijing exacerbated this threat dramatically. At considerable expense, China launched annual military expeditions from Beijing to weaken the Mongolians. The expenditures necessary for these land campaigns directly competed with the funds necessary to continue naval expeditions.
Further, in 1449, Mongolian cavalry ambushed a land expedition personally led by the Zhengtong Emperor at Tumu Fortress, less than a day's march from the walls of the capital. The Mongolians wiped out the Chinese army and captured the emperor.
This battle had two salient effects. First, it demonstrated the clear threat posed by the northern nomads.
Second, the Mongols caused a political crisis in China when they released the emperor after his half-brother had already ascended and declared the new Jingtai era.
Not until 1457 and the restoration of the former emperor did political stability return.
Upon his return to power, China abandoned the strategy of annual land expeditions and instead embarked upon a massive and expensive expansion of the Great Wall of China. In this environment, funding for naval expeditions simply did not happen.
However, missions from Southeast Asia continued to arrive for decades. Depending on local conditions, they could reach such frequency that the court found it necessary to restrict them: the History of Ming records imperial edicts forbidding Java, Champa, and Siam from sending their envoys more often than once every three years.
Southeast Asia
Even some of his crew members who happened to stay in this or that port sometimes did as well, such as "Poontaokong" on Sulu
The temples of this cult – called after either of his names, Cheng Hoon or Sam Po – are peculiar to overseas Chinese except for a single temple in Hongjian originally constructed by a returned Filipino Chinese in the Ming dynasty and rebuilt by another Filipino Chinese after the original was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.
(The same village of Hongjian, in Fujian's Jiaomei township, is also the ancestral home of Corazon Aquino.)
The San Bao Temple in Malacca.
Malacca
The oldest and most important Chinese temple in Malacca is the 17th-century Cheng Hoon Teng, dedicated to Guanyin.
During Dutch colonial rule, the head of the Cheng Hoon Temple was appointed chief over the community's Chinese inhabitants.
Following Zheng He's arrival, the sultan and sultana of Malacca visited China at the head of over 540 of their subjects, bearing ample tribute. Sultan Mansur Shah (r. 1459–1477) later dispatched Tun Perpatih Putih as his envoy to China, carrying a letter from the sultan to the Ming emperor.
The letter requested the hand of an imperial daughter in marriage. Malay (but not Chinese) annals record that, in the year 1459, a princess named Hang Li Po or Hang Liu was sent from China to marry the sultan.
The princess came with 500 high-ranking young men and a few hundred handmaidens as her entourage.
They eventually settled in Bukit Cina. It is believed that a significant number of them married into the local populace, creating the descendants now known as the Peranakan.
Owing to this supposed lineage, the Peranakan still use special honorifics: Baba for the men and Nyonya for the women.
Indonesia
Indonesian Chinese have established temples to Zheng He in Jakarta, Cirebon, Surabaya, and Semarang.
In 1961, the Indonesian Islamic leader and scholar Hamka credited Zheng He with an important role in the development of Islam in Indonesia.
The Brunei Times credits Zheng He with building Chinese Muslim communities in Palembang and along the shores of Java, the Malay Peninsula, and the Philippines.
This Chinese Muslim community was led by Hajji Yan Ying Yu, who urged his followers to assimilate and take local names.
The Chinese trader Sun Long even supposedly adopted the son of the king of Majapahit and his Chinese wife, a son who went on to become Raden Patah.
Amid this assimilation (and loss of contact with China itself), the Hanafi Islam became absorbed by the local Shafi'i school and the presence of distinctly ethnic Chinese Muslims dwindled to almost nothing.
The Malay Annals also record a number of Hanafi mosques – in Semarang and Ancol, for instance – were converted directly into temples of the Zheng He cult during the 1460s and '70s.
According to a popular legend, Parameswara was resting under a tree near a river while hunting, when one of his dogs cornered a mouse deer. In self-defence, the mouse deer pushed the dog into the river.
Impressed by the courage of the deer, and taking it as a propitious omen of the weak overcoming the powerful, Parameswara decided on the spot to found an empire on that very spot. He named it 'Melaka' after the tree under which he had taken shelter, the Melaka tree (Malay: Pokok Melaka).
In collaboration with allies from the sea-people (orang laut), the wandering proto-Malay privateers of the Straits, he established Malacca as an international port by compelling passing ships to call there, and establishing fair and reliable facilities for warehousing and trade.
Because of its strategic location, Malacca was an important stopping point for Zheng He's fleet. To enhance relations, Hang Li Po, according to local folklore a daughter of the Ming Emperor of China, arrived in Malacca, accompanied by 500 attendants, to marry Sultan Manshur Shah who reigned from 1456 until 1477. Her attendants married locals and settled mostly in Bukit China (Bukit Cina). (See Zheng He in Malacca).
Voyages of Zheng He
1405-1433 | ||||||||||||||
The ships of Zheng's armada were as astonishing as its reach. Some accounts claim that the great baochuan, or treasure ships, had nine masts on 400-foot-long (122-meter-long) decks. The largest wooden ships ever built, they dwarfed those of Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama. Hundreds of smaller cargo, war, and supply ships bore tens of thousands of men who brought China to a wider world.
Zheng He's Voyages of Discovery
Noted oceanic scientist Jin Wu discusses the 15th century expeditions of the Chinese mariner Zheng He & the celebration of the 600th anniversary of his first voyage.
What Zheng He accomplished, Jin Wu declared, must be considered an achievement for all of mankind, not just a Chinese achievement.
On April 12 Jin Wu, distinguished oceanic scientist and former Minister of Education of the Republic of China (on Taiwan), discussed Zheng He's voyages of discovery and the upcoming celebrations of the 600th anniversary of his first voyage.
In his talk, Professor Wu emphasized that, especially since the documentary record surrounding Zheng He (sometimes written Cheng Ho; 1371-1435) and his voyages is so thin, oceanic scientists and engineers and other physical scientists can provide important insights to supplement the work of historians.
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Historical Background
Professor Wu began by briefly retracing the history of Zheng He's voyages. Upon the orders of the emperor Yongle and his successor, Xuande, Zheng He commanded seven expeditions, the first in the year 1405 and the last in 1430, which sailed from China to the west, reaching as far as the Cape of Good Hope.
The object of the voyages was to display the glory and might of the Chinese Ming dynasty and to collect tribute from the "barbarians from beyond the seas."
Merchants also accompanied Zheng's voyages, Wu explained, bringing with them silks and porcelain to trade for foreign luxuries such as spices and jewels and tropical woods.
These voyages, Professor Wu noted, came a few decades before most of the famous European voyages of discovery known to all Western school children: Christopher Columbus, in 1492; Vasco da Gama, in 1498; and Ferdinand Magellan, in 1521. However, Zheng He's fleets were incomparable larger. According to figures presented by Professor Wu:
Navigator
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Number of Ships
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Number of Crew
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Zheng He (1405 - 1433)
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48 to 317
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28,000
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Columbus (1492)
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3
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90
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Da Gama (1498)
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4
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ca. 160
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Magellan (1521)
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5
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265
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Moreover, Zheng He's ships, Professor Wu explained, were impressive examples of naval engineering.
His so-called treasure ships (which brought back to China such things a giraffes from Africa) were 400 feet long. Columbus's flagship the St. Maria, in contrast, was but 85 feet in length.
Zheng He's treasure ships, Professor Wu mentioned, displaced no less than 10,000 tons and had an aspect ratio (width:length) of 0.254; in other words, they were wide and bulky—"the supertankers of their day."
Aside from the treasure ships, Zheng He's fleet also contained a variety of other, specialized vessels: "equine ships" (for carrying horses), warships, supply ships, and water tankers.
Professor Wu invited the audience to imagine the scene of Zheng He's 300-vessel fleet on the sea, spread out over many square miles. ("Sailing ships," Wu pointed out, "require room to maneuver" and thus the fleet would have blanketed a wide swath of the ocean.)
If an object of the voyages was to display the glory and might of China, then there can be no question but that this magnificent fleet would have awed all who witnessed it.
It is ironic, then, that today little is known of Zheng He's voyages. This is, Wu pointed out, mainly the doing of the Confucianists in the imperial court, who saw to it that Zheng's ships were burned after his last voyage and who made every effort to "systematically destroy all official records of the voyages."
Their motives were purely political. During much of the Ming dynasty (1368 – 1644), the eunuchs exercised great power in the imperial court, at the expense of the Confucian civil bureaucracy.
The expeditions of Zheng He, who was himself a eunuch, were strongly supported by eunuchs in the court and bitterly opposed by the Confucian scholar bureaucrats.
The Research Agenda
Although the Chinese documentary record of Zheng He's voyages is thus woefully incomplete, Professor Wu hopes that relevant documents may exist in the places Zheng He visited.
He encourages historians in these places to comb through archives and other sources in search of such records.
Archaeology also, Professor Wu stated, is likely to uncover valuable evidence. For instance, the shipyard in Nanjing where Zheng He's vessels were constructed still exists; or rather, the channels in which the ships were built still exist.
The shipyard evidently had five channels during Zheng He's time, but two of the five have been filled in. When Wu visited the disused shipyard in 2002, he was told the remaining three channels were to be filled in.
He quickly lobbied the relevant government officials and had the channels saved. Indeed, the channels will now become part of a naval museum. It is likely, Wu pointed out, that important artifacts are preserved the oxygen-starved mud of the channels.
Wu stated that "many scientific and technological aspects of the expeditions are worthy of multidisciplinary studies, which may in turn stimulate further historical studies." In other words, "engineers and scientists should work together with historians."
Wu stated that "many scientific and technological aspects of the expeditions are worthy of multidisciplinary studies, which may in turn stimulate further historical studies." In other words, "engineers and scientists should work together with historians."
Professor Wu himself is organizing three projects:
1. shipbuilding technology in ancient China,
2. navigation technology in ancient China, and
3. management science in ancient China.
It is still not known how it was possible for Chinese shipwrights to build a framework, without any iron, that could sustain a 400-foot long vessel.
Instead of looking for the answer just in the documentary record, Wu proposes that "naval architects join in with historians to discover whether it was possible, or how the ships were built."
About navigation technology, among the topics Wu discussed was how scientists today, using oceanic microwave remote sensing executed via instruments on satellites, can ascertain the "distribution of waves, of currents, of winds, of water temperature, of water depth" on a weekly basis.
"Ocean-going sailing ships sailed mainly by wind and ocean currents. With the combined effort of historians, navigators, and oceanographers, Zheng He's expedition routes can be more convincingly verified." Using computer simulation, "we can put a ship somewhere and see where it goes."
Wu stated that in China (and in Taiwan), it is always assumed that "management science is an import from the West."
However, in Wu's view, Zheng He's expeditions involved highly sophisticated techniques of organization and planning; in other words, management science.
For instance, Wu mentioned that transferring supplies to ships on the high seas is still difficult, yet somehow Zheng He's fleet was able to transfer water from the water tankers to the other ships.
This is, Wu observed, "really amazing."
Zheng He's expeditions involved, among others:
- Building ships
- Recruiting and training of crew members and soldiers
- Acquisition of domestic goods for exchange
- Command and logistics on the high seas
Sailing a large fleet sailing into largely unknown waters "required advanced management skills and systems and certainly deserves our intensive study." There was no margin for error. "What was achieved was comparable to what we did in our day to go to the moon."
Celebration of the 600th anniversary of Zheng He's First Voyage
What Zheng He accomplished, Jin Wu declared, must be considered an achievement for all of mankind, not just a Chinese achievement. Moreover, it presents an opportunity, Wu continued, "for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to work together."
Professor Wu went on to list his many activities in promoting the study of Zheng He and his voyages, including delivering the keynote speech (on Zheng He) at the annual meeting of the Conference on Asian Seas, in March 2001; organizing the First International Conference on Zheng He, held in Taipei, in September 2001; the establishment of Zheng He study clubs in several cities in the United States; and others, including plans to build a replica of Zheng He's treasure ship. The first iteration will be only 180 feet in length because "we don't have confidence we can build a 400-foot ship -- and we don't have that much money! Furthermore, there is quite a debate about what kind of ships Zheng He really had: the shape, etc." This first ship will thus not be a replica, but will incorporate features of Zheng He's ships about which there is reasonable certainty. As knowledge expands, more ships will be built, each iteration being closer to the ships that Zheng He sailed.
Comments of Richard von Glahn
At the conclusion of Jin Wu's talk, Richard von Glahn (UCLA Professor of History, and a specialist in Chinese history) offered some comments.
First, von Glahn mentioned that he teaches world history, and that all world history texts mention Zheng He.
The problem with these texts, von Glahn continued, is with the presentation. The tendency is to offer counterfactual arguments; in other words, to emphasize "China's missed opportunity."
The "narrative emphasizes the failure" and pays insufficient attention to what was accomplished.
In a word, von Glahn continued, "Zheng He reshaped Asia." Maritime history in the fifteenth century is essentially the Zheng He story and the effects of Zheng He's voyages.
For instance, Malacca, on the Malayan peninsula, and Zheng He's most important port after those in China, in the fifteenth century became the great port and hub of a trading network that extended across Southeast Asia and up to China.
Von Glahn emphasized that Zheng He's influence lasted beyond his age. Zheng He, von Glahn suggested, may be seen as the tip of an iceberg:
He was prominent, but there is much, much more to story of maritime trade and other relationships in Asia in the fifteenth century and beyond.
The conferences that Professor Jin Wu is planning in conjunction with the 600th anniversary of Zheng He's first voyage will, von Glahn stated, show this.
Jin Wu (Ph.D. in Mechanics and Hydraulics, University of Iowa), an internationally renowned researcher in oceanic science, was the Minister of Education in the Republic of China on Taiwan from 1996 to 1998.
He is a member of both the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the Academia Sinica.
He is currently Distinguished Professor of Hydraulic and Ocean Engineering, National Cheng Kung University (in Tainan, Taiwan), and concurrently Director of the Water Resources Research Center, and Director of the Research Institute for Public Affairs, both at Cheng Kung University.
Dr. Wu was for many years a professor of marine studies at the University of Delaware, one of the world’s foremost centers for marine and oceanic studies.
He is now H. Fletcher Brown Professor Emeritus of Marine Studies and Civil Engineering, University of Delaware.
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