The Dream of the Mighty Ocean
中国梦 大海梦
Contents:
Chinese Ships Traveling the Ocean Centuries Before the Tang Dynasty
As Ancient China was centuries a head of the world in learning and technology, the Chinese were the first to travel the mighty ocean. Before the Tang Dynasty and onwards, the Chinese have been sailing to Japan, Ryukyu, South East Asia, Arabia, East Africa, and Egypt. The year 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋) successfully overthrew the Mongolian Ruling Yuan Dynasty (元朝). The Mongols were driven out of the Chinese Heartland and Confucianist China was finally restored under the new Han Ruling Ming Dynasty, where Zhu was declared Emperor of China. Under the title as the Hongwu Emperor, Zhu worked hard, bring a generation of prosperity to nation. The nation progressed in all walks of life. The military grew strong and science and technology got more advanced. June 24, 1398, the Hongwu Emperor passed away.
Because his eldest son died earlier, his grandson, who is the son of his eldest son, Zhu Yunwen (朱允炆), succeeded the throne as the Emperor Jianwen (建文帝). However his reign was short, overthrown by his uncle Zhu Di, the 4th son of the Hongwu Emperor.
July 17, 1402, Zhu Di declared himself, the Yongle Emperor. As a part of his desire to expand the Confucianist influence throughout the world, the Yongle Emperor sponsored massive and long term treasure voyages led by admiral Zheng He. These expeditions were the world's most major sea going explorations of the world. The first expedition was launched in 1405 (18 years before Henry the Navigator
began Portugal's voyages of discovery). The expeditions were under the command of Zheng He and his associates (Wang Jinghong, Hong Bao, etc.). Seven expeditions were launched between 1405 and 1433, reaching not only the major trade centres of Asia (as far as Tenavarai (Dondra Head), Hormuz and Aden) and northeastern Africa (Malindi), as Official Chinese Records has stated, the giant fleet also traveled the entire world. Some of the ships used were apparently the largest sail-powered wooden ships in human history.
Although Official Chinese Records does briefly mention the fleet has traveled the world, most records of the 7 treasure voyages were believed to be destroyed, in 1480, burnt to ashes by a Mandarin, Liu Daxia. However on a re-analysis of the Ming Dynasty’s historical account on this matter, it is apparent not the case. The records were in fact hidden by Secretary of Transportation, Liu Daxia, and therefore should be found to This was covered up by the then Minister of Defense, Xiang Zhong, as at the time, the Ming Dynasty was nearly bankrupt due to reckless spending, and thus both
Yongle Emperor, Zhu Di (middle), who Ordered to Send the Massive Treasure Fleet into the Ocean, Admiral Zheng He (right), who led the fleet into the Ocean
ministers were keen to stop more of such spending by dissuading the Emperor from making more expensive expeditions. In short, there is no proof and no witness to the burning or destruction of the records. The records may still exist somewhere in the Chinese Nation. Despite having so many records lost, there is still a mountain of evidence scattered all around the world to prove the truth. In a 1996 Chinese publication talk mentions a documentation about a Chinese rounding of the Cape of Good Hope and reaching the Atlantic in 1420. This document was from the Collection of Prince Yusuf Kamal. According to the book, 1421 the Year China Discovered the World,
The Treasure Fleet Set Sail, Many More Ships are Right Behind Them
the author, Gavin Menzies, stated that half the treasure fleet lead by under the command of admiral Zhou Wen, was caught in a hurricane near the Caribbean. After make a rough landing on Bimini, many ships were damaged from the hurricane. The fleet would build an imperial dry dock to repair the ships of the treasure fleet. What's left of the dock today is the underwater Bimini Road, a road built beach rock which is the ship's ballast as a slipway to haul damaged ships ashore for refitting and repairs.
February 8, 1426, Zhu Zhanji (朱瞻基), grandson of the Yongle Emperor rises as the new emperor, under the new reign, Xuan De, meaning propagating virtue. For Zheng He and the eunuchs, it marked a return to center stage. Gong Zhen recorded that an imperial order was issued on May 25, 1430 for the arrangement of necessary provisions for the
dispatch of Zheng He, Wang Jinghong, Li Xing, Zhu Liang, Yang Zhen, Hong Bao, and others on official business to the countries of the Western Ocean. June 29, 1430, the Xuande Emperor issued his orders for the seventh voyage. Soon, another great sailing expedition would be launched, this one led by ships whose names reflected their virtuous mission: Pure Harmony, Lasting Tranquillity and Kind Repose. The emperor wished to reinvigorate the tributary relations that had been promoted during the Yongle reign. Emperor Xuan De ordered to Zheng He to instruct distant lands beyond the seas to follow the way of heaven. This voyage to “instruct” the foreigners was
the zenith of Admiral Zheng He’s great career. Zheng He was ordered to return to all three thousand countries he has visited in his past voyaged. The task required a massive number of ships. Several great fleets were readied for voyages across the world. The scope of the shipbuilding programme of more than 2,700 ships undermines the notion that Zheng He commanded only just one of the fleets of a hundred ocean-going vessels. This massive ship-building programme was accompanied by major improvements in the junks’ construction, aided with better quality timber.
January 19, 1431, the Great Voyage begins with the treasure fleet departing from Nanjing (南京). They invariably sailed in January because of the free power provided by the monsoons, which to this day determine sailing patterns from China across the Indian Ocean to India and Africa. January 23, 1431, the fleet made a stop at Xushan, a currently-unknown island in the Yangtze, where the crew hunted animals. February 2, 1431, the fleet sailed through the Fuzi Passage (present-day Baimaosha Channel) to the estuary Yangtze River before arriving at Liujiagang on the following day. March 14, 1431, the Liujiagang inscription was erected. April 8, 1431, the fleet arrived
A Map Showing the Routes of the Treasure Voyages
at Changle, where they remained until mid-December. The Changle inscription, dated to the 11th month of the 6th year of the Xuande reign, was erected during the end of their stay there. December 16, 1431, the fleet traveled to the Fu Tou Shan, near Fuzhou. January 12, 1432, the treasure fleet sailed through the Wuhumen. January 27, 1432, the fleet made a call at the capital city Vijaya (near present-day Qui Nhon) of Champa before departing on February 12. March 7, 1432, the fleet arrived at Java, stopping at the port of Surabaya, like they did in 1406, 1408 and 1418, fleets of a hundred or more Chinese vessels spent lengthy periods refitting in the ports
Bimini Road, the Remains of a Chinese Imperial Dry Dock Built on the Caribbean
of east Java. Both the new building programme in China and the huge refitting programme in Java, gradually improved the quality of Zheng He’s fleets. With their superior wood and construction, Zheng He’s ships would be capable of crossing the stormiest oceans.
The fleet remained in the region before departing on July 13. July 24, 1432, the fleet arrived at Palembang and departed on July 27. From Palembang, the fleet sailed down the Musi River, through the Banka Strait, passing the Lingga and Riau archipelagos. The Lingga and Riau archipelagos had a considerable pirate population that posed a threat to passing ships, but these pirates posed no threat to the well equipped and powerful treasure fleet. August 3, 1432, the treasure fleet arrived to Malacca. The fleet departed from Malacca on September 2, 1432. They traveled to Semudera and arrived there on September 12. November 2, 1432, the fleet departed from Semudera. November 28, 1432, the fleet arrived at Beruwala on Ceylon. The fleet departed from Beruwala on December 2. December 10, 1432, the fleet arrived at Calicut. December 14, 1432, the fleet departed from Calicut to Hormuz. January 17, 1433, the fleet arrived at Hormuz.
A single fleet of a thousand junks would have been impossible to control. Chinese records listing dates for outbound and returning voyages make it clear that different fleets departed and returned under different commanders often years apart. In sum, the scale of Zheng He’s voyages would have required many independent fleets to be simultaneously at sea. Some fleets were no doubt carried off by storms to unexpected destinations. Others were surely wrecked. In any case, it should come as no surprise that many, perhaps even a majority, of destinations reached by the fleets were never recorded in official Chinese records. Seafaring
in the 15th Century was an even more hazardous profession than it is today. Many ships never returned home to tell their tales.
The fleet reached Cairo through the shallow Red Sea-Nile canal, which Zheng He’s smaller ships traveled on. From Cairo, the Mediterranean – and southern Europe – were well within reach. 1433, the Chinese Fleet arrives to Florence. It would be here where the magnificent treasure fleet arrived and the ignited the Renaissance, change the course of history. Official ambassadors of the China met with Pope Eugenius IV and shared a wealth of Chinese knowledge, including world maps (which were later given to Columbus),
astronomy, mathematics, art, printing, architecture, civil engineering, military machines, surveying cartography, and genetics. This gift of knowledge sparked the inventiveness of the Renaissance - Da Vinci's inventions, the Copernican revolution, Galileo's discoveries, and much more.
Florentine astronomer Paolo del Posso Toscanelli had a long conversation with a Chinese ambassador who told of their great feeling of friendship for the Christians in 1433 during the papacy of Pope Eugenius IV. The ambassador offer a wealth of knowledge which would ignited the Renaissance, change the course of history. Much of the exciting intellectual interactions between Renaissance Florence and Ming China so far remained
Left: The Earliest Gear Wheels came from China Since 50 B.C.
Right: Drawings of Gear Wheels by Leonardo Da Vinci
The Oldest Illustration of an Endless Power Transmitting Chain Drive from the Su Sung’s Hsun I Hsiang Fa Yaoch Drawn in the Year 1090
Leonardo Da Vinci’s Illustration of a Chain Drive
nevertheless buried in the sands of time. As a result, even now Renaissance Italy is widely viewed as some purely European event without any traceable influences from the Chinese technology and science particularly in navigation and astronomy, which were without a doubt the most advanced, anywhere in the 15th century world. 1474, Toscanelli sent Columbus two letters and a map of navigation virtually providing a roadmap to the discovery of America. Two biographers of Columbus, his son Fernando and Bishop Las Casas of Chiapaz, even praise Toscanelli as the first to conceive the bold new idea of sailing to India by the western route. The map of navigation
which showed the way to America and to India must have been given to Toscanelli by the Chinese ambassador he met back in 1433.
Leonardo da Vinci, know to be mankind’s greatest genius, drawn up many great invention during the Renaissance. However all invention he had drawn were Chinese inventions which the was the wealth of knowledge left behind from the
Magnificent Chinese Treasure Fleet. Drawings of siege weapons, mills and pumps from a 1313 Chinese agricultural treatise, the Nung Shu, and from other pre-1430 Chinese books, were apparently similar illustrations by Leonardo, Di Giorgio and Taccola.
Some time after 1430-1445, he catastrophic comet Mahuika struck the coast of New Zealand where Admiral Zhou Man's Fleet was sailing. Reputed to be twenty-six times as bright as the Sun, it discharged electrically and shattered Chinese fleet of around sixty ships. The fleet which supported a thriving Chinese settlement that began as early as the Han Dynasty, mining gold, jade and antimony in New Zealand. The comet’s screaming noise blew out the sailors' eardrums. They also received horrific burns. Earthquakes and gigantic waves of over 200 metres high tossed the ships upside down like matchsticks, whilst the intense heat caused the masts and rigging to catch fire. Zhou Man’s wrecked hulks hurtled across the seas to New Zealand and southeast Australia fanned by 600 kilometre per hour winds. Junks were flung ashore at Bairnsdale, Warrnambool, King Island, Kangaroo Island and even the tip of West Australia. Maori (New Zealand natives) mythology, Fires of Tamatea, records the event of comet Mahuika. It stated: “the falling of the skies, raging winds and
massive and mysterious fires and storms from space.” The legend stated that the catastrophe was based on Tananui (Maori for "the big explosion") where the airburst flattened trees within a radius of 80 kilometres with vast forests under a bush fire. The Chinese settlers must have been burnt alive. Flocks of the flightless Moa bird were incinerated into extinction. Australian Aboriginal myths from Port Phillip Bay, Newcastle, and Wilcannia on the southeast coast of Australia also describe falling debris, cataclysmic floods, earthquakes and heavenly auroral fires. Physical evidence of wrecked junks was discovered by marine engineer Cedric Bell, who investigated the hypothesis of a fifteenth century tsunami. Bell surveyed the coast of New Zealand’s South Island. Magnetic instruments showed 44 large junks buried in the sand or amongst inland chevrons. One treasure ship was impaled in a cliff at Moorak. Two burning junks were hurled into the cliff face at Wakanui Beach, their wreckage buried deep beneath a tsunami formation enclosing a stone-built Chinese canal. Port Phillip Bay itself also has abundant evidence for the destructive mega-tsunami. Layers of burnt cliff top and shells stretch endlessly around Port Phillip Bay and the Victorian coastline. Burnt trees protrude along the shorelines. Chevrons (20-30 metre high sand incursions) invade the coastline along Wilson’s Promontory, Portsea, Warrnambool and beyond. The sand chevrons are solid evidence for tsunamis washing inland. Carbon dating of the burnt shell remains appears to validate the fifteenth century catastrophe. According to Gavin Menzies claims that over nine hundred ships failed to return to China. With much of the magnificent fleet destroyed end the great adventured, leaving western imperialism to take over in the decades to come.
Sources:
Ming dynasty - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jianwen Emperor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yongle Emperor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1421 the year China Discovered America? - YouTube
Bimini Road - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Amazon.com: 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance
The Papacy and Ancient China by Tai Peng Wang - Gavin Menzies
The Renaissance began in China - The Sunday Tribune - Spectrum
Mega-Tsunamis, Chinese Junks and Port Phillip Bay - Thunderbolts.info
1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance written by Gavin Menzies