China Daily: The "debate" over Zheng He

It’s another of those cherished myths–that Ming Dynasty explorer Zheng He made his way as far as the coasts of North America and Europe. It does a lot for Chinese national pride and it has certainly made Gavin Menzies a well-known and wealthy author. He’s become something of a strawman in China history circles, but Menzies’ theories do have support in some quarters, especially from Liu Gang, owner of a map (right) that supposedly proves Zheng He surveyed the wide world. (Though it should be noted that the authenticity of that map is also hotly disputed.)

The problem with all of this is that nasty old preference by most historians for actual documented evidence as opposed to speculation and, in this case, outright fantasy. (See related links here, here, and here.)

Fortunately, serious historians have one of China’s foremost historical myth debunkers, Ge Jianxiong, on their side. In today’s China Daily, Professor Ge weighs in on the Zheng He “debate.”

“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

This date in history: The bloody fall of the the Taiping capital

On this date in 1864, Zeng Guoquan, the brother of the late-Qing statesman and official, Zeng Guofan, ordered his engineers to blow a section of the wall surrounding the Taiping capital, Tianjing (Nanjing). The wall caved and government troops charged into the city. The Taipings gave some resistance but soon Nanjing was in complete chaos as Taiping officials and commoners committed suicide or fled for their lives, taking what ever they could with them. The Qing troops, frustrated after a long siege and an even longer campaign against the Taiping forces, vented their anger on the city and its people. Fires broke out as soldiers looted homes and businesses. Disciplined troop movements broke down almost immediately into bloody street-to-street and house-to-house fighting. As the Taiping military threw off their uniforms to flee or to confuse their attackers, Qing soliders started killing indiscriminately. Nearly 20,000 people died in the retaking of the city. Like many such events, some accounts put the number higher. It’s hard to know for sure.

Hong Xiuquan, the leader of the Taipings, had died on June 1 and his son, the Tiangui Fu, took his place as the titular head of the Taiping movement. Donning Qing army

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