Jottings from the Granite Studio

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 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…

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.

I’m not as rabidly anti-Menzies as others and there seem to be a few who have staked their careers on proving him wrong. But bad history is still bad history. Maybe someday we’ll have the evidence but right now, in the words of Ben Bradlee, “you haven’t got it yet.”