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Zheng He

Awake!—2013 | September
- Zheng He
  
  “We have traversed more than one hundred thousand lia of immense waterspaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising skyhigh, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away . . . while our sails loftily unfurled like clouds day and night continued their course (rapid like that) of a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare.”—Fifteenth-century inscription at Changle, Fujian, China, attributed to Zheng He.
  
  CHINA is a land of big things. It has the largest population and one of the largest land areas of earth’s nations. Its people built the Great Wall, one of the most ambitious construction projects in history. A fleet of great ships built by China’s Ming Emperors Yongle and Xuande was larger than any other that would be assembled for the next five centuries. The admiral of that fleet was a Muslim from southwestern China named Zheng He.

Zheng He

Awake!—2013 | September
- Those remarkable voyages did not continue. Just decades after Zheng He’s voyages, China turned its back on foreign trade and diplomacy. Feeling no need to look beyond China’s borders, a new emperor and his Confucianist advisers tried to seal the country off from outside influence. They consigned the treasure fleet to the past, apparently destroying records of their epic voyages and even the ships themselves. Only in recent years have people, inside of China and out, learned of that grand epoch when Zheng He’s giant fleet sailed the seas.

Zheng He

Awake!—2013 | September
- The Ming fleet under the command of Zheng He undertook seven epic voyages between 1405 and 1433.
  
  The fleet may have numbered 200 vessels or more—warships, supply ships, water tankers, ships to transport horses, and so on. More than 27,000 sailors, government officials, troops, merchants, maintenance workers, and others were transported.
  
  Not until World War I did any nation again assemble a fleet comparable to that of Zheng He. It visited ports in the Far East and the Indian Ocean, reaching as far as East Africa.

Zheng He

Awake!—2013 | September
- Zheng He’s Treasure Ships—How Large and How Many?
  
  Historical records from the Ming dynasty say that Zheng He’s treasure ships were amazingly large—447 feet (136 m) long and 183 feet (56 m) wide. Scholars find these figures problematic and hard to verify, in that wooden sailing ships in excess of 300 feet (90 m) in length are structurally unsound.
  
  “All indications are that exaggeration has been at work in the accounts that mention the ships’ enormous size,” says one article on the subject. “A ship of about 200-250 ft [60-75 m] would make much more sense than the 450 ft [135 m] one.” Whatever the case, in the 15th century, vessels measuring over 200 feet (60 m) in length were certainly exceptional, and Zheng He’s fleet included up to 62 of them!