THE FLEETS ARE PREPARED FOR THE VOYAGE TO THE BARBARIANS
In order for the barbarians to follow the way of heaven, they would first need to find their way to the wellspring of Confucian virtue, the Middle Kingdom. Such a journey would require both maps and the ability to establish position at sea. Thus the provision of accurate charts and a viable system of navigation was of paramount importance— not only to facilitate the safe passage of Zheng He and his fleets but also to encourage the barbarians to return tribute to the new emperor.
Zhu Di and his father, Hong Wu, had encouraged the development of every aspect of navigation. A handbook titled Notebook on Sea Bottom Currents, found in Quanzhou, states that, after announcing the ascension of the Yongle emperor (Zhu Di) to the throne, Zheng He and his admirals were instructed to search for navigation charts, collecting all the information about currents, islands, mountains, straits, and the positions of stars. They used this data to revise their navigation charts, including compass points and the cross-references of stars.
The Chinese cultivated Arab navigators and astronomers, especially during the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368). According to Gong Zhen, in 1403, two years before the first formal expedition, Zheng He, Jang Min, and Li Qi were sent by Zhu Di to visit countries of the western oceans. Their mission included recruiting foreign navigators capable of deep-sea navigation. For this and much other information in chapters 3 5, and 6, I am indebted to Tai Peng Wang’s research.1
The writer Yan Congjian stated in Shuyu Zhouzi Lu (Compiled information about the remotest foreign countries):
In the first year of the reign of the Emperor Hong Wu of the Ming dynasty (1368) the Emperor converted the Bureau of History into the Bureau of Astronomy. He also established the Bureau of the Chinese Islamic Astronomy. In the second year (1369) the Hong Wu Emperor summoned eleven Chinese Muslims including Zheng Ah Li, the Chinese Muslim Astronomical Officer, to the capital, Nanjing, “on a mission to improve on the Islamic calendars and to observe the astronomical-phenomena. They were each conferred upon with gifts and official titles accordingly.
In 1382 the emperor summoned a group of scholars, including the Islamic observatory official Hai Da Er and a master of Islam named Ma Sa Yi Hei, to choose the best astronomy books among several hundred volumes of Xiyu Shu (Books from the western regions) at the Yuan court in Beijing. The next year, a Chinese translation of the selected books, Tian Wen Shu (Works of astronomy), was published.
According to the Ming translator Ma Ha, the Tian Wen Shu was originally written by Abu Hassan Koshiya (A.D. 971–1029), a Yuan mathematician who played a dominant role in the development of spherical trigonometry. Ma Ha praises Koshiya as “one of the greatest scholars of all times who explained the ultimate theories of astronomy in all its great profundity and simplicity.”
The Tian Wen Shu explained the Islamic concepts of longitude and latitude. So it is clear that early Chinese concepts of latitude, longitude, and a round earth go back at least to this Ming translation of Islamic geography books. In about 1270 the Arab astrologist Jamal ad-Din had made a terrestrial globe of the earth that correctly depicted the proportions of land (30 percent) and sea (70 percent). He gave the globe to Guo Shoujing, as will be described in later chapters.
A reliance on Islamic navigators continued in Zheng He’s era. Zheng He himself was a Muslim, and given the advanced state of navigation and astronomy in the Islamic world, it’s no wonder he recruited other Muslims to his fleets. According to Chen Shuiyuan, a Taiwanese historian, many were located in Quanzhou, one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world and home to special graveyards reserved for Muslim sailors. Zheng He and his team also searched the provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, and Zhejiang for superior navigators.
Foreign navigators and astronomers who voyaged on Chinese ships were given Chinese names, such as Wang Gui, Wu Zheng, and Ma Zheng. When they returned after a successful mission, they were rewarded. In 1407, for example, foreigners returning to Quanzhou received notes equivalent to fifty taeles of silver as well as rolls of embroidered silk. In 1430, when a foreign Muslim named Sheban returned from the final expedition, the Xuan De Emperor promoted him to deputy battalion commander.
In a paper titled “Instruments and Observation at the Imperial Astronomical Bureau During the Ming Dynasty,” Professor Thatcher E. Deane states:
As with the development of the calendric systems…were most evident at the beginning of a dynasty, less so at the beginning of an individual emperor’s reign, and almost never at any other time when such expenditures were not direct investments in legitimising state and ruler. Hong Wu had an urgent need to improve the calendrical system because he was the first of the dynasty; Zhu Di was accused of usurping the throne so he also had a very strong need.
Gifts for Foreign Rulers
This obsessive focus on improving navigational techniques enabled Zheng He’s fleets to reach foreign countries, where, after presenting their credentials, the Chinese ambassadors would supply maps and astronomical tables to the rulers. The gift of knowledge was intended to make it possible for them to return tribute to the Middle Kingdom.
We know from recent excavations at the Jingdezhen kilns (where the bulk of the ceramics carried in Zheng He’s fleets were fired) and from excavations in Cairo beside the Red Sea Canal, as well as from collections in Europe, that Chinese delegations offered personal gifts to foreign leaders. Ceramic copies of Mamluk candlesticks were given to the Mamluk sultans, along with blue and white flasks, ewers, porcelain cups, and pen boxes. A ewer cover decorated with an armillary sphere in cobalt was fired for the king of Portugal, as were ceramic tiles for Ottoman sultans.
Gifts for more ordinary folk made the journey as well. Playing cards, chess, and mah-jongg sets were given to merchants. Children’s whirligig toys, kites, and hot-air balloons were dispensed.
The saddest cargo of the great fleets were women. Traditionally, foreign rulers were each presented with one hundred slave girls. When the fleets returned, the Xuan De emperor observed: “Ten thousand countries are our guests.” The number of concubines and slave girls embarked must have been staggering. In a subsequent chapter, we’ll show how, after the Chinese squadron reached Venice, female slaves and their offspring made a significant impact on the domestic life and population of Venice, Florence, and Tuscany.
Finally, a word about the most valuable part of the fleet—the sailors.
Like their modern counterparts, their most prized possessions were mementoes of their loved ones at home—drawings, locks of a wife’s or children’s hair, little presents, perhaps a pet dog, a tub of roses, or a tame, flightless bird or pet duck. Chinese sailors were avid gamblers; playing cards and dice were part of everyday life, as was mah-jongg.
Like today’s sailors, they would have been keen to better themselves. As the voyage progressed and boredom set in, they would have put aside novels for progressively more serious reading. By Zheng He’s era, printed popu lar books were widely available and all kinds of pocket encyclopedias were sold. Reference books (jih yung lei shu) with illustrations and descriptions covered all manner of practical subjects: agriculture; salt and sugar manufacture; collecting ceramics and bronzes; ship and cart making; coal and fuel use; paper making and printing; welding technology; alcohol fermentation; pearl and jade collecting.
The Nung Shu, a popular encyclopedia first published in 1313, provided descriptions and illustrations of agricultural machinery, including tilt and trip hammers; rotary grinding mills; winnowing fans; bellows powered by piston rods, connecting rods, and horizontal water wheels; flour-sifting machinery drawn by a water wheel; vertical water wheels for driving textile machinery; winders or windlasses with cranks for cranes, wells, and mine shafts; salt mills; pearl-diving apparatus;