Zheng He

Zheng He
Statue from a modern monument to Zheng He at the Stadthuys Museum in Malacca Town, Malaysia
Born	1371 Yunnan, China
Died	1433 (1434) (aged 62) At sea
Nationality	Ming Dynasty Chinese
Other names	Ma Sanbao Hajji Mahmud Shamsuddin
Occupations	Asian explorer
Title	Admiral of the Ocean Sea

Zheng He
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	鄭和
Simplified Chinese	郑和
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Zhèng Hé Gwoyeu Romatzyh Jenq Her Wade–Giles Cheng Ho Tongyong Pinyin Jhèng Hé Yale Romanization Jèng Hé IPA [ʈʂə̂ŋ xɤ̌] Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Jehng Wòh Jyutping Zeng6 Wo4 IPA [tsɛ̀ːŋ wɔ̏ː] Southern Min Hokkien POJ Tēⁿ-hô
Alternative Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	馬三寶
Simplified Chinese	马三宝
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Mǎ Sānbǎo Gwoyeu Romatzyh Maa Sanbao Wade–Giles Ma San-pao Tongyong Pinyin Mǎ Sānbǎo Yale Romanization Mǎ Sānbǎu Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Maáh Sáam bóu Jyutping Maa5 Saam1 bou2 IPA [ma̬ː sáːmpǒu] Southern Min Hokkien POJ Bé-sam-pó
Arabic name
Arabic	حاجي محمود شمس الدين

Life

Zheng, born as Ma He (t 馬和, s 马和), was the second son of a Hui family from Kunyang (present-day Jinning), near the southwest corner of Lake Dian south of Kunming in Yunnan. He also had four sisters. It is uncertain whether Zheng He was a Muslim himself: some contemporary records such as Ma Huan's suggest he may have been; however, he left numerous bequests and donations to temples of the Taoist sea goddess Mazu.

He was the great-great-great-grandson of Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, a Persian who served in the administration of the Mongolian Empire and was appointed governor of Yunnan during the early Yuan Dynasty. His great-grandfather was named Bayan and may have been a member of one of the Mongol garrisons in Yunnan. Both his grandfather and great-grandfather carried the title hajji, indicating that they had made the pilgrimage to Mecca.

In 1381, his father was killed following the defeat of the Northern Yuan. A Ming army was dispatched to Yunnan to put down the army of the Yuan loyalist Basalawarmi and effect the conquest of Yunnan. Ma He, then only eleven years old, was captured by the Ming-allied Muslim troops of Lan Yu and Fu Youde and castrated along with 380 other captives. He was sent to the court of the Prince of Yan, one of the Hongwu Emperor's sons named Zhu Di. He was initially called Ma Sanbao: either 三寶 (s 三宝, lit. "Three Gifts") or 三保 (lit. "Three Protections", both pronounced sān bǎo). The young eunuch eventually became a trusted adviser to the prince and, now almost 7 chi tall (around 6'6"), assisted him when the Jianwen Emperor's hostility to his uncle's feudal bases prompted the 1399–1402 Jingnan Campaign which ended with the emperor's apparent death and the ascension of the Prince of Yan as the Yongle Emperor. For the valor he displayed in the Battle of Zhenglunba near Beiping when his horse was killed underneath him, the eunuch's name was changed to Zheng He by Zhu Di. In the new administration, Zheng He served in the highest posts, as Grand Director and later (during his voyages) as Chief Envoy (正使, zhèngshǐ).

After the ascension of Zhu Di's son as the Hongxi Emperor, the ocean voyages were discontinued and Zheng He was instead appointed as Defender of Nanjing, the empire's southern capital. In that post, he was largely responsible for the completion of the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, an enormous pagoda still described as a wonder of the world as late as the 19th century.

The Hongxi era was quite short and, in 1430, the new Xuande Emperor appointed Zheng He to command over a seventh and final expedition into the "Western Ocean". It is generally believed that Zheng He died during the return trip following the fleet's visit to Hormuz in 1433.

Expeditions

The route of the 7th voyage of Zheng He's fleet.
Solid line: main fleet
Dashed line: a possible route of Hong Bao's squadron
Dotted line: a trip of seven Chinese sailors, including Ma Huan, from Calicut to Mecca on a native ship. Cities known to have been visited by Zheng He's fleets throughout his seven voyages shown in red.

Early 17th century Chinese woodblock print, thought to represent Zheng He's ships.

The Yuan Dynasty and expanding Sino-Arab trade during the 14th century had gradually expanded Chinese knowledge of the world: "universal" maps previously only displaying China and its surrounding seas began to expand further and further into the southwest with much more accurate depictions of the extent of Arabia and Africa. Between 1405 and 1433, the Ming government sponsored seven naval expeditions. The Yongle Emperor – disregarding the Hongwu Emperor's expressed wishes – designed them to establish a Chinese presence and impose imperial control over the Indian Ocean trade, impress foreign peoples in the Indian Ocean basin, and extend the empire's tributary system. It has also been inferred from passages in the History of Ming that the initial voyages were launched as part of the emperor's attempt to capture his escaped predecessor, which would have made the first voyage the "largest-scale manhunt on water in the history of China".

Zheng He was placed as the admiral in control of the huge fleet and armed forces that undertook these expeditions. Wang Jinghong was appointed his second in command. Preparations were thorough and wide-ranging, including the use of such numerous linguists that a foreign language institute was established at Nanjing. Zheng He's first voyage departed July 11, 1405, from Suzhou and consisted of a fleet of 317 (or 200) ships holding almost 28,000 crewmen.

Zheng He's fleets visited Brunei, Thailand and Southeast Asia, India, the Horn of Africa, and Arabia, dispensing and receiving goods along the way. Zheng He presented gifts of gold, silver, porcelain, and silk; in return, China received such novelties as ostriches, zebras, camels, and ivory from the Swahili. The giraffe he returned from Malindi was considered to be a qilin and taken as proof of the favor of heaven upon the administration.

While Zheng He's fleet was unprecedented, the routes were not. Zheng He's fleet was following long-established, well-mapped routes of trade between China and the Arabian peninsula employed since at least the Han Dynasty. During the Three Kingdoms Period, the king of Wu sent a diplomatic mission along the coast of Asia, which reaching as far as the Eastern Roman Empire. After centuries of disruption, the Song Dynasty restored large-scale maritime trade from China in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, reaching as far as the Arabian peninsula and East Africa. When his fleet first arrived in Malacca, there was already a sizable Chinese community. The General Survey of the Ocean Shores (瀛涯勝覽, Yíngyá Shènglǎn) composed by the translator Ma Huan in 1416 gave very detailed accounts of his observations of peoples' customs and lives in the ports they visited. He referred to the expatriate Chinese as "Tang" (唐人, Tángrén).

The Kangnido map (1402) predates Zheng's voyages and suggests that he had quite detailed geographical information on much of the Old World.

Zheng He generally sought to attain his goals through diplomacy, and his large army awed most would-be enemies into submission. But a contemporary reported that Zheng He "walked like a tiger" and did not shrink from violence when he considered it necessary to impress foreign peoples with China's military might. He ruthlessly suppressed pirates who had long plagued Chinese and southeast Asian waters. For example, he defeated Chen Zuyi, one of the most feared and respected pirate captains, and returned him back to China for execution. He also waged a land war against the Kingdom of Kotte on Ceylon, and he made displays of military force when local officials threatened his fleet in Arabia and East Africa. From his fourth voyage, he brought envoys from thirty states who traveled to China and paid their respects at the Ming court.

In 1424, the Yongle Emperor died. His successor, the Hongxi Emperor (r. 1424–1425), stopped the voyages during his short reign. Zheng He made one more voyage during the reign of Hongxi's son, the Xuande Emperor (r. 1426–1435) but, after that, the voyages of the Chinese treasure ship fleets were ended. Xuande believed his father's decision to halt the voyages had been meritorious and thus "there would be no need to make a detailed description of his grandfather’s sending Zheng He to the Western Ocean." The voyages "were contrary to the rules stipulated in the Huang Ming Zuxun" (皇明祖訓), the dynastic foundation documents laid down by the Hongwu Emperor:

Some far-off countries pay their tribute to me at much expense and through great difficulties, all of which are by no means my own wish. Messages should be forwarded to them to reduce their tribute so as to avoid high and unnecessary expenses on both sides.

They further violated longstanding Confucian principles. They were only made possible by (and therefore continued to represent) a triumph of the Ming's eunuch faction over the administration's scholar-bureaucrats. Upon Zheng He's death and his faction's fall from power, his successors sought to minimize him in official accounts, along with continuing attempts to destroy all records related to the Jianwen Emperor or the manhunt to find him.

Although unmentioned in the official dynastic histories, Zheng He mostly probably died during the treasure fleet's last voyage. Although he has a tomb in China, it is empty: he was buried at sea.

Voyages

Detail of the Fra Mauro map relating the travels of a junk into the Atlantic Ocean in 1420. The ship also is illustrated above the text.

Order	Time	Regions along the way
1st Voyage	1405–1407	Champa, Java, Palembang, Malacca, Aru (id:Aru), Samudera, Lambri, Ceylon, Kollam, Cochin, Calicut
2nd Voyage	1407–1409	Champa, Java, Siam, Cochin, Ceylon
3rd Voyage	1409–1411	Champa, Java, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Quilon, Cochin, Calicut, Siam, Lambri, Kayal, Coimbatore, Puttanpur
4th Voyage	1413–1415	Champa, Java, Palembang, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Cochin, Calicut, Kayal, Pahang, Kelantan, Aru, Lambri, Hormuz, Maldives, Mogadishu, Barawa, Malindi, Aden, Muscat, Dhofar
5th Voyage	1416–1419	Champa, Pahang, Java, Malacca, Samudera, Lambri, Ceylon, Sharwayn, Cochin, Calicut, Hormuz, Maldives, Mogadishu, Barawa, Malindi, Aden
6th Voyage	1421–1422	Hormuz, East Africa, countries of the Arabian Peninsula
7th Voyage	1430–1433	Champa, Java, Palembang, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Calicut, Fengtu... (18 states in total)

Zheng He led seven expeditions to the "Western" or Indian Ocean. Zheng He brought back to China many trophies and envoys from more than thirty kingdoms – including King Vira Alakeshwara of Ceylon, who came to China as a captive to apologize to the Emperor for offenses against his mission.

One of a set of maps of Zheng He's missions (郑和航海图), also known as the Mao Kun maps, 1628

There has been speculation that at least some of Zheng's ships may have traveled beyond the Cape of Good Hope. In particular, the Venetian monk and cartographer Fra Mauro in his 1459 map described the travels of a huge "junk from India" 2,000 miles into the Atlantic Ocean in 1420. What Fra Mauro meant by 'India' is uncertain and some scholars believe he meant an Arab ship. Others, most famously Gavin Menzies, propose Zheng He may have discovered America 70 years before Christopher Columbus.

Zheng himself wrote of his travels:

We have traversed more than 100,000 li of immense water spaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course [as rapidly] as a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare…

Sailing charts

A section of the Wubei Zhi oriented east: India in the upper left, Sri Lanka upper right, and Africa along the bottom.

See also: Chinese geography and Chinese directions

Zheng He's sailing charts were published in a book entitled the Wubei Zhi (A Treatise on Armament Technology) written in 1621 and published in 1628 but traced back to Zheng He's and earlier voyages. It was originally a strip map 20.5 cm by 560 cm that could be rolled up, but was divided into 40 pages which vary in scale from 7 miles/inch in the Nanjing area to 215 miles/inch in parts of the African coast.

There is little attempt to provide an accurate 2-D representation; instead the sailing instructions are given using a 24-point compass system with a Chinese symbol for each point, together with a sailing time or distance, which takes account of the local currents and winds. Sometimes depth soundings are also provided. It also shows bays, estuaries, capes and islands, ports and mountains along the coast, important landmarks such as pagodas and temples, and shoal rocks. Of 300 named places outside China, more than 80% can be confidently located. There are also fifty observations of stellar altitude.

Size of the ships

File:Zheng He's ship compared to Columbus's.jpg

A display at the Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai, UAE, compares the size of ships used by Zheng He and by Christopher Columbus.

Traditional and popular accounts of Zheng He's voyages have described a great fleet of gigantic ships, far larger than any other wooden ships in history. Some modern scholars consider these descriptions to be exaggerated.

Chinese records state that Zheng He's fleet sailed as far as East Africa. According to medieval Chinese sources, Zheng He commanded seven expeditions. The 1405 expedition consisted of 27,800 men and a fleet of 62 treasure ships supported by approximately 190 smaller ships. The fleet included:

• "Treasure ships" (宝船, Bǎo Chuán), used by the commander of the fleet and his deputies (nine-masted, about 127 metres (416 ft) long and 52 metres (170 ft) wide), according to later writers . This is more or less the size and shape of a football field.
• Equine ships (馬船, Mǎ Chuán), carrying horses and tribute goods and repair material for the fleet (eight-masted, about 103 m (339 ft) long and 42 m (138 ft) wide).
• Supply ships (粮船, Liáng Chuán), containing staple for the crew (seven-masted, about 78 m (257 ft) long and 35 m (115 ft) wide).
• Troop transports (兵船, Bīng Chuán), six-masted, about 67 m (220 ft) long and 25 m (83 ft) wide.
• Fuchuan warships (福船, Fú Chuán), five-masted, about 50 m (165 ft) long.
• Patrol boats (坐船, Zuò Chuán), eight-oared, about 37 m (120 ft) long.
• Water tankers (水船, Shuǐ Chuán), with 1 month's supply of fresh water.

Six more expeditions took place, from 1407 to 1433, with fleets of comparable size.

If the accounts can be taken as factual, Zheng He's treasure ships were mammoth ships with nine masts, four decks, and were capable of accommodating more than 500 passengers, as well as a massive amount of cargo. Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta both described multi-masted ships carrying 500 to 1000 passengers in their translated accounts. Niccolò Da Conti, a contemporary of Zheng He, was also an eyewitness of ships in Southeast Asia, claiming to have seen 5 masted junks weighing about 2000 tons. There are even some sources that claim some of the treasure ships might have been as long as 600 feet. On the ships were navigators, explorers, sailors, doctors, workers, and soldiers along with the translator and diarist Gong Zhen.

The largest ships in the fleet, the treasure ships described in Chinese chronicles, would have been several times larger than any other wooden ship ever recorded in history, surpassing l'Orient (65 m (213.3 ft) long) which was built in the late 18th century. The first ships to attain 126 m (413.4 ft) long were 19th century steamers with iron hulls. Some scholars argue that it is highly unlikely that Zheng He's ship was 450 feet (137.2 m) in length, some estimating that they were 390–408 feet (118.9–124.4 m) long and 160–166 feet (48.8–50.6 m) wide instead while others put them as small as 200–250 feet (61.0–76.2 m) in length, which would make them smaller than the equine, supply, and troop ships in the fleet.

One explanation for the seemingly inefficient size of these colossal ships was that the largest 44 Zhang treasure ships were merely used by the Emperor and imperial bureaucrats to travel along the Yangtze for court business, including reviewing Zheng He's expedition fleet. The Yangtze river, with its calmer waters, may have been navigable by these treasure ships. Zheng He, a court eunuch, would not have had the privilege in rank to command the largest of these ships, seaworthy or not. The main ships of Zheng He's fleet were instead 6 masted 2000-liao ships.

Legacy

A giraffe brought from Medieval Somalia in the twelfth year of Yongle (1415).

Imperial China

In the decades after the last voyage, Imperial officials minimized the importance of Zheng He and his expeditions throughout the many regnal and dynastic histories they compiled. The information in the Yongle and Xuande Emperors' official annals was incomplete and even erroneous; other official publications omitted them completely. Although some have seen this as a conspiracy seeking to eliminate memories of the voyages, it is likely that the records were dispersed throughout several departments and the expeditions – unauthorized by (and in fact, counter to) the injunctions of the dynastic founder – presented a kind of embarrassment to the dynasty.

State-sponsored Ming naval efforts declined dramatically after Zheng's voyages. Starting in the early 15th century, China experienced increasing pressure from the surviving Yuan Mongols from the north. The relocation of the capital north to Beijing exacerbated this threat dramatically. At considerable expense, China launched annual military expeditions from Beijing to weaken the Mongolians. The expenditures necessary for these land campaigns directly competed with the funds necessary to continue naval expeditions. Further, in 1449, Mongolian cavalry ambushed a land expedition personally led by the Zhengtong Emperor at Tumu Fortress, less than a day's march from the walls of the capital. The Mongolians wiped out the Chinese army and captured the emperor. This battle had two salient effects. First, it demonstrated the clear threat posed by the northern nomads. Second, the Mongols caused a political crisis in China when they released the emperor after his half-brother had already ascended and declared the new Jingtai era. Not until 1457 and the restoration of the former emperor did political stability return. Upon his return to power, China abandoned the strategy of annual land expeditions and instead embarked upon a massive and expensive expansion of the Great Wall of China. In this environment, funding for naval expeditions simply did not happen.

However, missions from Southeast Asia continued to arrive for decades. Depending on local conditions, they could reach such frequency that the court found it necessary to restrict them: the History of Ming records imperial edicts forbidding Java, Champa, and Siam from sending their envoys more often than once every three years.

Southeast Asia

The Cakra Donya Bell, a gift from Zheng He to Pasai, now located at the Museum Aceh in Banda Aceh.

Cult of Zheng He

Among the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, Zheng He became the object of cult veneration. Even some of his crew members who happened to stay in this or that port sometimes did as well, such as "Poontaokong" on Sulu. The temples of this cult – called after either of his names, Cheng Hoon or Sam Po – are peculiar to overseas Chinese except for a single temple in Hongjian originally constructed by a returned Filipino Chinese in the Ming dynasty and rebuilt by another Filipino Chinese after the original was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. (The same village of Hongjian, in Fujian's Jiaomei township, is also the ancestral home of Corazon Aquino.)

The San Bao Temple in Malacca.

Malacca

The oldest and most important Chinese temple in Malacca is the 17th-century Cheng Hoon Teng, dedicated to Guanyin. During Dutch colonial rule, the head of the Cheng Hoon Temple was appointed chief over the community's Chinese inhabitants.

Following Zheng He's arrival, the sultan and sultana of Malacca visited China at the head of over 540 of their subjects, bearing ample tribute. Sultan Mansur Shah (r. 1459–1477) later dispatched Tun Perpatih Putih as his envoy to China, carrying a letter from the sultan to the Ming emperor. The letter requested the hand of an imperial daughter in marriage. Malay (but not Chinese) annals record that, in the year 1459, a princess named Hang Li Po or Hang Liu was sent from China to marry the sultan. The princess came with 500 high-ranking young men and a few hundred handmaidens as her entourage. They eventually settled in Bukit Cina. It is believed that a significant number of them married into the local populace, creating the descendants now known as the Peranakan. Owing to this supposed lineage, the Peranakan still use special honorifics: Baba for the men and Nyonya for the women.

Indonesia

The Zheng Hoo Mosque in Surabaya.

Indonesian Chinese have established temples to Zheng He in Jakarta, Cirebon, Surabaya, and Semarang.

In 1961, the Indonesian Islamic leader and scholar Hamka created Zheng He with an important role in the development of Islam in Indonesia. The Brunei Times credits Zheng He with building Chinese Muslim communities in Palembang and along the shores of Java, the Malay Peninsula, and the Philippines. These Muslims allegedly followed the Hanafi school in the Chinese language. This Chinese Muslim community was led by Hajji Yan Ying Yu, who urged his followers to assimilate and take local names. The Chinese trader Sun Long even supposedly adopted the son of the king of Majapahit and his Chinese wife, a son who went on to become Raden Patah. Amid this assimilation (and loss of contact with China itself), the Hanafi Islam became absorbed by the local Shafi'i school and the presence of distinctly ethnic Chinese Muslims dwindled to almost nothing. The Malay Annals also record a number of Hanafi mosques – in Semarang and Ancol, for instance – were converted directly into temples of the Zheng He cult during the 1460s and '70s.

Modern Scholarship

In the 1950s, historians such as John Fairbank and Joseph Needham popularized the idea that after Zheng He's voyages China turned away from the seas due to the Haijin edict and was isolated from European technological advancements. Modern historians point out that Chinese maritime commerce did not totally stop after Zheng He, that Chinese ships continued to participate in Southeast Asian commerce until the 19th century, and that active Chinese trading with India and East Africa continued long after the time of Zheng. Moreover revisionist historians such as Jack Goldstone argue that the Zheng He voyages ended for practical reasons that did not reflect the technological level of China. Although the Ming Dynasty did ban shipping with the Haijin edict, this was a policy of the Hongwu Emperor that long preceded Zheng He and the ban – so obviously disregarded by the Yongle Emperor – was eventually lifted entirely. However, the ban on maritime shipping did force countless numbers of people into smuggling and piracy. Neglect of the imperial navy and Nanjing dockyards after Zheng He's voyages left the coast highly vulnerable both to Japanese and "Japanese" Wokou during the 16th century.

Richard von Glahn, a UCLA professor of Chinese history, commented that most treatments of Zheng He present him wrongly: they "offer counterfactual arguments" and "emphasize China's missed opportunity." This "narrative emphasizes the failure" instead of the accomplishments, despite his assertion that "Zheng He reshaped Asia." Glahn argues maritime history in the 15th century was essentially the Zheng He story and the effects of his voyages.

Cultural Influence

Despite the official neglect, the adventures of the fleet captured the imagination of some Chinese and novelizations of the voyages occurred, such as the Romance of the Three-Jeweled Eunuch in 1597.

In modern times, interest in Zheng He revived substantially. In Vernor Vinge's 1999 science-fiction novel A Deepness in the Sky, a race of commercial traders in human space are named the Qeng Ho after the admiral. The expeditions featured prominently in Heather Terrell's 2005 novel The Map Thief. For the 600th anniversary of Zheng He's voyages in 2005, the China's CCTV produced a special television series Zheng He Xia Xiyang, starring Gallen Lo as Zheng He.

Relics

Nanjing Temple of Mazu

Zheng He built the Tianfei Palace (天妃宫, Tiānfēigōng, lit. "Palace of the Celestial Wife"), a temple in honor of the goddess Mazu, in Nanjing after the fleet returned from its first western voyage in 1407.

Taicang Stele

The "Deed of Foreign Connection and Exchange" (通番事跡) or "Tongfan Deed Stele" is located in the Tianfei Palace in Taicang, whence the expeditions first departed. The stele was submerged and lost, but has been rebuilt.

Nanshan Stele

In order to thank the Celestial Wife for her blessings, Zheng He and his colleagues rebuilt the Tianfei Palace in Nanshan, Changle County, in Fujian province as well prior to departing on their last voyage. At the renovated temple, they raised a stele entitled "A Record of Tianfei Showing Her Presence and Power" (天妃靈應之記, Tiānfēi Líng Yīng zhī Jì), discussing their earlier voyages.

Sri Lankan Stele

The Galle Trilingual Inscription in Sri Lanka was discovered in the city of Galle in 1911 and is preserved at the National Museum of Colombo. The three languages used in the inscription were Chinese, Tamil and Persian. The inscription praises Buddha and describes the fleet's donations to the famous Buddhist Tenavarai Nayanar temple of Tondeswaram.

Tomb and Museum

Zheng He's tomb in Nanjing has been repaired and a small museum built next to it, although his body was buried at sea off the Malabar Coast near Calicut in western India. However, his sword and other personal possessions were interred in a Muslim tomb inscribed in Arabic.

The tomb of Zheng He's assistant Hong Bao was recently unearthed in Nanjing, as well.

Commemoration

In the People's Republic of China, 11 July is Maritime Day (中国航海日, Zhōngguó Hánghǎi Rì) and is devoted to the memory of Zheng He's first voyage.

Gallery

• 
  Zheng He's tomb in Nanjing
• 
  Museum to honour Zheng He, Nanjing
• 
  Zheng He Gallery in Malacca
• 
  Zheng He statue in the Quanzhou Maritime Museum

See also

• Ming Dynasty
• Ming Shi-lu
• Galle Trilingual Inscription
• Chinese exploration

• Hui
• Ma Huan
• Fei Xin

• Chang Yuchun
• Hong Bao
• Zhou Man

References

• Deng, Gang (2005). Chinese Maritime Activities and Socioeconomic Development, c. 2100 BC - 1900 AD. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-29212-4.
• Dreyer, Edward L. (2006). Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming, 1405–1433 (Library of World Biography Series). Longman. ISBN 0-321-08443-8.
• Levathes, Louise (1997). When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405–1433. Oxford University Press, trade paperback. ISBN 0-19-511207-5.
• Mills, J. V. G. (1970). Ying-yai Sheng-lan, The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores (1433), translated from the Chinese text edited by Feng Ch'eng Chun with introduction, notes and appendices by J. V. G. Mills. White Lotus Press. Reprinted 1970, 1997. ISBN 974-8496-78-3.
• Ming-Yang, Dr Su. 2004 Seven Epic Voyages of Zheng He in Ming China (1405–1433)
• Viviano, Frank (2005). "China's Great Armada." National Geographic, 208(1):28–53, July.
• Joseph Kahn: China Has an Ancient Mariner to Tell You About. In The New York Times of 2005-7-20.
• Newsletter, in Chinese, on academic research on the Zheng He voyages
• Cummins, Joseph (2006). History's Great Untold Stories. Murdoch Books. ISBN 1-74045-808-7.
• Shipping News: Zheng He's Sexcentenary - China Heritage Newsletter, June 2005, ISSN 1833-8461. Published by the China Heritage Project of The Australian National University.

External links

• Zheng He - The Chinese Muslim Admiral
• Zheng He Journey to Arabia
• Zheng He 600th Anniversary
• BBC radio programme "Swimming Dragons".
• TIME magazine special feature on Zheng He (August 2001)
• Virtual exhibition from elibraryhub.com
• Ship imitates ancient vessel navigated by Zheng He at peopledaily.com (25 September 2006)