The Last Journey of the San Bao Eunuch, Admiral Zheng He

The fascinating development in East Asia finds common interest in Germany because of its immediate economic influence. Though it deserves, culture and especially that of ancient periods is not of top interest I dare to say. The book widened my eye. It deals with tremendous armadas of thousands of ships starting in China and going West in the first half of the 15th century with the ambition of curiosity, trade, and, of course, conquest. The period when from Europe single expeditions started towards East on land and sea, as Marco Polo and Vasco da Gama, is well known from German high school education as well as the Vikings' sailing to the New World. In contrast, those Chinese expeditions to the West remain largely unconsidered though each of them must have been feltlike a blast in mainly Muslim parts of India, Arabia and Africa. The book gives strong arguments that a part of the last fleet of Admiral San Bao reached the Mediterranean and Tunesia via rounding South Africa and that another part eventually landed in North America.The book is easy to read. The many original passages in Chinese characters are reproduced, translated, and explained in detail showing the reliability of the deduced ideas. Maps and figures illustrate the results thatare emphasized and repeatedby the author for the ease of reader's attention. Finishing the first half of the book I was surprised by interesting facts I was unaware so far. The author proceeds in its second part of the book to the exploration of the New World with a lot of unexpected, but serious facts enriched with entertaining episodes.

I am a contributor (through illustrations and editing) to this book by my wife Sheng-Wei Wang. Here I wish to highlight a few relevant aspects of this significant and fascinating contribution that provides novel insights into the history of 15th-century Chinese maritime explorations.This book deals primarily with Admiral Zheng He’s seventh and last voyage with his gigantic fleets of large ships. Those voyages were terminated due to a momentous change of policy by the Chinese government: to isolate itself from the rest of the world despite being its top power. Since all records and artefacts about the seven voyages were then destroyed and banned, it has been very difficult to reconstruct the history of these expeditions. The present book by Sheng-Wei Wang contributes new research on that very interesting topic from various angles. She brings a scientific approach to this important subject, using her education and practice as a scientist with a PhD in chemical physics. In particular, she reconstructed from a 16th-century epic work the timeline and routes of the seventh voyage: new evidence is presented that this expedition -- as well as the previous one -- reached the Mississippi valley in North America, long before Christopher Columbus did.Living in Hong Kong, I have witnessed and appreciated first-hand the many challenges inherent in understanding, interpreting and presenting the original account by Luo Maodeng, written in 16th-century Chinese, which underlies significant portions of Sheng-Wei Wang’s book. Since this subject was still illegal in China at that time, Luo’s account was couched in hidden forms as an allegory that had to be extracted through close scrutiny and correlation with well-established historical, archaeological, cultural, geographical and climate information.I highly recommend this scholarly and insightful analysis of an enigmatic and historic episode that should interest everyone, especially in the light of today’s China-US relations: it is unquestionably eye-opening!– Michel A. Van Hove

The book introduced more than what I had learned from the history classes. To my knowledge, Zheng He explored the South China Sea, Gulf of Thailand, Andaman Sea, Bay of Bengal, and the Arabian Sea. But the book shows evidence that Zheng He's last expedition plausibly reached the ancient American Indian city, Cahokia, in the U.S. central Mississippi Valley in late autumn, 1433 , long before Christopher Columbus first discovered America. It was really impressive to me after reading the book with details and pieces of evidence. Highly recommended to friends who were interested in history.

The book is a milestone in Zheng He research. It vividly presents, as never done before, the navigational routes and time lines of Zheng He’s treasure fleet to N. America in the 1430s, with hard and soft evidence extracted from the original text of an ancient Chinese master piece. The book opens a wide horizon for sinologists, archeologists, historians, geographers, scientists, engineers, navigators, cartographers, writers and general readers who are interested in ancient China-America relations to seek further truth in this missing chapter of history. Anyone who thinks that Columbus “discovered” America will have second thoughts after reading this book.

To my knowledge, Zheng He was the greatest mariner, explorer and pioneer through all the Chinese dynasties. This new book is now showing that Zheng He's fleet reached North America long before Columbus reached the Bahamas. The author must have a great courage for conducting this difficult and challenging research project to guide readers into such a bold adventure. Zheng He’s voyages, no doubt, were the greatest episodes of Chinese sailing in world history. I would highly recommend this book to friends.