4000 volumes
IN DECEMBER 1404, [Emperor] Zhu Di had appointed two long-time
advisers, Yao Guang Xiao and Liu Chi, assisted by 2,180 scholars, to
take charge of a project, the Yong-le-Dadian, to preserve all known literature
and knowledge. It was the largest scholarly enterprise ever undertaken.
The result, a massive encyclopedia of four thousand volumes containing
some fifty million characters, was completed just before the Forbidden
City was inaugurated.
In parallel with this great endeavour, Zhu Di ordered the opinions
of 120 philosophers and sages of the Song dynasty to be collated and stored
in the Forbidden City together with the complete commentaries of thinkers
from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. In addition to this wealth
of academic knowledge, hundreds of printed novels could be bought from
Beijing market stalls. There was nothing remotely comparable anywhere in
the world. Printing was unknown in Europe - Gutenberg did not complete his
printed Bible for another thirty years...
The library of Henry V (1387-1422) comprised six handwritten books, three
of which were on loan to him from a nunnery, and the Florentine Francesco
Datini, the wealthiest European merchant of the same era, possessed twelve
books, eight of which were on religious subjects.
The Emperor's guests
On 2 February 1421 rulers from twenty eight states in Asia, Arabia,
Africa and the Indian Ocean assembled to pay homage to the Emperor Zhu
Di, or Yong Le - the third Ming emperor, at Beijing. But the Holy
Roman Emperor, the Emperor of Byzantium, the Doge of Venice and the kings
of England, France, Spain and Portugal being backward states were not invited.
Giant ships
Zhu Di expanded the warships and merchant ships he had inherited.
He commissioned 1,681 new ships among them 250 gigantic nine-masted ships.
The fleet contained more than 3,500 other vessels. There were 1,350 patrol
ships and the same number of combat vessels, 400 larger warships
and another 400 freighters for
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transporting grain, water and horses
for the fleet.
The voyage to the intellectual paradise of Beijing also offered
foreign potentates and envoys many earthly delights. Carried in sumptuous
comfort aboard the leviathan ships, they consumed the finest foods and
wines, and pleasured themselves with the concubines whose only role was
to please these foreign dignitaries. The formal inauguration of the Forbidden
City was followed by a sumptuous banquet. Its scale and opulence emphasized
China's position at the summit of the civilized world. In comparison, Europe
was backward, crude and barbaric. Henry V's marriage to Catherine of Valois
took place in London just three weeks after the inauguration of the Forbidden
City. Twenty-six thousand guests were entertained in Beijing, where they
ate a ten-course banquet served on dishes of the finest porcelain; a mere
six hundred guests attended Henry's nuptials and they were served stockfish
(salted cod) on rounds of stale bread that acted as plates. Catherine de
Valois wore neither knickers nor stockings at her wedding; Zhu Di's favourite
concubine was clad in the finest silks and her jewellery included cornelians
from Persia, rubies from Sri Lanka, Indian diamonds and jade from Kotan
(in Chinese Turkestan). Her perfume contained ambergris from the Pacific,
myrrh from Arabia and sandalwood from the Spice Islands. China's army numbered
one million men, armed with guns; Henry V could put five thousand men in
the field, armed only with longbows, swords and pikes. The fleet that would
carry Zhu Di's guests home numbered over a hundred ships with a complement
of thirty thousand men; when Henry went to war against France in June of
that year, he ferried his army across the Channel in four fishing boats,
carrying a hundred men on each crossing and sailing only in daylight hours.
Farewell ceremony
For a further month after the inauguration of the Forbidden City,
the rulers and envoys in Beijing were provided with lavish imperial hospitality
- the finest foods and wines, the most splendid entertainments and the
most beautiful concubines, skilled in the arts of love. Finally, on 3
March1421, a great ceremony was mounted to commemorate the departure
of the envoys for their native lands. A vast honour guard was assembled:
'First came commanders of ten thousands, next commanders of thousands, all
numbering about one hundred thousand men . . . Behind them stood troops in
serried ranks, two hundred thousand strong . . . The whole body . .. stood
so silent it seemed there was not a breathing soul there.' At noon
precisely, cymbals clashed, elephants lowered their trunks, and clouds
of smoke wafted from incense-holders in the shape of tortoises and cranes.
The emperor appeared, striding through the smoke to present the departing
ambassadors with their farewell gifts - crates of blue and white porcelain,
rolls of silk, bundles of cotton cloth and bamboo cases of jade. His great
fleets stood ready to carry them back to Hormuz, Aden, La'Sa and Dhofar in
Arabia; to Mogadishu, Brava, Malindi and Mombasa in Africa; to Sri Lanka,
Calicut, Cochin and Cambay in India; to Japan, Vietnam, Java, Sumatra, Malacca
and Borneo in south-east Asia, and elsewhere.
The armada
Two days and thirty-six locks later, they arrived at Tanggu (nt the
modern city of Tianjin) on the Yellow Sea. The sight that greeted the envoys
at Tanggu was one that
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must have lingered long in their minds.
More than one hundred huge junks rode at anchor, towering above the watchers
on the quayside - the ships were taller by far than the thatched houses
lining the bay. Surrounding them was a fleet of smaller merchant ships.
Each capital ship was about 480 feet in length (444 chi, the standard Chinese
unit of measurement, equivalent to about 12.5 inches or 32 centimetres)
and 180 feet across — big enough to swallow fifty fishing boats. On the
prow, glaring serpents' eyes served to frighten away evil spirits.
Pennants streamed from the tips of a forest of a thousand masts; below
them great sails of red silk, light but immensely strong, were furled on
each ship's nine masts. 'When their sails are spread, they are like
great clouds in the sky.' .
... Europeans could not even begin to equal in scale or scope
until Captain Cook set sail three and a half centuries later.
... As the admirals and envoys embarked, and the armada was readied for
sea, the water around the great ships was still black with smaller craft
shuttling from ship to shore. For days the port had been in turmoil as
cartloads of vegetables and dried fish and hundreds of tons of water were
hauled aboard to provision this armada of thirty thousand men for their
voyage. Even at this late hour, barges were still bringing final supplies
of fresh water and rice. The great armada's ships could remain at sea for
over three months and cover at least 4,500 miles without making landfall
to replenish food or water, for separate grain ships and water tankers sailed
with them. The grain ships also carried an array of flora the Chinese intended
to plant in foreign lands, some as further benefits of the tribute system
and others to provide food for the Chinese colonies that would be
created in new lands. Dogs were also taken aboard as petsfl others to be
bred for food and to hunt rats, and there were coops of Asiatic chickens
as valuable presents for foreign dignitaries. Separate horse-ships carried
the mounts for the cavalry.
The staggering size of the individual ships, not to mention the
armada itself, can only be understood in comparison with other navies
of the same era. In 1421, the next most powerful fleet afloat was that
of Venice. The Venetians possessed around three hundred galleys — fast,
light, thin-skinned ships built with softwood planking, rowed by oarsmen
and only suitable for island-hopping in the calm of a Mediterranean summer.
The biggest Venetian galleys were some 150 feet long and 20 feet wide and
carried at best 50 tons of cargo. In comparison, Zhu Di's treasure ships
were ocean-going monsters built of teak. The rudder of one of these great
ships stood 36 feet high — almost as long as the whole of the flagship,
the Nina, in which Columbus was later to set sail for the New World. Each
treasure ship could carry more than two thousand tons of cargo and! reach
Malacca in five weeks, Hormuz in the Persian Gulf in twelve. They were capable
of sailing the wildest oceans of the world.
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Wonder of the ancient
world
BEGUN in 486 BC under the Wu dynasty, the canal was one of the wonders
of the ancient world. From AD 584 onwards
it was extended and the individual sections linked together to form system
stretching for 1,800 kilometres - to this day the longest man made waterway
in the world. However, it was built at a horrific human cost: it is estimated
that half of the six million labour force perished at their work. The
financialstresses and domestic
upheavals caused by the building of the canal were also one of the principal
causes of the rapid collapse of the short-lived Sui dynasty (AD 589-618).
The Grand Canal was the main artery of commerce between north and south
China, but its capacity was no longer equal to the demands being placed
upon it. The work to enlarge it was carried out in two stages. In 1411, dredging
and reconstruction of the northern section began to clear 130 miles of channel,
and thirty-six new locks were built, for Beijing was over a hundred feet
higher than the Yellow River. Three hundred thousand labourers were employed
on the task. The southern section from the Yellow River to the Yangtze was
opened in 1415. The completed canal stretched from Beijing in the north to
Hangzhou on the coast, south of Shanghai. Grain was transported in no fewer
than three thousand flat-bottomed barges, and shipments rose from 2.8 million
piculs (approximately 170 million kilograms) in 1416 to five million (300
million kilograms) by the following year.
The insatiable demand for grain to feed the workforce in Beijing
led to shortages and famine elsewhere in China, and the timber required
for Zhu Di's great schemes stripped the forests of hardwood. Quite apart
from the timber needed to build the Forbidden City, each treasure ship in
the emperor's huge fleet consumed the wood of three hundred acres of prime
teak forest. The imperial navy was supported by a new fleet of auxiliary
store ships, and hundred of smaller merchant ships were also built to trade
between Chinese, Indian and African ports. Yet more hardwood was used in
the construction of the thousands of grain barges plying the Grand Canal.
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of acres of forest were felled.
Annam (the northern part of modern Vietnam) and Vietnam were also denuded
of trees, sparking off the first of a series of uprisings against Chinese
rule.
Malacca
In Port
Ma Huan also described the procedures followed by the Chinese fleets
when in port: When Malacca is visited by Chinese merchant vessels, [the
inhabitants] erect a barrier [for the collection of duties]. There are
four gates in the city wall, each furnished with watch and drum towers.
At night men with hand bells patrol the precincts. Inside the walls, a second
small enclosure of palisades has been built where godowns [warehouses]
have been constructed for the storage of specie and provisions. When the
government ships [Zheng He's fleet] were returning homewards, they visited
this place in order both to repair their vessels and to load local products.
Here they waited for a favourable wind from the south and in the middle
of the fifth month [June] they put to sea on their return voyage.
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All manner of peoples visited
Malacca - Bengalis, Gujaratis, Parsees, Arabs and many others conversed
in eighty-four languages - and all returned home with Chinese goods. Boats
that brought spices from the Spice Islands of Ternate and Tidore in the
Moluccas returned with Chinese porcelain. Arab dhows sailed north-west
for India, the Gulf, Egypt and Venice laden with silk, supplemented with
batiks and tin from Malacca and Java. After the Chinese junks had unloaded
their silk and porcelain, they refilled their holds with spice, Indian gems
and Venetian glass.#
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These extracts are taken from "1421 - the Year China Discovered the World"
by Gavin Menzies, Bantam Press 2002, a MUST BUY book, controversial
because the author suggesys that there is evidence that the Chinese discovered
the Americas before Christopher Columbus
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Glimpses of China, 1421