The Seven Voyages of ...

…no, not Sinbad, but an equally intrepid explorer who also encountered visited distant lands, saw strange creatures and battled pirates on the high seas. He would surely have become the hero of tales in the “1001 Nights” had he lived centuries earlier. He is legendary in the country of his birth, and was even celebrated in one of the most ostentatious (and unnervingly intimidating) Olympic opening ceremonies ever. His names was Zheng He (1371-1433) and he was admiral of the Treasure Fleet of the Ming emperor of China.

There are several similarities between Zheng He and the legendary Sinbad. Both were Muslims, both sailed through the Indian Ocean many times, and both may have sailed further than anyone else in their lifetime.

A wax figure of Zheng He in the Quanzhou Maritime Museum, Fujian Province, China.

Zheng He was born into a Muslim family in Kunming in Yunnan, in what is now a province of China but was then a semi-independent region still ruled by the former imperial Mongol dynasty. Zheng’s birth name was Ma He. Islam had spread to south-east Asia several centuries earlier through trade routes and there’s still millions of Muslims in Yunnan province today. Zheng was descended from the first Governor of Yunnan, appointed by Kublai Kahn. It is claimed Zheng descends from the Prophet Mohammed through his governor ancestor. This is very possible, though no complete record of that descent exists. It is also believed that Zheng’s father took the pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj.

When he was about 10 years old Yunnan was invade by the Ming army. Zheng’s father was killed and he was captured. Almost immediately he was subjected to the usual punishment given to male captives – castration, and he became a eunuch.

Eunuchs in Ming China were mainly captured slaves. They were generally regarded as non-male and non-female and could be regarded as a third gender in a way similar to some members of the hijra community of the Indian subcontinent. Most of the Ming eunuchs worked at the imperial court and civil servants often regarded them with suspicion and condescension. Being close to imperial ears eunuchs could be chosen to act as spies against court officials. It was possible, therefore, to eunuchs to be trusted by the emperor and rise in power above the court official who despised them.

Zheng became a slave of the Prince of Yan, Zhu Di, the governor of Beijing. Zheng came to earn the prince’s trust and took a leading role in many of his military campaigns. In 1402 Prince Zhu became emperor. It was the new emperor that Zheng was bestowed with that name in place of Ma. From that moment it was a quick rise in the military ranks for Zheng and he become a diplomat, admiral and Grand Director of the seven voyages of the Treasure Fleet.

The emperor devised these treasure voyages in 1403 and set about constructing the fleet. The treasure the ships were to carry was gold, silver, rich brocades and silks, and porcelain to foreign lands in exchange fore rich goods to bring back to China. They also carried envoys and diplomats with letters from the emperor to give to foreign heads of state and transport foreign ambassadors back to China with their treasures to give to the emperor.

The treasure ships were huge. When Columbus “sailed the ocean blue” across the Atlantic 90 years later he could have fitted ten of his ships inside just one of those treasure ships. Not only that, but each Treasure Fleet consisted of 300 ships, including the treasure ships themselves as well as supply ships and military ships. Imagine seeing those sail over the horizon straight towards you. Likewise, there was a massive crew, up to 27,000 people on each voyage.

In recent years, especially since the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the first voyage, more interest has been taken in Zheng He and the Treasure Fleet. During the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games there was a section devoted to Zheng He in which hundreds of men dressed in blue waved 20-feet-long paddles in the air to represent the waves of the sea (above). When the paddles were held up together they showed paintings of the Treasure Fleet. At the end of their section they formed the outline of one of those massive ships.

Among the more recent documentaries about Zheng He is shown below. It shows better the routes of his voyages and gives some new theories about his influence in the countries he visited.