Zheng He

• 1. Introduction

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  Zheng He commanded ships that, by legend, were almost twice as long as any wooden vessel ever recorded, carrying hundreds of sailors across four decks. He was born in 1371 into a Muslim family in Yunnan, given the name Ma He, and he was castrated as a boy and placed in service to a Ming prince. Yet this enslaved eunuch rose to become a man many call the greatest admiral in Chinese history. Between 1405 and 1433 he led seven treasure voyages that reached the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. He wrote of traversing more than 100,000 li of immense water spaces. How did a captured boy from a conquered province come to command the most powerful navy of his age? Why did an empire that built such a fleet then try to erase it from memory? And just how large were the ships that have fascinated scholars for centuries?

• 2. From Ma He To Zheng

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  Ma He was born in Kunyang, Kunming, in Yunnan, then ruled by the Principality of Liang loyal to the Northern Yuan dynasty. He had an older brother and four sisters. His family carried deep roots: he was a great-great-great-grandson of Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, who governed Yunnan during the early Yuan dynasty under the Mongol Empire. His grandfather and his father both held the title hajji, suggesting they had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. In the autumn of 1382, a Ming army invaded and conquered Yunnan, then ruled by the Mongol prince Basalawarmi, the Prince of Liang. Ma He's father had died in the fighting between Ming armies and Mongol forces, at 37 or 39 depending on the account. His oldest son, Wenming, buried their father outside Kunming. Captured by Ming armies, Ma He was castrated between the ages of 10 and 14 and sent to serve the Prince of Yan. The boy who lost his father to the Ming conquest would spend his life serving the dynasty that took everything from him.

• 3. Servant Of The Prince

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  Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan, was 11 years older than Ma He and had governed Beiping, modern Beijing, since 1380. There Ma received a proper education he would never have gained in the imperial capital. The Hongwu Emperor, Zhu Di's father, did not trust eunuchs and believed it best to keep them illiterate. On the northern frontier with hostile Mongol tribes, Ma spent his early years as a soldier and joined Zhu Di's campaigns. On the 2nd of March 1390, he accompanied the prince on his first expedition, a great victory when the Mongol commander Naghachu surrendered after realizing he had fallen into a trap. Known as Sanbao during this service, a reference to the Buddhist Three Jewels, Ma earned the prince's confidence and trust. Records describe his adult appearance: seven chi tall, a waist five chi in circumference, glaring eyes, white well-shaped teeth, and a voice as loud as a bell. That loyalty would soon be tested in a war for the throne itself.

• 4. The Jingnan Rebellion

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  In 1398 the Jianwen Emperor issued a policy called xuefan, reducing the feudatories, which meant stripping the princes of their power and military forces. By then Zhu Di was the eldest surviving son of the late Hongwu Emperor, who had died on the 24th of June 1398. In August 1399, Zhu Di openly rebelled against his nephew. That same year, Ma He successfully defended Beiping's city reservoir, Zhenglunba, against the imperial armies. In January 1402, Zhu Di began his campaign to capture the imperial capital, Nanjing, and Ma He served as one of his commanders. Zhu Di's armies marched into Nanjing on the 13th of July 1402, and he accepted elevation to emperor four days later. During the Chinese New Year on the 11th of February 1404, the new Yongle Emperor conferred the surname Zheng upon Ma He, honoring his defense of the reservoir in 1399 and his service in the campaign for the capital. The eunuch who had defended a city's water supply now bore a name the emperor himself had chosen.

• 5. The Treasure Voyages

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  Zheng He's first voyage departed on the 11th of July 1405 from Suzhou, a fleet of 317 ships holding almost 28,000 crewmen. The Yongle Emperor designed the expeditions to establish a Chinese presence over Indian Ocean trade, impress foreign peoples, and extend the empire's tributary system. Some passages in the History of Ming suggest the first voyage doubled as an attempt to capture his escaped predecessor, the Jianwen Emperor, making it the largest-scale manhunt on water in Chinese history. The fleets visited Brunei, Java, Siam, India, the Horn of Africa, and Arabia. Zheng He presented gold, silver, porcelain, and silk, and China received ostriches, zebras, camels, and ivory from the Swahili Coast. A giraffe brought back from Malindi was taken for a qilin and read as proof of the Mandate of Heaven. The routes themselves were not new. Zheng He's fleet followed long-established trade paths between China and the Arabian Peninsula used since at least the Han dynasty. When his fleet first reached Malacca, a sizable Chinese community already lived there. The translator Ma Huan, who composed the General Survey of the Ocean Shores in 1416, called these expatriates the Tang people.

• 6. A Tiger Who Walked

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  A contemporary reported that Zheng He walked like a tiger and did not shrink from violence when he wished to impress foreign peoples with China's military might. He ruthlessly suppressed pirates who had long plagued Chinese and Southeast Asian waters. He defeated Chen Zuyi, one of the most feared pirate captains, and returned him to China for execution. After this, the Ming established the Old Port Pacification Superintendency at Palembang, naming the local Shi Jinqing as its superintendent. Zheng He waged a land war against the Kingdom of Kotte on Ceylon and made displays of force when officials threatened his fleet in Arabia and East Africa. From his fourth voyage he brought envoys from 30 states to pay respects at the Ming court. Among his trophies was King Vira Alakeshwara of Ceylon, brought to China as a captive to apologize for offenses against the mission. In 1424 Zheng He traveled to Palembang to confer an official seal and letter of appointment upon Shi Jisun as Pacification Commissioner. When he returned, he found the Yongle Emperor had died on the 12th of August 1424.

• 7. How Big Were The Ships

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  Luo Maodeng's 1597 novel describes nine-masted treasure ships measuring 44.4 by 18 zhang, about 127 meters long and 52 meters wide. The largest such ships would have been nearly twice as long as any other wooden ship recorded until the 20th century. They would have surpassed Admiral Horatio Nelson's HMS Victory, 69.34 meters long and launched in 1765, and the 68.88-meter Vasa of 1627. Many scholars consider it unlikely any of Zheng He's ships reached 450 feet, proposing lengths as low as 200 to 250 feet. Edward L. Dreyer dismissed the novel as historical evidence, noting it claimed the ships were built with divine help by the immortal Lu Ban. From 2003 to 2004, the Treasure Shipyard was excavated in northwestern Nanjing. Its largest surviving basin extends 421 meters but was only 41 meters wide and 4 meters deep, too narrow for even half the claimed ship. If each cluster of basin structures held one ship framework, the largest would not exceed about 75 meters. Comparative study by Hu Xiaowei in 2018 concluded one zhang equaled 1.5 to 1.6 meters, which would make the treasure ship roughly 70.4 meters long. Zhao Zhigang claimed to have settled the debate, placing the largest ship at about 70 meters.

• 8. Erased Then Revived

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  The Hongxi Emperor terminated further treasure voyages on the 7th of September 1424, and his son the Xuande Emperor sent Zheng He on only one more. Xuande believed his father's decision to halt the voyages had been meritorious, saying there would be no need to describe his grandfather's sending Zheng He to the Western Ocean. The voyages had violated the Huang Ming Zuxun, the dynastic foundation documents laid down by the Hongwu Emperor, which urged that far-off countries be told to reduce their tribute. They were made possible only by a triumph of the eunuch faction over the scholar-bureaucrats. Upon Zheng He's death and his faction's fall, officials minimized him in the histories, alongside attempts to destroy records of the Jianwen Emperor and the manhunt. Zheng He probably died during the fleet's last voyage, perhaps in 1433 or 1435. Though he has a tomb at Cattle Head Hill in Nanjing, it is empty: he was buried at sea off the Malabar Coast near Calicut. His sword and possessions were interred in a Muslim tomb inscribed in Arabic. The voyages were long neglected until Liang Qichao published a biography in 1904. Today, the 11th of July is Maritime Day in China, devoted to the memory of his first voyage, and the training ship Zheng He carries his name as a goodwill ambassador around the globe.