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Documentary, 1421 The Year China Discovered The World( America)
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00:07In the year 1480, Confucian courtiers ransacked the Imperial Archives. They sought to destroy
00:15every trace of one of the Ming Dynasty's greatest achievements.
00:25The logbooks of the Starfleet, the greatest armada of wooden ships ever assembled, were
00:32consigned to the flames.
00:44From the smoke and ashes of that fire came a mystery that would tantalize the world.
00:53Just how far had China's Imperial Fleet pushed the boundaries of the known world?
00:58Could it have even reached America before Christopher Columbus?
01:29A remarkable man stands at the heart of this great mystery.
01:34His name was Zheng He, still revered as a god in parts of the East, once a hero in China.
01:49The most powerful of the court eunuchs. His loyalty in battle brought him great rewards.
01:59The Emperor made him Admiral of the Ming Fleet. In 30 tumultuous years, his fleet of 300 ships
02:07ships and some 28,000 men undertook seven epic voyages.
02:16Until recently, that saga was neglected and little known outside China. But in China, some
02:22traditional storytellers have never forgotten the heroic exploits of the great Zheng He.
02:31The Emperor declared, who is willing to take the command and go to the Western Ocean as my marshal?
02:39Zheng He, he has been rewarded for his bravery. He is a talent. But he is too old. What a
02:46pity.
02:47No, no, no, I say. The older the ginger, the hotter it is.
02:56One man more than anyone else was to spread Zheng He's fame to the West.
03:05In 2002, a retired submarine commander called Gavin Menzies delivered a sensational lecture
03:12at the Royal Geographical Society in London.
03:15Someone was in the Caribbean in 1424, seven years to four kilometers.
03:22Menzies had delivered a bombshell.
03:28Menzies argued that in 1421, almost a century before Magellan, Zheng He's fleet had circumnavigated the world.
03:38He has expanded his theories in a best-selling book.
03:42If Menzies was right, Zheng He had reached the New World before any European explorer.
03:53For years, Zheng He's grave lay virtually unnoticed, tended only by his family in Nanking.
04:04For almost 600 years, the family came here quietly, with no fuss.
04:10Very few people even knew the tomb was here.
04:25The full extent of Zheng He's seven voyages is now a subject of intense interest and controversy.
04:36Of course, he was to lose his life on the seventh voyage.
04:40His tomb contains nothing but his clothes and shoes.
04:47So much has been lost or destroyed.
04:50But Zheng He's story can be pieced together from inscriptions on the stone tablets he erected.
04:55The emperor sent envoys to foreign lands to tame their barbarian habits and instill in them our civilization.
05:08Other fragments of information survive in provincial archives and imperial decrees.
05:14In an official history, a few surviving maps, and the memoirs of a translator who sailed with the fleet.
05:21This film will search for the true story of Zheng He's journeys.
05:31Those who accompanied Zheng He on the fleet were regarded as heroes, and we worship to them.
05:39Zheng He sailed when Henry V was king of England, when most people thought the world was flat.
05:45We have traversed immense waters, behold waves like mountains, set eyes on far distant barbarian regions.
05:56With clues ancient and modern, these two one-hour programs will follow in the wake of the mighty Starfleet.
06:04Our sails unfurled like clouds, continuing their course.
06:08The first program will trace the fleet's passage through ancient temples and trade routes to the ports of modern Asia,
06:16Arabia, and Africa.
06:18The second program will follow Gavin Menzies' theory to see how and if the fleet crossed the Atlantic to America.
06:34It was almost by accident that Gavin Menzies first stumbled on the story of the man he believes was the
06:41Chinese Columbus.
06:43When I wrote the book, I pinned my evidence on the fact that the first European explorers all had charts
06:51showing them where they were going.
06:54Columbus had a map of the Caribbean.
06:58Magellan had a map of the world.
07:01Somebody discovered the world before Europeans did.
07:10The maps of those early explorers have all disappeared.
07:14But maps indicating islands on the far side of the Atlantic have survived.
07:18And this convinced Menzies that someone must have mapped parts of the New World long before Columbus.
07:25To begin with, he thought it must have been the Portuguese.
07:29So I went to the Portuguese ambassador in London.
07:32And he said, we'll introduce you to the keeper of the Torre do Tombo in Lisbon.
07:37The Torre do Tombo is one of Portugal's great national libraries.
07:41So I started going through the records.
07:45If Menzies could prove that Portuguese explorers had crossed the Atlantic and mapped parts of the Caribbean before Columbus,
07:52it would be by any standards a world scoop.
07:58But what he found instead was evidence that led him to believe that as early as 1428, there had been
08:05a map of the world that predated those early Portuguese voyages of exploration.
08:11His source was a Portuguese historian, writing more than 100 years after the event, who claimed this map had indicated
08:19both the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan.
08:22If there ever was such a map, it no longer exists.
08:26But Menzies was convinced.
08:30Far from the Portuguese having discovered these islands in the Caribbean, 70 years before Columbus, what in fact happened was
08:37that they didn't know about them.
08:39My whole book had to be rethought.
08:47Years of research lay in ruins.
08:55Menzies drowned his sorrows in a bar in Lisbon, but a nagging question was left in his mind.
09:01If the Portuguese were not the first to map the far side of the Atlantic, who was?
09:07England and France were at the end of the Hundred Years' War. They were bust.
09:13Venice was in political turmoil. They were out of the picture.
09:16The Islamic world was again in complete turmoil. It could only be in China.
09:26In 1402, China was centuries ahead of the West in learning and technology.
09:32This was the era of the Ming Dynasty, one that would last from 1368 to 1644.
09:41The third Ming Emperor had just usurped the throne and was keen to stamp his authority on the vast country
09:48and state bureaucracy he now ruled.
09:55This painting shows the prosperity of the Ming capital.
10:01Zhu Di saw himself as a great emperor.
10:06He wanted to surpass all his ancestors and build the greatest empire.
10:17To enhance the prestige of his throne, the emperor sought to expand trade and diplomatic contacts with the outside world.
10:30He wanted to improve the relations with neighboring countries.
10:34He wanted to improve the relations with neighboring countries.
10:34So, Zheng He's mission was to be political.
10:38It aimed to spread and increase the power of the Ming Dynasty.
10:42The emperor encouraged the tribute system.
10:50Indeed, ambassadors poured into the Chinese court to pay tributes, demonstrating the pulling power of the Chinese throne.
11:03You pay us tributes and we bestow benefits on you.
11:08By giving you back in benefits more than your tributes were worth, we showed we were a more powerful country
11:15and maintained moral superiority.
11:18Very typical Chinese thinking.
11:26His traditionally minded Confucian courtiers advised against an ambitious and expensive foreign policy.
11:33They maintained that China as a land power should be self-sufficient, turning its back on the barbarians beyond the
11:40seas.
11:45But Zhu Di believed that seeking wealth and renown abroad would secure his throne at home.
11:52So in 1403 he ordered that a great fleet be built.
11:57For the next 30 years it would fly the flag around the Indian Ocean and extend the tribute network throughout
12:03the known world.
12:09Dockyards were made ready to build the fleet.
12:14Twenty years ago this was sea.
12:16The houses here were only built since then.
12:19You can imagine these buildings as Zheng He's treasure boats.
12:25And Zheng He's first task was to build more ships.
12:32Amazingly, in the heart of the former capital Nanjing, the great dry docks can still be seen six centuries later.
12:43The people here told me that as late as 1949 these were still linked to the sea.
12:50The docks were enormous.
12:52The length was a mile and a half.
12:55The width, 500 yards.
12:58They were made up of seven dry docks.
13:01This is number six.
13:04It is on record that the emperor once borrowed 10,000 workers from here to build a monument.
13:11So over 20,000 probably worked here.
13:17It must have been an extraordinary sight.
13:25The fleet under construction consisted of several hundred ships, including a handful of giant treasure junks.
13:34You see those wooden stakes.
13:36They were not to fortify the bank,
13:39but to support the boats from beneath so the workers could work on them.
13:47Here in 1957, we found a huge rudder,
13:5111 yards long.
13:54I saw it myself.
13:58Archaeologists concluded the rudder post was 600 years old and 33 feet long,
14:04part of an enormous junk.
14:13An entry in the Ming annals says the ships were 44 zhang in length.
14:18That translates to over 400 feet,
14:21five times longer than the flagship of Christopher Columbus.
14:30Treasure junks was recorded to be 50 yards wide and over 100 yards long.
14:36Were there such large ships?
14:38I think there were.
14:42Fugian has a long history of ship building.
14:46We had very good natural materials,
14:48fir trees and pine.
14:52Of the 200 ships Zheng He had to build,
14:55the big boats must all have been built here.
15:02This group of scholars and naval enthusiasts has raised the money to reconstruct a Ming junk.
15:09But they're still arguing about what size it should be.
15:14The largest treasure boat was no more than 200 feet.
15:18Too small. Far too small.
15:20My sources are accurate.
15:23This drone is from Zheng He's time.
15:26No, no.
15:27Experts agree a large boat with three layers of planks would be strong enough.
15:32And so would the keel.
15:33We checked it again and again.
15:35With the technology and materials we have today,
15:39it's difficult to build such a big boat.
15:41But we cannot yet say it's impossible.
15:47Many believe that 450 foot ships were feasible
15:50because of their multiple bulkheads.
15:53Inspired by the way bamboo grows in sections,
15:56this Chinese design gave their ships great strength.
16:02In 1407, the eunuch Changhe built huge boats in Changle to sail to the Western Ocean.
16:11The Ministry of War wanted Fujian province to build 100 of the fleet's ships.
16:17The next year, it ordered another five huge ones.
16:26With the whole weight of the Ming state behind it, the scale of this enterprise was awesome.
16:34Carpenters, sailmakers and blacksmiths were drafted in from across the country.
16:48Archaeologists have dug up evidence of the new technologies that were deployed.
16:53As with the Titanic, bulkheads divided the ships into watertight compartments.
16:59Outer hulls were triple planked for strength.
17:02Steered by that great Chinese invention, the stern rudder,
17:06as many as nine masts carried the sails that propelled the great treasure junks.
17:14All the ships of Zheng He's fleet were far superior to any of those of Columbus,
17:19Magellan or the Gamma.
17:26The emperor planned a series of voyages to win tribute and allegiance
17:31from the rulers of the Indian Ocean.
17:33He issued seals of office to be presented to local rulers, binding them to his throne.
17:41Though some Confucian advisers opposed this venture,
17:45he could count on complete support from the court eunuchs.
17:49His most trusted eunuch, Zheng He, began assembling the expedition on the broad Yangtze River.
18:03Zheng He arranged his fleet so that the command boats could communicate with the rest of the ships,
18:09range up the Yangtze River.
18:11With a skeleton crew, Zheng He sailed downriver to Taikang, a good place to recruit sailors.
18:24The sailors I experienced, they grew up in this river country.
18:31A stele or inscribed stone tablet gives the departure dates of the seven voyages.
18:37The stele records destinations as well as dates of arrival and departure.
18:44It states clearly that Zheng He was first to embark from the port of Taichang.
18:53Zheng He recruited key members of his crew from the communities of Muslim Arab seafarers in Fujian province.
19:01Arabs had been drawn here by trade.
19:04Centuries later, Chinese Muslims still live here, worship in mosques,
19:08and recall the day the admiral, a fellow Muslim, stopped in their town.
19:15There was a huge storm that day, when Zheng He came ashore to our town.
19:24Our ancestors went to meet him at a pavilion on the edge of town.
19:29They chatted and played chess, as if they were old friends.
19:37He stayed in our village for two days.
19:42But I don't know the details.
19:46No, no, it was to recruit sailors and specialists for his fleet.
19:51The journey sounded too dangerous.
19:55But he convinced us over a game of chess.
20:03He was particularly keen to recruit Arabs.
20:12Arabs had a great experience in navigation.
20:15They had always played a big role in links between East and West.
20:30The tomb of one of the men Zheng He played chess with is still here.
20:37At the time of his visit, there were reported to be over 10,000 Arabs living and trading in the
20:43great ports of southern China.
20:47In the fall of 1421, Zheng He was ready to embark on the sixth of his seven great voyages.
20:55All he needed now was a fair wind.
21:01His fleet needed a north wind.
21:04This began in November.
21:13Zheng He still went to the mountain where the fishermen pray for favourable winds.
21:20And he too prayed to the goddess of the sea for safety.
21:27His men believed in the goddess and the ceremony was quite a serious affair.
21:37They asked for her protection.
21:39They feared they would run into danger.
21:50Late November 1421, the winds veered at last and Admiral Zheng He ordered his great fleet to weigh anchor.
22:23There were between 100 and 200 ships, including seven great ships
22:29boats for the commanders, boats for horses, people, water, and food.
22:37Personnel about 30,000, the majority of which were military people.
22:44An eyewitness account said they needed two to three hundred men just to operate the rudder,
22:50sails, and anchors.
22:56Zheng He's fleet would have dwarfed the combined fleets of Europe at the time.
23:03We have set up for the barbarian countries, commanding the multitudes on the fleet.
23:09Our one fear is not to succeed.
23:12But if all men serve their emperor, then we will succeed.
23:26They were a strange mixture of superstition and science.
23:30But they used technology that's still in use today, a Chinese invention, the compass.
23:38We entreat the patriots of the imperially created compass and those through the ages who have
23:45traversed the sea and the great guardian spirits of the 24 directions.
23:51We beseech all to protect our ships.
24:00Though sea logs and other records have been destroyed, one of Zheng He's maps has survived.
24:09The charts were drawn for sailors.
24:12People assume they are upside down, without latitude and longitude.
24:19But the chart puts the actual course of the ship, as they sail, at the centre.
24:26So north and south are rotating.
24:31The fleet left Taikan Harbour, following east, south-east, to reach the open sea.
24:41Even today, you could use this to sail to India and Africa.
24:50Zheng He's surviving map is just one of the clues that make it possible to trace the journey
24:55he then took.
25:00The journey on the sea was dangerous.
25:03At times, mist and cloud came, and you couldn't see nothing.
25:07Earth and heaven blended into one vast emptiness.
25:16The fleet had its own embedded historian, Mahuan, a translator who was to chronicle its voyages.
25:25I followed the mission wherever it went, for I do not know how many thousands of miles.
25:32I pass through the various countries with their different seasons, climate, topography and peoples.
25:39I am incapable of literary elegances.
25:42I write of these matters with an honest pen and nothing more.
25:51Mahuan's account tells us that the fleet sailed down the coast of Vietnam, past Thailand and
25:58on to Malacca in Malaysia, just north of modern Singapore.
26:06Steer 120 degrees by 135.
26:10The ship is level with Man Lajar, Malacca.
26:19After three weeks at sea, Zheng He's fleet arrived at Malacca.
26:23Malacca is the gateway to the Indian Ocean and a perfect place to build a supply base for
26:29the fleet.
26:33When the treasure ships arrived here, they at once erected a stockade.
26:39Inside again, they erected a second stockade, like a small city wall within which they constructed
26:46warehouses and granaries.
26:53The Chinese needed a depot.
26:55They are a long way from home.
26:59They also wanted to control the Straits of Malacca.
27:04When you control the Straits, you control trade.
27:06And this was the other aspect of the Ming Emperor's aspirations.
27:10Not only the economic domination, he had to politically dominate.
27:19When the base was threatened by local skirmishes, they backed a local rebel leader, turning him
27:25into a puppet king.
27:31The rise of Malacca is intimately tied to support from the Ming.
27:41And it was through that support that Malacca came to be one of the great trade ports of
27:46the 15th century.
27:54The emperor's official seal confirmed this pact.
27:58The king of Malacca also have this seal given by the emperor of China.
28:08The locals have a more romantic version of the story.
28:11Legend tells of a fairytale marriage that united the Chinese and Malays in friendship.
28:18The Chinese princess and her many handmaidens were brought to our country as a gift to our
28:25great king.
28:26So pleased was he with the beauty that he gave the great hill of Malacca on which her kinsmen
28:32might settle.
28:49Today, the hill still serves the Chinese community as a graveyard.
29:03The Cantonment, or Chinese enclave, which grew up around the fleet's supply base is still
29:09there.
29:10Malacca remains today a city shaped by that Chinese contact.
29:17And a new statue of Zheng He waits to look down on the town he helped to found.
29:26They marshaled the goods.
29:27Then they waited till the wind was favorable.
29:32In the middle decade of the fifth moon, they put to sea.
29:44Now, for the first time, they struck out into the open sea across the Indian Ocean.
29:54At Ceylon, modern Sri Lanka, they left an inscribed stone stele to record their passing.
30:00It does not record their first armed confrontation.
30:05For those Zheng He's main purpose was peaceful power projection.
30:09He was willing to use force where necessary.
30:17The fleet was threatened by the King of Ceylon.
30:22Zheng He was ready to take the island by force.
30:30When you look at the violence which occurred during these voyages, one has to look a bit beyond the
30:36rhetoric.
30:38that these were less than friendly missions, that there was a huge amount of intimidation
30:43involved.
30:44When you take 30,000 troops, it's not intended to be a mission of peace and friendship.
30:52The King was taken like an animal in a cage, shivering, begging for his life.
30:59We have a preeminent global power.
31:03The Ming in the 15th century.
31:06Their missions were both a political and an economic attempt to dominate the known world.
31:18The junk sailed on, their holds crammed with the produce of China's massive porcelain and
31:24silk industries, keen to gain direct access to the marketplaces of the Indian Ocean.
31:34The fleet's own chronicler, Mahwan, describes how it sailed on to India's Malabar coast and
31:41the city of Calicut.
31:45It lies beside the sea, the country of Calicut.
31:51This is a great country of the Western Ocean.
32:02The Malabar coast was the fulcrum of the Indian Ocean trade network.
32:07If a treasure ship goes there, it is left entirely to two men to superintend the buying
32:13and sailing.
32:14A local broker comes and joins them.
32:18When the fleet came, the ship was approached by the local people in small boats.
32:27The middlemen, people who were acting as brokers for the collection of boats and they were translators
32:35as well.
32:37They discuss the price of the silks one by one.
32:41When the price has been fixed, they write out an agreement.
32:46All joined hands together.
32:48And the broker then says, in such and such a moon, on such and such a day, we have all
32:54joined hands and sealed our agreement with a hand clasp.
32:58Whether the price be dear or cheap, we will never repudiate it.
33:14Today, little has changed.
33:16The Chinese traded their silks and porcelain for spices, which were brought to Cochin and
33:21stocked in warehouses.
33:28These days, tally sticks coexist with computers.
33:39Over the centuries, the spice trade has brought great wealth to Calicut.
33:47You can see it to this day in the ornaments that adorn the elephants during temple festivals.
33:56Some of that gold may well have come from the ancient trade with China.
34:08China is the place where you make money, Cochin is the place where you spend it.
34:13There was an old saying like that.
34:15So most of the spices were taken from Cochin and they were in return given gold.
34:20You can see the ornaments on the top of elephants.
34:24The way of income for the Cochin kingdom was to spice trade because there was no gold in India.
34:36The Chinese chronicler, Mah Hwan, was struck by how much the two great civilizations had in common.
34:46Here we have engraved a stone, a perpetual declaration for 10,000 ages.
34:51It says that the journey from this country to China is more than a hundred thousand li'i,
34:57yet the people are very similar, happy and prosperous and with identical customs.
35:14Local dance theatre owes much to its contact with the Chinese.
35:19Very many art forms of coastal India, very clear kind of influence of the Chinese.
35:26Chinese opera influencing the local art forms.
35:31Various dance drama performances are straight away replicas of Chinese opera.
35:45The story of tonight's play is that of the Monkey King,
35:48a mythical character who is common to Indians and Chinese.
35:53To the Nile of the Tremont, the Chinese opera to World of the Tremont,
35:56In the to the Nile of the Tremont, the Chinese opera is a small part of the Chinese.
36:16The Nile of the Tremont, the About Tremont
36:22The Starfleet had already sailed an incredible 6,000 miles.
36:27It was now ready for the next leg of its journey.
36:31As we followed this journey, it's surprising how much of our modern world
36:36would still be familiar to Zheng He's sailors.
36:40600 years ago, Asian seafarers were enormously skilled and knowledgeable.
36:46Zheng He did not need to venture into a complete unknown.
36:50His navigators did exactly what merchants do to this day.
36:54They hired local pilots to set the course from India's Malabar coast
36:58to the fabled lands of Arabia.
37:01The local traders who were traveling in fairly big vessels had better know-how.
37:08So definitely such people's help was sent sharing.
37:13And certainly people who were coming to the coast for the first time
37:18I must have been guided by them.
37:26They would have been picking up pilots there, either Arab or Indian pilots,
37:31to come across because there was a lively trade going on.
37:34You'd find the info from the local knowledge,
37:37from the pilots that would be available there,
37:39from the captains that had sailed over,
37:40perhaps were waiting to come back to Arabia themselves.
37:43So you would ask around, you'd get, they know when to leave,
37:49they know when they'd be coming here.
37:50The knowledge would be freely available.
37:53The Ming fleet weighed anchor and sailed away from the coast of India.
37:59The Chinese could certainly use some local knowledge.
38:07Their own methods for predicting wind and weather were,
38:10to say the least, idiosyncratic.
38:21Fortunately for them, help was at hand.
38:31Then, as now, Indian pilots knew all about the seasonal monsoon winds,
38:36which is so crucial in this part of the world.
38:40During the monsoon season, vessels, mainly depending on sails,
38:45you can start from Arabia and come to India with least effort.
38:52If you try to go in the opposite direction,
38:56you will be wasting your time in the sea.
38:59The journey from India to Arabia would have been time to coincide
39:03with the second half of the monsoon season,
39:05when the winds reversed direction.
39:08The winds which were blowing from southwest to northeast
39:13will blow in the exactly opposite direction.
39:16From northeast, they will blow to southwest.
39:20That's why Indian spice traders always time their journeys
39:24to coincide with the phases of the monsoon.
39:31Chinese scholars who have studied the fleet's surviving charts
39:34say that Chinese navigation was more sophisticated
39:37than their techniques for predicting wind and weather.
39:41We still have four original charts
39:44from Zheng He's voyages for crossing the Indian Ocean.
39:49We use the sun by day.
39:52We use the stars at night.
39:55We use the height of the star
39:56to determine the position of the ship, its latitude.
40:04Going from Calicut to Hormuz in the Persian Gulf,
40:07they used many stars, but the main one was the pole star.
40:20Chinese navigators also tapped into the knowledge of the Arabs,
40:24the greatest astronomers of the period.
40:31If you look at the stars,
40:33we know how they found their positioning in the sea.
40:36They used a karma, a square board,
40:39lined up the bottom edge with the horizon
40:42and the top edge with a pole star.
40:45From that, they could calculate their latitude.
40:50The Arabs were the great navigators.
40:53They were the prime link throughout the Indian Ocean.
40:56Two examples.
40:58The compass came from Earth to them and then to Europe.
41:02The kamal is an Arab invention,
41:05but we adapted it to suit us.
41:10The Chinese and the Arabs both used the same techniques
41:14to navigate by the stars.
41:16And after four centuries of trade
41:18between these two great civilizations,
41:20it has become difficult to decide who learned what from whom.
41:26The Arabs had sets of navigation.
41:30Well, some of them were poems.
41:32Some of us just got really pilot books
41:34where they could tell the prospective navigators,
41:37okay, on a certain day you leave this port
41:40if you want to go to another port.
41:42And it would also tell how to get from one port to another.
41:54This Arab pilot book was written in rhyme
41:57to help sailors remember which stars would guide them
42:00to which port.
42:01It speaks about the direction, the area where we are,
42:10the exact ports and stars positioning.
42:15Okay, also you could follow what for them was
42:18the mouth of the lion, which is part of a scorpion.
42:24It's kind of a collection of stars together.
42:28And if you follow the timings, you're right,
42:31then you reach exactly on that direction.
42:37Blown by the northeast monsoon,
42:39the Starfleet entered the Straits of Hormuz,
42:42the very hub of Arabian trade routes.
42:51A hundred years earlier, the ancient silk road across the landmass of Asia
42:55had been cut by Mongol conquests.
42:58The Chinese were keen to re-engage with the Arab world
43:01and reconnect with a network of caravan routes
43:03that crisscrossed the Middle East
43:05and terminated at the trading towns that lined the Persian Gulf.
43:09The fleet at Anchor became a vast emporium,
43:12exchanging silk and porcelain for the luxuries carried here
43:15to the marketplaces of Hormuz,
43:17Calhat and Sohar.
43:22Sohar, for instance, was described in the 15th century
43:25to be the most active trading port city in the whole of the East.
43:30And that made it easier for China to bring their goods into Sohar
43:35and take others from all over.
43:37Items that were traded in Sohar
43:39came all the way from Europe
43:40and also all the way from the various parts of Africa.
43:49Tom Vosmer has been excavating another of these ports,
43:53Calhat in Omam.
44:02The foreshore is littered with evidence of Chinese visits
44:06to the Persian Gulf.
44:07Six hundred years ago,
44:09this port would have been swarming with camel caravans
44:12and foreign merchants.
44:14More Chinese sell it in.
44:16We probably have these coming across from Hormuz
44:19because the Chinese were landing a lot of their goods at Hormuz
44:22and we have a real good connection with Hormuz here.
44:25They would have anchored down in here.
44:27There's a bay there.
44:29We found a lot of stone anchors there
44:30that date to this same period.
44:32So that sort of confirms in our minds
44:35that this was the port area.
44:56The Chinese learned this was a good place to buy horses.
45:00The loss of the Silk Road
45:02had cut China off from Central Asia
45:04at the very time when threats from beyond the Great Wall
45:07left China in urgent need of new mounts for its cavalry.
45:12At that time, horses were fetching about 100 pieces of silver
45:16and our historian has discovered
45:19that a male slave is only five.
45:22So a horse was fabulously valuable here
45:25and the people were making a lot of money
45:27from that sort of thing.
45:30The Chinese were open to the learning of Arab scientists
45:34who back then were the most knowledgeable in the world.
45:39The Chinese had recently suffered outbreaks of plague
45:42and medicine was high on their list of priorities.
45:53Zheng He had recruited over 100 Chinese doctors
45:56and pharmacologists to seek out new medicines.
46:00Arabia is still a cornucopia of medicinal herbs
46:03and countless other remedies.
46:05This is Sa'dar.
46:06This is Sa'dar.
46:21This is Sa'dar.
46:33Take this with the sugar and mix with the hot water and take it like a tea, and it's good
46:39for the stomach.
46:43Frankincense, myrrh, cinnabar, and storax were processed, dried, and packed away in jars for their eventual return journey.
47:08There was one more piece of invaluable information that the Chinese could learn from the Arabs, for it was they
47:15who held the key to Africa.
47:43The Chinese had long known of the Dark Continent, and centuries earlier, Chinese goods had reached these shores on Arab
47:50sailing boats.
47:54The stated aim of this, the Sixth Voyage, was to return ambassadors from African cities who had previously journeyed to
48:01China.
48:06But the fascination with Africa ran much deeper.
48:10Arab vessels had traded slaves and gold for centuries.
48:13But by the time the Ming fleet arrived, the stage was set for a different kind of exchange.
48:22Far from being primitive societies, there were African nations that had traded their way to great wealth, and stone-built
48:29cities lined the coast.
48:35Far from being primitive societies, there were African nations that had traded their way to great wealth.
48:48A town like Patti, at this time, has about nine gates, huge gates, huge buildings, palaces, and we have huge
48:57mosques.
48:57These towns are now showing some kind of prestige, that they have achieved this much wealth, they have achieved this
49:04much power.
49:05They now have to symbolically also show that they are important.
49:11For African rulers, blue and white Ming porcelain, delicate and exotic, became the ultimate status symbol.
49:19In these round niches, they used to put the post and bowls, which would look like this.
49:25And the bowls were meant for decoration purposes, right?
49:29This bowl is a 15th century Chinese bowl.
49:32The people around here had a psychological feeling that the shards of these particular bowls,
49:36once they are taken and kept in the suitcases, the people will become rich or wealthy.
49:41So, a good number of them were taken for such a purpose.
49:52The treacherous shoals on the African coastline took their toll on Chinese trading vessels.
50:11There is even a special word for those who were shipwrecked here.
50:14They're known as the Famao.
50:17Off the coast of Kenya, there's an island, where it is said that descendants of some of these Chinese castaways
50:23can still be found.
50:24Their stories have been passed down through the village's own keeper of tales.
50:30One of the Chinese family is nearby, and Mansuri, he can take us there.
50:37He knows the family.
50:51The Farrakh household was one of the four Famao families on the island.
51:03Bibi Farrakh believes her shipwrecked ancestor came from China.
51:20They had a shipwreck, and they came, they thought it was in Shanga, and then they came to see you,
51:25and then they got married to the locals.
51:27And even the name of her mother is called Safina, meaning it's a Dao which saved these people from the
51:34shipwreck to bring them to the seashell.
51:36And now they are the descendants of those Chinese people who had a shipwreck.
51:59Therefore, they heard about it from the parents, and it's the story of the town.
52:05Everyone knows in the village about the shipwreck.
52:18But what incentive led the Ming fleet to brave the risks of a 10,000-mile ocean voyage to Africa?
52:27They came to bring tortoiseshell back to China, which they would use for a variety of things.
52:36Rhino horns, like these horns from black rhinos, would be brought back to China,
52:41and they were mostly used for the making of medicines to lower fever.
52:46Esmond Martin has dedicated much of his life to stamping out the now-illegal trade that brought the Chinese to
52:53Kenya.
52:53And this would be bigger than the average tusk that you would find in Asia.
52:58And this is soft ivory as well, is a distinction.
53:01The forest elephants of Asia produce a hard ivory, which is more difficult to carve.
53:06And the Chinese have always liked soft ivory, so this African ivory that they would get from East Africa was
53:12superior.
53:14Five centuries ago, the trade in tusks would have dwarfed the stacked seas from modern poachers in the fight to
53:21save Africa's wildlife.
53:22But the Chinese motives were mixed.
53:25While some filled the holds of their treasure ships with ivory and rhinoceros horn,
53:30others were searching out new and wonderful animals for the emperor's menagerie.
53:35What lured the Ming starfleet to Africa may have been a hunger for the exotic, and Africa had much to
53:43offer.
53:43A contemporary illustrator recorded a host of fantastic beasts, the rhinoceros, the ostrich, and the zebra.
53:51Their 16th century illustrated book of strange countries records their wonder.
54:04And here on the savannas, they came across the greatest prize of all.
54:08An animal so strange, so unusual, that it seemed to fit the description of the legendary Qilin,
54:15the Chinese equivalent of the unicorn.
54:18Arrangements were made to bring it back to confer good fortune on the emperor himself.
54:26That they actually did it, to me, is mind-boggling.
54:29And then getting it onto the boat, have no idea how they did that,
54:32keeping in it a boat for all those months in storms, it just, it must have been a feat.
54:38You know, she has a weird balance, these spindly legs and that heavy body.
54:45You know, you may have noticed when a giraffe gallops, they kind of pull forwards,
54:49and they get this rocking motion.
54:51If something puts that rocking out, they'll go over, head over heels.
54:56And so maybe on a boat, that would also be a bit of a problem.
55:02History does not record how they transported their living treasure across 8,000 miles of sea.
55:12But three months later, the imperial palace was mesmerized by the sight of the giraffe.
55:30Court officials craning their necks, looked on with pleasure,
55:35and stamping their feet when they were scared or startled,
55:39thinking that these were things that were rarely heard of in the world,
55:43and that China had never seen their likeness.
55:51The giraffe had come from the ends of the earth
55:54to be recorded in the meticulous records of the Forbidden City.
56:00The achievements of Zheng He and the Starfleet rank as some of the greatest in naval history.
56:08But for centuries, this story has been largely confined to China,
56:12unknown to and unrecognized by the rest of the world.
56:22In the next hour, this program will examine the astonishing claim
56:26that Chinese sailors went beyond the edge of the known world,
56:29crossed the Atlantic, discovered America,
56:33and became the first to circumnavigate the globe.
56:36So this program is actually brought to you by the
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