1421: The Year China Discovered the World

by Gavin Menzies

  3

  THE FLEETS SET SAIL

  UNAWARE OF THE upheaval that was about to overtake China, the great armada sailed majestically south across the Yellow Sea, beginning a journey that would take them to the ends of the earth. Early on the first morning of the voyage, 5 March 1421, the helmsmen kept the Pole Star, Polaris, dead astern while the navigators measured the star’s altitude with their sextants. After taking their first readings, the navigators held their course due south for exactly twenty-four hours, then took another measurement of Polaris. By sailing due south, at the end of their first day at sea not only were they able to determine their change in latitude – their distance south of the North Pole – but could also adjust their compasses for magnetic variation, measure their speed and the distance covered, and calibrate their logs.

  The methods of navigation employed by Zhu Di’s admirals are revealed by one of the few documents of the era to have survived, the Wu Pei Chi. These Chinese sailing instructions, essentially a manual of the arts of seamanship and naval warfare, somehow escaped the purges of the mandarins.1 There were instructions, inscribed on a long, thin strip of paper, for each regular voyage they made, giving detailed directions including star positions, latitudes, bearings and the physical description of islands, prominent headlands, bays and inlets that would be clearly visible along the route. By studying these sailing directions, it is possible to deduce not only the course the Chinese had steered but the accuracy of their navigation and their ability to set a course by the stars. It is an invaluable document.

  The Pole Star was of great importance to the Chinese, both symbolically and for navigation. It was the fundamental basis of Chinese astronomy, for the celestial pole was regarded as the heavenly equivalent of the position of the emperor on earth. As mandarins, courtiers and servants circled around the emperor, so the other stars rotated around the Pole Star; as the clothes of the servants and their proximity to the emperor signified their importance, so did the brightness, colour and positioning of the stars that were ‘tied’ to the Pole Star. ‘There is high Confucian authority. The master says, “He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the Pole Star which keeps its place while all the stars turn around it.”’2

  Navigational diagram used by Zheng He for the Sri Lanka-Sumatra run and reproduced in the Wu Pei Chi, 1628.

  Western methods of astronomy embodied the principles first enunciated by Greek astronomers such as Aristotle and Ptolemy, basing latitude on the equator. In Chinese astronomy, latitude was determined not by the distance north of the equator but by the distance from the North Pole, which was determined by the altitude of the Pole Star, Polaris. A bright and easily identifiable star, Polaris sits directly above the North Pole, billions of miles out in space. When viewed from the North Pole it is directly above the observer at 90° altitude or 90° latitude; at the equator it sits on the horizon at 0° altitude or 0° latitude. Measuring its height above the horizon (altitude) enables the navigator to calculate his latitude. Moreover, since Polaris is due north it enables magnetic variation – the difference between due north and the magnetic north of a compass – to be determined and adjustments made.

  By 1421, the Chinese had well over six centuries’ experience of ocean navigation, basing their calculations on both the Pole Star and the stars circling the pole at high altitudes which never rise and never set. In effect, once the Chinese had determined the absolute position of Polaris in the celestial sphere, they ‘tied’ other stars in the northern hemisphere to it. When viewing one star or constellation, they knew exactly where the others were in relation to it, even when they had not yet risen in the night sky. They were thus in a position to know a star’s exact location, even when invisible below the horizon, by observing the meridian passage – the highest point of their track across the night sky viewed from any particular point – of the circumpolar stars to which it was ‘tied’. However, the Chinese had not yet mastered using the sun to obtain latitude,3 something the Portuguese first achieved in 1474 and which enabled them to measure latitude in the southern as well as the northern hemisphere. The Chinese could not determine their latitude south of the equator, where Polaris was invisible. It was a problem that had to be solved. A star or stars in the southern hemisphere that could fulfil the function of Polaris in the northern had to be identified before Zhu Di’s dream of charting the whole world could be realized.

  By the seventh century, the Chinese could accurately determine the course to steer, for they had discovered the compass. They knew that the magnetic properties of lodestone could be transferred by induction to iron, and that this magnetized iron could be floated on oil, allowing it to swivel freely, one end pointing always to the earth’s magnetic south. In 1421 the Chinese could steer to within two degrees of their chosen course using reliable magnetic compasses. They could also measure the distance travelled using hour-glasses of sand. A day was divided into ten parts, each hour-glass equalling 2.4 hours, the length of one watch for the seamen on duty.

  The calculation of longitude, however, remained a problem they had not fully resolved at the start of this sixth voyage. Changes in longitude depend on four things: the course steered, the speed of the ship, the time that has elapsed and the distance north or south of the equator. By recording the number of watches, the speed through the water and the compass course, the navigator could estimate his change in longitude. But there was one great disadvantage to the Chinese method of navigation: if the body of water over which the ship was sailing was itself moving – for example, when a current was moving with or against the ship – the mariner had no way of measuring his change of longitude. This could only be achieved by measuring absolute time, something Europeans were not to achieve for another three and a half centuries, when John Harrison finally perfected a clock that could keep precise time at sea. At the start of the sixth voyage, this defect caused huge errors in Chinese calculations of longitude. Polaris navigation enabled them to calculate latitude and make landfalls north of the equator with astonishing accuracy, but a method of calculating longitude with anything approaching the same accuracy was not perfected until near the end of their voyages.

  With centuries of experience in building ships to sail storm-tossed oceans, the Chinese marine engineers had evolved a robust frame built in sections. Each section was contained by watertight bulkheads at either end, resembling the internal partitions of a bamboo, and the watertight sections were bolted together with brass pins weighing several kilograms. Three layers of hardwood were nailed to a teak frame, then the planks were caulked (made waterproof) with coir (coconut fibre) and sealed with a mixture of boiled tung oil and lime. This hard, waterproof lacquer had been used to seal Chinese ocean-going ships since the seventh century, but so much tung oil was required to build Zheng He’s treasure fleets that acres of land along the Yangtze banks were acquired to plant orchards of tung trees.

  Marine engineers at the Longjiang shipyards designed their ships to survive the fiercest storms on the open ocean. Reinforced bows enabled the vessel to smash through the waves, and at either side of the bow were channels leading to internal compartments. As the square bow pitched in heavy seas, water was funnelled in; as the bow surfaced above the waves, the water drained out, modifying the pitching motion. A teak keel bound together by iron hoops ran the length of the ship, and specially cut, large rectangular stones – or composite stone and mud balls – were packed around it for ballast. Additional keels that could be raised and lowered were fitted at either side for more stability. In a storm, semi-submersible sea anchors could also be thrown overboard to reduce rolling. Even in the roughest weather and sea conditions, pitching and rolling were greatly reduced by these ingenious modifications.

  The giant ships could survive typhoons and the sectional construction reduced the risk of sinking through a collision with a reef or an iceberg. They were designed to remain afloat even if two compartments were flooded after being punctured by coral or ice. To increase cargo c
apacity, the hulls of the junks were very wide compared with their length and they were flat-bottomed. Their sails were balanced lugs, four-sided sails hanging from a yardarm set at an oblique angle – the characteristic sail of China. They were stiffened by a series of bamboo battens, so the design was extremely efficient when sailing before the wind. It also allowed the sails to be reefed, or lowered, quickly in an emergency.

  The most reliable ships in the world in the fourteenth and early fifteenth century, and by far the biggest, were these Chinese junks. Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan traveller and writer who journeyed through Asia in the fourteenth century, wrote that the trade of the whole world between the Malabar coast of India and China was carried in Chinese ships. Centuries later, in 1848, a junk built to the designs of that era was sailed from China via New York to London by a party of British naval officers. They sailed before the wind all the way and the junk handled beautifully. But magnificent though these ships were, they had been designed to operate primarily between China and Africa, sailing before the monsoon winds (which changed direction twice yearly), as they had for centuries. Although a lug-sail is also quite efficient when sailing into the wind, the combination of the hull shape and sail design meant that the Chinese monsters were crab-like and inefficient when attempting to do so. They had to wear rather than tack, and for all practical purposes were constrained to sail before the wind – a severe limitation when outside the monsoon belt of the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. It was to be one of the crucial clues when it came to tracking the course of the Chinese fleets during the great voyages of 1421 to 1423.

  The eunuch captains and admirals of these great treasure ships were men of awesome ability but, like the European explorers who followed them, they often drew their crews from the lowest levels of society. Most were criminals, sent to sea in lieu of imprisonment or internal exile, and in some respects life as a crewman was far better than a prison sentence. They were provided with a uniform – a knee-length white robe – food and wine, and were well cared for when at sea. The admiral’s staff included 180 medical officers, and every ship and company of soldiers had a medical officer for every 150 men. There was a varied and plentiful diet on the treasure ships, but the perils of voyaging through uncharted waters meant that life expectancy was short: only one in ten returned from the great voyages of exploration and discovery. But those who had survived the earlier voyages of the treasure fleets had been well rewarded. They were often freed and given endowments or pensions.

  Like all sailors, the Chinese were superstitious. Each of Zheng He’s ships had a small cabin dedicated to Ma Tsu, the mariners’ deity, and prayers were said to her every evening before supper. When the crew went ashore in foreign lands, they carried round bronze mirrors to ward off evil spirits; on the reverse was the eight-spoked Taoist wheel.

  The elite of the crew were the navigators and ‘compass-men’, operating from an enclosed small bridge and living and dining separately from the rest of the men. The junks also carried artisans and craftsmen of every description, capable of performing any task. Caulkers, sailmakers, anchor- and pump-repairers, scaffolders, carpenters and tung oil painters would keep the ships in good repair on their long voyage into the distant oceans. Their work in the Forbidden City complete, stone-carvers and stone masons were also embarked to leave permanent legacies of the fleets’ voyages across the world. There was even a historian, Ma Huan, to document the voyage. His diaries, The Overall Survey of the Ocean Shores, were published in 1433, after Zheng He’s final voyage.

  The staple foods – soya beans, wheat, millet and rice – were carried in separate grain ships, enabling a fleet to stay at sea for several months without replenishing supplies, but if the grain ships sank, the whole fleet was in desperate trouble. Soya beans, grown in tubs all year round, were used in several ways. Soaked in water, they sprouted ‘yellow curls’ from the green bean. The sprouting process increased the content of ascorbic acid, riboflavin and nicotinic acid, the basis of vitamin C, and protected the crew from the deficiency disease scurvy. The Chinese knew well the dangers of scurvy and the remedies to prevent it. Enough citrus fruit – limes, lemons, oranges, pomelos and coconuts – was taken aboard to give every man protection against the disease for three months. Pomelos – a grapefruit-like fruit, also known as a shaddock – had been particularly valued ever since the Warring States period from the fifth to second centuries BC. ‘The candid and ingenious prince should know … the State of Chu must necessarily gain wealth from its groves of orange and pomelo trees.’4

  Some of the rice was brown, not polished, and the husks contained vitamin B1. As a result, beri-beri – a disease causing degeneration of the nervous system – was rare among the crew. Fresh vegetables mainly comprised cabbages, turnips and bamboo shoots. When they ran out, the sprouting soya beans were particularly valuable. Soya beans also produced ‘milk’. When boiled, it became curd, or tofu, rich in vitamin D, while fermentation of soya produced soy sauce. Tofu and vegetables were flavoured with a sauce made from fermented fish, soy, dried herbs and spices, or glutamate made by chewing wheat flour. The grains were chewed, spat out into a container and left to ferment. The method is still used in South America today. Noodles, pasta and dumplings were also made from wheat flour. Sugar cane was used to sweeten dried fruit and was also chewed raw by the crew.

  Fruits and vegetables were preserved in ingenious ways. Fruit was dried or caramelized, pears, bamboo shoots and grapes were buried in sand, and vegetables were salted, pickled and marinated in vinegar and sugar.5 Meat was limited, for the most part comprising Chinese pigs, dogs bred for the purpose and frogs kept in tubs. Chickens were kept for divination and were never eaten on board, but fresh, salted, dried and fermented fish were plentiful. They were caught by the trained otters, working in pairs to herd shoals into the nets, and by an array of hooks and nets. The crew drank green oolong and red tea, carried in both leaf and cake form, and rice wine (jiu) was hugely popular. ‘In the sixth month [August] we gather wild plums and berries; in the seventh we boil marrows and beans; in the eighth we dry the dates; in the tenth we take the rice to make with it the spring wine so that we may be granted long life.’6

  Wine was also distilled into liqueurs, brandy and vinegar. The junks required huge quantities of fresh water for crew and horses and replenished their tanks whenever an opportunity arose, but they also knew how to distil it from sea-water, using paraffin wax or seal blubber for fuel. Their capacity to desalinate sea-water and the fresh vegetables they carried gave them the ability to cross the broadest oceans. The overall diet was infinitely more varied and nutritious than that provided for Magellan the best part of a century later – ‘We ate only old biscuits turned to powder, all full of worms and stinking of the urine the rats had made on it.’7 On the junks, rats were hunted by the sailors’ little ship-dogs. Arsenic was used to kill bugs and insects and to promote the growth of plants.

  The concubines for the treasure fleets were recruited from the floating brothels of Canton.8 They belonged to an ethnic group called the ‘Tanka’, descendants of people who had emigrated from the remote interior of China to the coast to engage in pearl fishing. They spoke a peculiar dialect and differed from Chinese women by refusing to have their feet bound. They were prohibited from going ashore at any ports of call and from marrying Chinese men. They attended the sumptuous banquets aboard the treasure ships and were taught how to hold their drink; they consumed huge amounts. They were well educated and, as well as satisfying the sexual demands of the ambassadors and envoys, were expected to play cards and chess, to act in plays and to sing and dance. Most of them were Buddhists, a creed they adopted because of its teaching of universal love, compassion and equality of all beings, man and woman, emperor or prostitute.

  Concubines were not viewed with contempt because of their profession; they were regarded as a long-established, legitimate and necessary part of society. Indeed, sex was viewed as a sanctified act. ‘Of all the ten thousand things created by heaven, man
is the most precious. Of all things that make man prosper, none can be compared to sexual intercourse. It is modelled after heaven.’9 All men were free to have concubines, and ‘class or fortune mean nothing in the selection as the only standard of preference is physical beauty’.10 The Chinese invariably invited rulers back to Beijing, and foreign envoys could dwell in heaven from the time they left their home country until they returned, often a year or more later. Little wonder that they accepted invitations to Beijing with such alacrity.

  Sex aids and aphrodisiacs were available to concubines and their guests. The most popular aphrodisiac was a pair of red lizards caught while copulating and drowned alive in a jar of wine. The wine was left for a year before being sold. There were also ‘the genitals of a lewd animal, the beaver, with the drug so obtained to anoint the penis’, and ‘bald chicken potion’11 was very popular. The name derived from a prefect of Shu who started drinking the elixir when he was seventy. His wife was so exhausted by his subsequent virility that ‘she could neither sit nor lie down’, and insisted that her husband throw the potion away. A cockerel then ate it, jumped on a hen and ‘continued copulating several days without interruption, pecking the hen’s head until it was completely bald’.12

  The ‘classic’ concubine’s bed was decorated with symbolic fruit. Bedspreads were embroidered with patterns of blossoming plum branches – the plum denoted sexual pleasure and fulfilment. The peach represented women’s genitalia, and pomegranates represented the vulva. When envoys boarded treasure ships they frequently gave pomegranates as gifts. By day, concubines wore pantaloons, wide trousers; they usually made love wearing the mo xiong, a red brassière and silk stockings. Envoys and concubines were expected to wash their private parts before and after intercourse. A male contraceptive, a condom called yin jia, was available, and agar-agar jelly acted as a lubricant and mild disinfectant; venereal disease in the era of the treasure ships was rare, though it was to spread like wildfire in the late Ming period.