1421: The Year China Discovered America (P.S.) - Gavin Menzies

An Incidental Sinophilic Truth from a UK Submarine Captain

This review adds comments to Menzies' landmark book on how the mediaeval Chinese empire developed ocean-going vessels, geopositioning and mapping systems before the Europeans. The Ming Dynasty developed it at a huge cost overextending itself and ultimately abandoned this effort before triumphantly sheparding the world. Fortunately this legacy was not forgotten in southern China and was secretly perpetuated through Chinese maritime legend and lore.

Recent Sino and Western historians have written a now huge library on why it was Southern China's Guangdong and Fujian's poor and isolated provinces which continued to be the locus of outward-looking vision of the world. This discussion will concentrate on Menzies' American thesis and collaborate modern Chinese topics. The Chinese diaspora originated in Toisan (100 miles west of Canton (Guangzhou) in mid- to late-1800s with the lure of "easy-money" at the start of California's Gold Rush. Toisan's (Toishan) famine, an agriculturally poor, over-populated mountainous region, started a mass diaspora to SE Asia and the Americas, bound together with the its unique Cantonese-like dialect.

The hc book has a 14-pg index, 100-pg appendices including a 25-pg bibliography, 35 maps & drawings and 32-pg of color pixs. Menzies' unique research adventure curiously starts with being raised in China as a child by a Chinese "amah," or old grandmother caregiver p10.

The ships were built from the essential teak and ironwood, a tropical hardwood, which has natural oils that resist weakening when submersed in seawater. The China Empire's Guangdong and Annan regions (now North Vietnam) had the virgin tropical rain forests p63 essential for building a flotilla of 400+ft ships.

"Junk" or "Wangkang" boat design and building, so labeled derisively by the UK and Europe, was not low-tech. It had rudders, keel designs and sails with battens needed to efficiently captured wind power. The major deficiency of being able to sail into the wind p64, unlike the deep keels and narrower beams of modern yacht design, was made up for by making huge ships with shallow (<10ft) draft so they could be self-sufficient for year-long voyages and global sailing techniques by set-sail "with" the prevailing winds and ocean currents (Walker circulation, UCAR). This seasonal geophysical and climatological knowledge was mapped in secret. Thus massive floating cities with appropriate talents for maintenance and exploitation, including shipwrights and masons, cooks and concubines, metallurgy and mining technologists, and huge holds for trading and tribute.

In 2003 the first American-built Chinese junk was launched. The US National Park Service had commissioned John Muir, a young curator of San Francisco's Maritime Museum to design and build a historically authentic junk at China Camp State Park near San Rafael, CA in Marin County. He participated in a cultural exchange program with Southern China resources to authenticate building techniques. It is the single-masted 43-ft junk "Grace Quan," a replica of a 1906 shrimp fishing sailboat where many used to ply SF Bay estuaries during the 1860-1910. The junk was christened (YouTube) in memory of the mother of 80+ year-old Frank Quan, the last surviving Chinese SF Bay shrimp fisherman. Muir's collegiate Masters thesis was on archaeology of CN fishing craft.

Then in 2005-8, a Taiwanese group, the Chinese Maritime Development Society [....], underwrote building an authentic 54-ft, 3-masted ocean-going Chinese Junk "Princess TaiPing." It was designed and built after an exhaustive 3-year program of shipbuilding research, a collaboration with PRChina, HK, and deciphering Fujian history and shipwright records of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). So far with a crew of eight, it has crossed the Pacific in 69 days, first landing in Eureka, Humboldt Cty near the CA-Oregon boarder before sailing south into SF Bay, Youtube (ZfpdWlcwcm4).

The crew was, understandably, cold, waterlogged, hungry for fresh produce and exhausted from surviving endless storms during the first leg of this historic voyage. The return leg to Greater China from San Diego is starting upon this writing (Dec 08). It will use a southern route via Hawaii to take advantage of the equatorial winds and currents of Winter. If successfully completed in 2009, this will be the first trans-Pacific crossing in a sailing junk in modern times.

"NingPo (previously Kin Tai Foong)" is the oldest (1753, Fuzhou, Fujian) known CN junk in California, sunk off the Catalina Islands [...]. This 138ft, 3-masted, 3ft draft junk was last used in 1938.

"Tek Sing (True Star)" sunk off the Sumatra, Java coast in SE Asia in 1822 with a full load of trade cargo and 1600 people, mainly field laborers bound for Java. The tragedy is known as the "Chinese Titanic." It was a 150ft, 3-masted, 20ft beam junk. The wreck was found on May 12, 1999 according to Nigel Pickford's book [...]. It was built in 1817 at Amoy (Xiamen) in Fujian province.

Another curious theory of Menzies' thesis is that Asiatic chickens (south CN) were present in the Americas before Columbus landed. There is an extended discussion p123 including Rhode Island where he claims that Chinese junks had gifted these chickens to American natives before the Portuguese and Spanish claimed the Americas.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, a bred of Asiatic chicken has black skin, meat, bones and special medicinal qualities. This Cornish hen-sized melanotic chickens are commercially raised in BC, Canada and distributed fresh and frozen throughout the States at large Asian markets and Chinatowns. The modern breed, a black Silkie, is popular as a pet breed in the UK.

Several TCM-oriented cookbooks include its preparation and herbs. There are many Taipei, Taiwan health food restaurants that serve it. It is entirely plausible that these chickens were raised on mediaeval junks to provide food that had extraordinary nutrition for long arduous voyages.

All-in-all, Menzies book is a fascinating read, easy to comprehend in that many of his theories are determined by careful examining disparate facts and using inductive logic. As in his discussion on how Chinese navigators were the first to discover how to accurately measure longitude in Appendix 4, p177-87 by year 1421.

1421, the Year Chinese Discovered America

Before Columbus started his journey, he already had in his possession a world map presented to the Pope by a Chinee envoy showing the American continent. Since the map already showed the new world (American continent) that means some other people had already been there and in this case the Chinese. Therefore, Columbus's claim that he discovered the new world was a false claim at best. Capt. Menzies listed detailed evidence to argue his case that the Chinese discovered America in 1421, about 100 years before Columbus and he has succeeded.

A Fine Work of Fiction

Yet another one of those books that had all the markings of something I would rather use as an assault missile from my deck when the neighboring children get too loud as I'm trying to read.

I wish I could give this a great review. Had Sir Menzies filed his work in the fiction section where it belongs, I may have. But unfortunately, a history this is not. I don't need to give you specifics as they are too plentiful everywhere else.

All I can say is that I really enjoyed the book for many reasons. Among them I now know that literary talent is judged not only by its product but also by its categorization.

Goodbye to the "Spaceman" theory

This book may not be to everyone's liking, but it does use a great of deal of commonsense with regard to Mankind's perception of geographical knowledge in Medieval times. It makes perfect common sense that people explored the world BEFORE Chris Columbus. He must have had an idea from somewhere, that the 'Final Frontier' was out there.......the way to The Indies....only problem was the American continent got in the way! Or did it?? Did he know, that there was a landmass to the West? Where did he get his maps?
If this book is not to your liking, you must have a mind that is welded shut to the reception of new ideas.

Excellent history

A must read and a corrective of the present history of the discovery of America by Columbus. The cruelness of the emperor and his vision of a great "market" and "friends" across the seas are truly fascinating and understandable, yet frightening. The "proofs" and evidence presented make this the most wonderfully believable part of history not yet exposed.