China's Great Armada

Six centuries ago a towering eunuch named Zheng He commanded the Ming dynasty's fleet of immense trading vessels on expeditions ranging as far as Africa.

Viewed from the rocky outcropping of Dondra Head at the southernnmost tip of Sri Lanka, the first sighting of the Ming fleet is a massive shadow on the horizon. As the shadow rises, it breaks into a cloud of tautly ribbed sail, aflame in the tropical sun. With relentless determination, the cloud draws ever closer, and in its fiery embrace an enormous city appears. A floating city, like nothing the world has ever seen before. No warning could have prepared officials, soldiers, or the thunderstruck peasants who stand atop Dondra Head for the scene that unfolds below them. Stretched across miles of the Indian Ocean in terrifying majesty is the armada of Zheng He, admiral of the imperial Ming navy.

Exactly 600 years ago this month the great Ming armada weighed anchor in Nanjing, on the first of seven epic voyages as far west as Africa—almost a century before Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas and Vasco da Gama's in India. Even then the European expeditions would seem paltry by comparison: All the ships of Columbus and da Gama combined could have been stored on a single deck of a single vessel in the fleet that set sail under Zheng He.

Its commander was, without question, the most towering maritime figure in the 4,000-year annals of China, a visionary who imagined a new world and set out consciously to fashion it. He was also a profoundly unlikely candidate for admiral in anyone's navy, much less that of the Dragon Throne.

The greatest seafarer in China's history was raised in the mountainous heart of Asia, several weeks' travel from the closest port. More improbable yet, Zheng was not even Chinese—he was by origin a Central Asian Muslim. Born Ma He, the son of a rural official in the Mongol province of Yunnan, he had been taken captive as an invading Chinese army overthrew the Mongols in 1382. Ritually castrated, he was trained as an imperial eunuch and assigned to the court of Zhu Di, the bellicose Prince of Yan.

Within 20 years the boy who had writhed under Ming knives had become one of the prince's chief aides, a key strategist in the rebellion that made Zhu Di the Yongle (Eternal Happiness) emperor in 1402. Renamed Zheng after his exploits at the battle of Zhenglunba, near Beijing, he was chosen to lead one of the most powerful naval forces ever assembled.

Six centuries later I left China with photographer Michael Yamashita in search of Zheng He's legacy, a 10,000-mile (16,093-kilometer) journey that would carry us from Yunnan to Africa's Swahili coast. Along the way I came to feel that I had found the man himself.

Timeless Design

Hewing to a long but dying tradition, workmen in Beihai, China, craft the wood skeleton of a junk for the prolific South China Sea fishing industry. The ship's design has probably changed little since Chinese admiral Zheng He commanded a massive fleet of junks during seven epic voyages—the first of which was launched 600 years ago this month. In service to Ming emperor Zhu Di, Zheng's Treasure Fleet conducted widespread trade and diplomacy throughout the Indian Ocean. His mandate was to enrich the imperial treasury by exacting tribute from leaders of other countries bordering the Indian Ocean, and to solidify their allegiance to China.

Bound for the Kettle

The fins of a hammerhead shark hauled out of the Red Sea at Al Hudaydah, Yemen, may end up on dinner tables in China, where shark-fin soup is highly prized. Seafaring traders from Yemen and other Arabian Peninsula countries did brisk business throughout the Indian Ocean during the Ming period, which lasted from the 14th to the mid-17th centuries. When Zheng set sail in 1405, his fleet was the mightiest of its age. With vessels numbering in the hundreds and crewmen in the tens of thousands, Zheng took to the seas nearly a century before the European age of exploration began in earnest.

Toiling for Tin

At the bottom end of a soaring market, an ethnic Chinese worker squats in a sluice to gather tin ore at a mine on Bangka Island off the Sumatran coast. Zheng's crewmen found a Chinese community already settled on this Indonesian island when their ships called at Bangka to trade for tin and other goods. Prices for the metal rose substantially in 2004, and abandoned mines are being reworked as demand grows, particularly within China's vigorous economy.

Distant Ties to China?

On Pate Island along the Swahili coast of Kenya, the Mohame family pounds corn to make cornbread, a staple of their diet. The Mohameds are one of three families of the Famao clan who claim Chinese lineage. According to local legend, shipwrecked sailors from Zheng's fleet made it to shore and married local women, a belief that has become a central part of the Famao's personal mythology. Hints of past Chinese presence still exist on the island: Local tombs and lion statues have designs that some believe closely resemble those of the Ming era, and bits of Chinese ceramics that have washed ashore decorate the facades of some houses.

Routine Maintenance

Dhows lie beached near Ra's al Hadd in Oman, their hulls sealed with a coating of cement and animal fat. For Arab countries the dhow has been the workhorse of the Indian Ocean, just as the junk has been for the Chinese in Southeast Asia. Zheng's fleet stopped here to trade porcelain for frankincense, myrrh, and aloe.

Honoring the Admiral

Incense perfumes the air at Tay Kak Sie, a Chinese Buddhist temple in Semarang, Indonesia—one of several in Southeast Asia where Zheng He's memory is revered. Its sister temple, Sampokong, was built to honor Zheng's reported appearance in Semarang to visit Wang Jinghong, his vice commander, who was laid up in a cave to recuperate from illness. A Central Asian Muslim by birth who was sympathetic to other religions, Zheng is thought to have been buried at sea after dying on the fleet's seventh and last voyage. A tomb—purportedly empty—stands outside Nanjing, China. It bears an Arabic inscription: "Allahu Akbar" ("God is Great").

Zheng He was only one among hundreds of eunuchs in powerful positions at the Ming court. Since at least the Zhou dynasty (circa 1045-256 B.C.), official records document eunuchs in the service of the Chinese emperor. By the fall of the Ming dynasty in A.D. 1644 there were more than 100,000 eunuchs living in Beijing, reports Dorothy Perkins in the Encyclopedia of China. Why so many? At first eunuchs were in large supply because captured enemies—boys and men—were often castrated, probably to ensure the end of their bloodline. The procedure was high-risk, involving excision of both penis and testicles. Many died from the operation or complications afterward, but those who lived often became workers in the imperial harem or the harems of high officials. Later, castration was used specifically as a way to gain employment at the palace, and courtiers were even required to furnish the Manchu palace with sons to be castrated. For this elective surgery, more care was taken with the health of the patient—it is claimed that only about two in a hundred cases were fatal. Since the eunuchs were often the only males in close daily contact with the emperor and top government officials, they gained vast political power and were able to sway the policies of the day. The Confucian bureaucrats who ran the government were in constant struggle with the eunuchs for supremacy. Over time, the eunuchs took part in imperial power plays at the highest levels, sometimes even effecting a change of emperor or running the show from behind the throne. Their power waxed and waned throughout the different dynasties, running strong in the Tang, weaker in the Song, and again quite strong in the Yuan (Mongol) and Ming dynasties. The last eunuch to serve a Chinese emperor was Sun Yaoting, who served Henry Puyi, the last emperor. Sun Yaoting passed away in 1996. - Elizabeth Snodgrass

Voyages of Zheng He
1405-1433
The ships of Zheng's armada were as astonishing as its reach. Some accounts claim that the great baochuan, or treasure ships, had nine masts on 400-foot-long (122-meter-long) decks. The largest wooden ships ever built, they dwarfed those of Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama. Hundreds of smaller cargo, war, and supply ships bore tens of thousands of men who brought China to a wider world.

1. 1405-1407
   317 ships
   27,870 men
   In July the fleet left Nanjing with silks, porcelain, and spices for trade. This well-armed floating city defeated pirates in the Strait of Malacca and reached Sumatra, Ceylon, and India.
2. 1407-1409
   The fleet returned foreign ambassadors from Sumatra, India, and elsewhere who had traveled to China on the first voyage. The expeditions firmly established the Ming dynasty's Indian Ocean trade links.
3. 1409-1411
   Although notable for the imperial fleet's only major foreign land battle, the voyage was also marked by Muslim Zheng's offering of gifts to a Buddhist temple, one of many examples of his ecumenism.
4. 1413-1415
   In this voyage's wake, the first to travel beyond India and cross the Arabian Sea, an estimated 18 states sent tribute and envoys to China, underscoring the Ming emperor's influence overseas.
5. 1417-1419
   Zheng's Treasure Fleet visited the Arabian Peninsula and, for the first time, Africa. In Aden the sultan presented exotic gifts such as zebras, lions, and ostriches.
6. 1421-1422
   Zheng He's fleet continued the emperor's version of shuttle diplomacy, returning ambassadors to their native countries after stays of several years, while bringing other foreign dignitaries back to China.
7. 1431-1433
   The last voyage, to Africa's Swahili coast, with a side trip to Mecca, marked the end of China's golden age of exploration and of Zheng He's life. He presumably died en route home and was buried at sea.

By Frank Viviano
Photographs by Michael Yamashita