Born c. 1371,
Kunyang, K’un-ming, China
Died c. 1433,
Calicut, India
When Cheng Ho (or Zheng He) was a young boy, he was made a servant of the Chinese emperor. He then rose to become an important military leader and admiral. Although his expeditions to Southeast Asia, India, Arabia, and the east coast of Africa contributed significantly to Chinese knowledge of these areas, the government failed to recognize the advantages to be gained from this information. The history of the centuries that followed might have been different had the Chinese taken better advantage of the voyages of Cheng Ho.
Cheng Ho was born into a Muslim family in the city of Kunyang in the K’un-ming province of southwestern China. When he was ten years old, the Muslims of K’un-ming rebelled against their Chinese rulers. The Chinese put down the rebellion, however, and Cheng Ho was one of a few local children who were selected to be castrated and serve as eunuchs in the court of the Chinese emperor. Cheng Ho became a servant to a prince named Chu Ti. As Cheng Ho grew older, he accompanied Chu Ti on various military campaigns against the Mongols on the northern border. He eventually became one of the prince’s most valued military leaders and advisers.
In 1402, after leading a successful insurrection, Chu Ti was crowned emperor. Now known as Yung-lo, the emperor put Cheng Ho in charge of several naval expeditions to foreign lands. Yung-lo suspected that the previous emperor might have fled across the sea, so he directed Cheng Ho and others to pursue evidence of his whereabouts. In 1405 Cheng Ho set out on his first voyage from the mouth of the Yang-tse River with an enormous fleet that was said to contain 65 large and 255 small vessels and a total crew of 27,800. The party sailed south across the South China Sea, anchoring at Qui Nhon in what is now Vietnam.
In one of his first important acts as a leader Cheng Ho defeated the famous Chinese pirate Chen Tsu-i in battle. He took Chen Tsu-i prisoner, sending him to Nanking to be executed. Cheng Ho continued on to Sri Lanka and the port of Calicut, in south India. He returned to China in 1407. During that same year Cheng Ho set out on his second voyage to Calicut, then the center of the spice trade in southern India. After leaving Calicut, Cheng Ho’s expedition stopped in Thailand and Java before returning to China in 1409.
During his third voyage, from 1409 to 1411, Cheng Ho made excursions to Thailand, Malacca on the coast of Malaya, Sumatra, and Sri Lanka. After having some trouble with the king of Sri Lanka, Cheng Ho was taken prisoner and sent back to China. For his fourth voyage, from 1413 to 1415, Cheng Ho took his fleet even farther: dividing the ships into several squadrons, he sent some to Sri Lanka and Bengal and others to the Maldive Islands off the southwest coast of India, to Hormuz (the main port of Iran), and to the south coast of Arabia. On the fifth voyage (1417-19) the fleet went to the Ryukyu Islands between Japan and Taiwan, to Brunei on the north coast of Borneo, and to the island of Java. Squadrons continued on to the shores of East Africa, visiting Mogadishu, Brava, and Juba in Somalia; Malindi and Mombasa in Kenya; the island of Zanzibar and ports in Tanzania and Mozambique. The sixth expedition (1421-22) expanded upon the previous one, visiting states between Brunei and Zanzibar, and stopping at the ports of Brava and Mogadishu.
Before Cheng Ho returned from his sixth expedition, Yung-lo died. Cheng Ho had lost his major supporter. Officials at the court began to lobby to stop Cheng Ho’s voyages, arguing that the expeditions were unnecessary and wasteful. They claimed that the “Middle Kingdom”—as China was then called because the Chinese believed they occupied the middle of the earth and were surrounded by barbarians—had nothing to gain by dealing with other countries. However, the new emperor, Chu Chan-chi, approved one last voyage.
From 1433 to 1435 Cheng Ho revisited many places on the coast of Africa, traveling as far north as the Strait of Hormuz, which lies between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The party was given gifts and tributes for the Chinese emperor from rulers of many lands they had visited. Cheng Ho died during this trip, in the port of Calicut; his body was taken back to China to be buried in Nanking.
In 1431 Cheng Ho had erected a monument in a Taoist temple, upon which he inscribed a description of his accomplishments. Discovered in 1937, the monument provides a poetic account of his explorations. It states in part:
[We have] gone to more than thirty countries large and small. We have traversed more than one hundred thousand li [a li is about one-third of a mile] of immense water spaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising sky-high, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors.
It remains a mystery why the Chinese did not follow up on the explorations of Cheng Ho. About 70 years after the admiral’s death, Vasco da Gama (see entry) and other Portuguese and European navigators began to explore the areas Cheng Ho had previously visited. The Chinese could have profited from Cheng Ho’s voyages, perhaps especially from their knowledge of Africa. Instead, it was the Europeans who became the important maritime powers of the next several centuries.
Eunuchs
The practice of employing eunuchs, or young boys who have been castrated, as servants in wealthy households and royal courts dates back to ancient times, although it was not so common in the Muslim world as it was in the Byzantine and Ottoman empires. Eunuchs frequently became powerful leaders, like Cheng Ho; another example was the Byzantine general Narses. Because eunuchs were castrated they had high voices, and they were often used in choirs; this custom began in Constantinople and was adopted by European opera companies in the eighteenth century. Castrati sang in the papal choir at the Vatican in Rome until the nineteenth century.
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