1421: The Year China Discovered America Quotes
"The discoveries on which the book is based could never have come about without that knowledge."
"The Chinese preferred to pursue their aims by trade, influence and bribery rather than by open conflict and direct colonization."
"Zhu Di's policy was to despatch huge armadas every few years throughout the known world, bearing gifts and trade goods."
"The armada's ships could remain at sea for over three months and cover at least 4,500 miles without making landfall to replenish food or water."
"The only interest of the Spanish and Portuguese was in gathering sustenance, gold and spices, while warding off attacks from the natives."
"The coasts, cliffs and mountains early explorers had viewed from their quarterdecks were those I saw through a submarine periscope."
"The remarkable information that those maps contain is, and always has been, there for all to see, but it has eluded many eminent historians of China."
"They must have been skilled in astro-navigation and must have found a method of determining longitude to draw maps with negligible longitude errors."
"If our actions have in fact been improper, you should lay these out one by one, hiding nothing, so that we may try to reform ourselves and regain the favour of heaven."
"To have drawn maps of the entire world with such accuracy, these explorers, whoever they were, must have circumnavigated the globe."
"A diplomatic crisis accelerated the disintegration of Zhu Di’s government."
"You have lost your yang power and that is why your concubines resorted to a relationship with a young eunuch."
"Relieving people’s poverty ought to be handled as though one were rescuing them from fire or saving them from drowning."
"The building and repair of all treasure ships is to be stopped immediately."
"We have traversed more than 100,000 li of immense water spaces."
"It was another shattering blow to the morale of the Chinese and their emperor."
"The ships or junks that navigate these seas carry four masts or more."
"China’s territory produced all goods in abundance, so why buy useless trifles from abroad?"
"The embargo on overseas trade was rigidly maintained throughout the next hundred years."
"The mental capacity of the wives far exceeds that of their husbands."
"The only possible conclusion is that chickens were introduced from across the Pacific, probably repeatedly, long before the Mediterranean discoveries of America."
"The first European, Magellan, did not set sail for Patagonia until years after the Piri Reis was drawn."
"The Chinese must have looked upon such alien creatures with wonder, and at once would have begun efforts to capture some specimens."
"Whether or not Hoei-Shin reached the Americas, the Chinese certainly believed he had, for his report was regularly entered in the yearbooks of the Chinese Empire."
"After passing through the strait, Admiral Hong Bao took his fleet southwards, sailing to the west of the islands of Tierra del Fuego."
"In the eighth month of the twelfth year of the Khai-Yuan period, an expedition was sent to the south seas to observe Lao Jen."
"The Chinese had been attempting to locate the positions of both the Southern Cross and Canopus for centuries."
"There was no longer the slightest shred of doubt in my mind. There was no need to summon ancient Egyptians or space aliens."
"In summer there are periods of flat calm, clear skies and limpid blue seas speckled with ice floes."
"Asiatic chickens were found the length of both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the Americas as far north as Rhode Island."
"The accuracy with which the eastern Australia coast had been drawn left me equally dumbstruck."
"China and India together accounted for almost half the world’s entire wealth."
"They used mercuric sulphide (cinnabar) for red inks and paints."
"When there is cinnabar above, gold will be found below."
"Chinese scientists had classified minerals into groups by the first century AD."
"The Chinese took inordinate care in the selection of their horses."
"To have surveyed it with such precision, the Chinese fleet must have spent some time on the east coast of Australia."
"The wealth of wrecks and Chinese artefacts found in and around that country show that, by luck or design, the great Chinese fleets had discovered the location of some of the most varied and rich mineral seams in the world."
"Combining copper and zinc gave them brass; saltpetre mixed with sulphur and charcoal made gunpowder."
"When Zhou Man’s fleet resumed its voyage, it sailed north up the Great Barrier Reef, again shown with amazing accuracy on the Rotz chart."
"The Americanists are not aware of the Chinese literature suggesting not only discovery but colonization of America."
"The thesis that the Chinese explored virtually the whole world between 1421 and 1423."
"Evidence of the visit of the Chinese treasure fleet to the Americas."
"The great importance of this chart lies in the fact that it is the first to represent a group of four islands in the western Atlantic."
"This must have drifted across the ocean from some civilized country."
"These Caribs can fight about as well in water as in their canoe."
"The Chinese would have put to sea to escape the Caribs, just as Columbus’s fleet did."
"One can imagine the relief of the seamen and concubines as they saw the sandy spit of land fringed by palm trees."
"Some must have been left on Bimini, others put ashore wherever conditions seemed to offer better hope of survival."
"My task was now to find where Zhou Wen had sailed between those two landfalls."
"Greenland was circum-navigable in 1421–2, for the climate of Greenland was far warmer than it is today."
"The barbarians came from the nearby coast of the heathens, and attacked the inhabitants of Greenland most cruelly."
"The pitiable inhabitants of both sexes they carried away … the greater number have since returned from captivity to their own houses."
"I believe the only rational view to take is that this letter is describing a Chinese fleet arriving from North America."
"The colony on the Bache Peninsula is of particular interest...none of the houses has a roof."
"In trying to solve the mystery of these curious buildings, my first clue came from the local geography."
"Ellesmere Island also has another very valuable commodity: copper."
"All of this was reasonably logical, but it begged the question of why the Chinese, with their magnificent ships, should have bothered to build stone houses at all."
"The buildings are large enough to have accommodated as many as three thousand people, but without a roof over their heads they would have been lucky to survive a single Arctic night."
"The Portuguese did not have enough ships to determine longitude by trigonometry."
"If a ship could safely round Cape Bojador, man could sail anywhere. There was no need for irrational fears about falling off the edge of the earth."
"The fear of the unknown still dominated the minds of ordinary Portuguese seamen, and a lifetime of myth, legend, and superstition could not be erased overnight."
"Eannes’s achievement in rounding Cape Bojador completely changed European man’s attitude to seafaring."
"Magellan knew of the strait that bears his name before he set sail, for it was shown on a map in the King of Portugal’s treasury."
"The world’s spice trade was now within Portugal’s grasp. Anyone who opposed them was mown down with grapeshot."
"The rivers of Colombia and Venezuela are also linked to the Chinese voyages by the DNA (transferrins) of the people who lived beside them."
"The Chinese fleets had charted the world, they could determine longitude by means of lunar eclipses."
"The stability and protection that [the Great] wall provided ensured that, of all the great civilizations of antiquity, China alone survived."
"The Chinese had millennia of experience and expertise in every sphere of human activity."
"Columbus’s plans for a voyage westwards were now in desperate trouble, for the Portuguese were on the verge of opening up the route to India round the Cape of Good Hope."
"Local custom has it that during a banquet each person may propose one toast to the guest and a second to their particular friend."
"Recently discovered family records confirm that he spent twelve years at sea with Admiral Zheng He."
"Once again, nearly a hundred distinguished professors attended the conference, their field of research China’s relations with overseas countries."
"He began to research Zheng He’s voyages but found, as I had done, that the records had been destroyed."
"The professor decided to write a book in which he would claim that the Chinese had discovered the Americas before Europeans."
"This wonderful stuff was still coursing through my veins the following morning as we staggered around Taicang’s old harbour."
"In December, Marcella and I returned to Yunnan in south-west China to honour the invitation of Professor Yao Jide and Professor Fayuan Gao."
"Some years ago, while researching into the prefecture of Fujian province, he had come across accounts of a Brazilian delegation."
"Another bombshell followed. Admiral Zheng Ming described an airport-runway-extension excavation in Fujian."
"At the end of three days the conference unanimously voted to adopt my evidence. There was barely a voice against the motion."
"Gilt does not last, so junks wrecked relatively recently."
"Chinese people not intermarried seen in California, Mexico, Texas, and Florida."
"Ming porcelain dated either by cobalt or by Zhu Di’s stamp – 1403 to 1421 – found in Americas, Africa, Australia."
"Jade figurine at Darwin dated by shape of Canopus head to early Ming, between 1008 and 1523."
"Zheng He states ‘3,000 countries large and small’ visited."
"Columbus’s records, ‘70 years before, people from Cathay in Orient’ (Greenland)."
"Fra Mauro’s map, ‘about the year 1420’, ship or junk from India."
"Chinese official records listing countries visited by Zheng He’s fleet includes America and Australia."
"Chinese already in the Americas when the first Europeans arrived: bibliographical evidence."
"The number of voyages made by the treasure fleets is, and will continue to be, a matter of dispute."
"The identity of the admiral in command of the third fleet is not known with absolute certainty."
"The originals are in Beijing, but the British Library holds copies."
"The circumference of the globe is 21,600 nautical miles."
"The southern portion of the map was based on a chart found on the person of a Spanish seaman captured by the Ottomans in 1501."
"The work of M. Chevalier and his colleagues."
"For this information I am indebted to Brett Green, whose family recorded the Aboriginal songs and folklore of this coast."
"As may be verified with the Microsoft computer program Starry Night."
"The current curator of the Technological Museum in Sydney, where the statuette is housed, states, 'The Museum’s preferred dating of this object is the early nineteenth century.'"