Portrait of Zheng He
When it comes to ancient Chinese navigation, the story of Zheng He's seven voyages to the West has been familiar to us since childhood.
As the leader of the fleet, Zheng He has been the focus of people's attention from ancient times to the present.
But the other 20,000 or so entourage, their lives, are also worth learning about.
01
In 2004, in Taicang, Jiangsu Province, a Ming Dynasty couple's joint burial tomb was accidentally discovered at the construction site of a new building.
There are no dazzling funerary items such as rare treasures unearthed in the tomb.
Fortunately, the epitaph is well preserved, and the identity of the owner can be known from the inscription.
No, a lost Ming Dynasty navigation hero surfaced.
The owner of the tomb was named Chen Xian, and his position before his death was that of a hundred households in the local health center in Taicang and a lieutenant of Zhaoxin. The so-called Hundred Households, in the Ming Dynasty, were the small leaders of 120 soldiers.
Lieutenant Shōshin, on the other hand, was the rank of Military Attaché of The Six Pins.
Zheng He's "Memories of the Heavenly Princess Lingying"
It seems that the tomb owner is a low-level military attaché of the Ming Dynasty, and it seems that he is not a big person.
And according to the beginning of the epitaph, Chen An lost his parents when he was still teething, which can be called a fate. However, the next sentence in the inscription made everyone nervous.
"When the officials of the meeting sent envoys to sail through the western regions to select the brave men in Jiangnan, they avoided the soldiers in every way, and the king did not avoid them, so he obeyed under his command, and he saw his cronies and cronies, and went three times in several years, wading thousands of miles away, and returning unharmed."
The lieutenant, that is, the eunuch in the palace. The eunuch who went to sea in Taicang with the purpose of "connecting the Western Regions" undoubtedly referred to Zheng He!
In 1413, when Chen Xian was 16 years old, Zheng He was ordered to go to the West for the fourth time.
However, the danger of ocean voyage made the local soldiers in Taicang Port afraid to avoid it, and no one was willing to serve the mission.
At such an embarrassing time, Chen Xian, who was "full of courage and perseverance, and had long had Yizhi", took the initiative to ask for help, so he received the attention of Zheng He and was most valued by his cronies.
Later, Chen Xian participated in the fifth and sixth voyages to the West, from the Champa State in present-day southern Vietnam, to the Manchukua State at the confluence of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, to Sri Lanka and Guri in southern India, and even Kenya in eastern Africa, all of which were places where Chen Xian had been with Zheng He's huge fleet.
02
Zheng He's fleet, in addition to undertaking the Ming Dynasty's task of appeasing the Western countries, was also equivalent to a trading bloc. Most of the more than 20,000 soldiers and officials accompanying them would carry goods and take advantage of the opportunity to trade for huge profits.
On the first voyage to the West, in Java, more than a hundred officers and men of Zheng He's fleet came ashore to trade.
As a result, it was involved in civil unrest in Java, and almost the entire army was destroyed.
To this end, the Yongle Emperor specifically issued a threat to the King of Java.
Statue of the Yongle Emperor
Even, Yongle claimed as much as 60,000 taels of gold from Java! Every time Chen Xian participated in the Western Ocean, he not only disdained to seek personal interests with such "half-way merchants", but remembered to "collect a number of volumes of books" along the Fujian coast to bring back to his hometown and spread culture.
Such a character is indeed worthy of admiration. However, Daming reached its peak in the Yongle era and quickly went downhill after that. Chen Xian, who had just lived at home for a few years, was recruited to quell the rebellion.
"There are only ten people in the army who supervise the battle with banners, and the king is in Yan."
With Chen Xian's fearless character, he traveled far away from the whale waves, and he was not afraid of traveling tens of thousands of miles on the ocean, and he was naturally the first to charge and bear the brunt of it.
Late one night in the third year of Xuande (1428), Chen Xian and his men attacked the rebels at night, but unfortunately they were discovered in advance by the rebels. Chen Xian fought and died in this way.
This hero who accompanied Zheng He to the West three times died in today's Vietnam. He was only 31 years old.
Ming Dynasty woman portrait
03
Successful men have a great woman behind them. On the epitaph of Chen Xian's tomb, his wife Dong Shi is mentioned. According to speculation, it should be Chen Xian who married her after returning to China for the first time in the West.
However, as a close confidant of Zheng He, Chen Xian inevitably joined the next two envoys. Therefore, the epitaph says that the couple :"For more than ten years, there are few meetings."
After Chen Xian's death, Lady Dong did not remarry, but carefully taught her son. In order to let her 9-year-old son study with peace of mind, Mrs. Dong worked hard every day to sell the fabric for the family.
Heaven finally gave this unfortunate woman a little comfort, and his son Chen Sheng was successful in his studies and stepped into his career.
And after growing up, "accumulated books full of family", and "happy to make friends with wen wu xianhao", temperament and hobbies, almost carved out of a mold with his father Chen Xian.
The happiest thing is that Lady Dong lived a long life, living until the fourteenth year of Chenghua (1478), and died peacefully in the peaceful life of her children and grandchildren, at the age of 81.
The couple, who had gathered less and more before they died, were finally able to sleep together after their deaths.
And Chen Xian, because of this experience of following Zheng He to the West, has now received the attention of historians at home and abroad.
This is probably something that their husband and wife six hundred years ago never imagined.
But at that time, there were thousands of people like Chen Xian, and who knew about their lives?