In 1399, Zhu Di, who was then the King of Yan, launched the Battle of Jingnan and finally succeeded in seizing the throne and ascending the throne, becoming the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty, that is, the historical Ming Chengzu. During his reign, the country was rich and the people were strong, and the society was stable, because its era name was "Yongle", so those who came after him called the period under his rule "Yongle Prosperous Era".
Ming Chengzu Zhu Di has the ability of martial arts and martial rule, after the great Ming dynasty is rich and strong, Zhu Di, who longs for the dynasty of all nations, in order to carry out foreign exchanges and expand the influence of the Ming Dynasty, since 1405 AD, sent the eunuch Zheng He of the Three Treasures to the West seven times, through more than 30 countries, becoming a grand event with great glory in the early Ming Dynasty.
It is reasonable to say that Zheng He's voyage to the West, such a grand event of the country that spanned 28 years, should have a large number of historical materials to refer to, but in fact, this historical event known to women and children is rarely dissected in detail in the history. In this case, if someone stood up and said that Zheng He's voyage to the West was actually a scam, would you agree with such a view?
A family of Chinese engineering doctors in Canada said: Zheng He's going to the West is a scam
Lin Yanping is a Chinese Ph.D. from Canada who majored in engineering at McGill University in Canada and received a Doctor of Science and Engineering degree.
Once, Dr. Lin Yanping went to a university in China for a guest lecture, and in the course of his speech, he publicly expressed a questioning opinion: Zheng He's voyage to the West was actually just a hoax, Zheng He did not actually sail far, and those "feats" were all exaggerated words fabricated by Ming Chengzu Zhu Di and his courtiers.
The doctor will always come up with some arguments to support his own point of view, Lin Yanping is no exception, he analyzed the long-distance ships used by Zheng He as mentioned in the "History of Ming" from the perspective of science and engineering, the doctor believes that the treasure captain of Zheng He's voyage is 140 meters long and 57 meters wide, so according to the calculation results, its displacement will be about 3,000 tons. If the displacement of such a scale is not supported by a steel structure, it may not be possible to achieve it with a wooden structure alone.
In addition, Dr. Lin Yanping also proposed that according to historical records, Zheng He's treasure ships were all flat-bottomed ships, and such ships could not withstand the strong winds and waves, let alone sail for a long time.
As soon as Dr. Lin's astonishing arguments and arguments were thrown out, they immediately caused an uproar among the college students in the audience.
But before long, a boy with glasses stood up, and after getting permission to speak, the student said aloud:
I once went to the Indonesian city of Semarang, where there is a temple called "Sam Po Gong", which was built by the local people to commemorate Zheng He, the three treasure eunuchs who brought them advanced culture and technology. The local name "Semarang" is also named in honor of Zheng He. In addition, several coastal countries in Sri Lanka and East Africa still use Chinese and local languages to carve the stone stele of Zheng He's arrival in the local area in the past, is it difficult for several countries to collude to make up a historical lie?!
After hearing such a remark, Dr. Lin did not say anything that could be refuted for a long time. So, is Zheng He's voyage to the West a scam? Why are there so few surviving historical records describing this "feat"?
2 theories that Zheng He's Western historical materials were destroyed
Zheng He went to the West at the behest of Zhu Di, the ancestor of Ming Cheng, and it is reasonable to say that he will definitely be recorded by historians. However, only when such information is properly kept can it be passed on forever and will it be known to future generations.
There are two kinds of speculations in the historical circles: First, after Zheng He's death, Liu Daxia, a servant of the Ming Dynasty' military department, thought that the voyage was extremely expensive, so he burned all the paper materials accumulated by Zheng He over the decades; second, the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty was "jealous" of the Ming Dynasty's feat of Zheng He's seven voyages to the West, so he ordered the historian to destroy the relevant historical materials and distort them.
In this way, the good historical evidence and paper materials have become "wood without roots", allowing future generations to guess and comment, turning an objective historical fact into a wild history legend.
Paper historical materials are almost impossible to find, so is there any other evidence to prove the authenticity of Zheng He's voyage to the West? Numerous historical sites and archaeological discoveries have strongly proved the authenticity of Zheng He's voyage to the West. Zheng He's first way to the West was through Southeast Asian countries, and now Semarang in Indonesia is named after Zheng He who left the ship several times in those years.
In 1434, the "Three Treasures Gong" temple was completed, and there was a cave in the temple, which was said by local people to be the place where Zheng He once rested, and today, the cave still enshrines a statue of zheng He, the eunuch of the Three Treasures. For hundreds of years, the temple has been incense-filled, proving that the local people have always cherished this temple, which symbolizes the historical friendship between the two countries.
Sri Lanka, located on the coast of the Indian Ocean, was called Ceylon in ancient times. Today, in Sri Lanka's National Museum, there is a stone stele carved by the Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty and brought to Ceylon by Zheng He. The stone stele records the historical facts of Zheng He's gift of various Buddhist items such as gold, silver and satin to the Ceylon Buddhist Temple in that year.
In the spring of 2001, Chinese archaeologists officially carried out excavation and research on the tomb of King Liangzhuang of the Ming Dynasty. As the grandson of Ming Chengzu Zhu Di, the pearlescent and dazzling burial items after the death of King Liangzhuang opened the eyes of the archaeologists. On the coffin bed of King Liang Zhuang, a large number of sparkling gemstones were unearthed, and expert research confirmed that those gems were from the Western feudal state.
In addition, archaeologists also found a huge gold ingot in the tomb, with an inscription on it: Yongle Seventeen Years western ocean and other places bought 80% color one ingot Wu pick up two. This gold ingot is undoubtedly the most direct and convincing cultural evidence of Zheng He's voyage to the West.
In the autumn of 2010, a Ming Dynasty tomb was unearthed in Nanjing, owned by a eunuch named Hong Bao. When the epitaph was unearthed, historians were shocked — it turned out that Hong Bao was one of the main commanders who often accompanied Zheng He when he went to the West.
The epitaph of the eunuch Hong Bao also has such a clear line: Charge the deputy envoy, command the sergeant, and take the number of 5,000 material giants such as Dafu. This sentence is an objective description of the displacement of the large ship on which Zheng He was riding.
The "material" of the Ming Dynasty is a unit of measurement, 1 material is 0.5 tons, if the weight of the giant ship at that time was 5000 tons, it means that the weight of the entire giant ship is 2500 tons. The excavation of this epitaph just powerfully broke the doubts of Dr. Lin Yanping and some Western historians about Zheng He's voyage to the West.
More than 600 years ago, Ming Chengzu Zhu Di did not hesitate to use the country's financial resources to send Zheng He to the West seven times in 28 years, in order to promote daming's national prestige, Zhu Di let Zheng He's fleet full of all kinds of Daming materials, and did not hesitate to distribute rewards to various countries along the way. Although the purpose of diplomacy was achieved, this move also caused Daming's national treasury to be in deficit for a while, and paid a huge price.
Zheng He, who built the Miracle Gong for Daming, probably would never have imagined that hundreds of years later, people would question his heroic and fearless feats. The reason why Zheng He's voyage to the West has been questioned is that some modern people still cannot believe that daming had developed navigation technology and the wisdom of the ming dynasty people at that time.