The 105 years from 1840 to 1945 were the darkest pages in Chinese history. The European powers went from Nanyang to China, broke into the hinterland of the border, and all of them sought mutual markets, and the Qing Dynasty lost in this change that had not occurred for thousands of years.
In particular, the fiasco in the Sino-Japanese War, the total destruction of the Beiyang Fleet not only shattered the dream of the 40,000 heavenly kingdom people in the same light, but also lost even the most basic self-esteem, and since then anything has only to be stained with the word "foreign".
As a result, foreign "experts" took the opportunity to stir up trouble and cobble together various seemingly scientific and rigorous academic views to argue that ancient China was not good.
Although the Chinese navy was completely destroyed twice by the Japanese navy in modern times, the naval strength of the Ming Dynasty was absolutely crushing in all of Asia. During the Ming Dynasty, the total number of ships of the Daming Marine Division was as high as more than 3800, and the Zheng He fleet was the strongest fleet in the world!
In order to show the wealth and strength of China, and to search for the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen, Zheng He's fleet went to the Western Ocean seven times and visited more than thirty countries and regions in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans, with a total voyage of more than 70,000 nautical miles and three circles around the earth.
Seventy years before Diaz discovered the Cape of Good Hope, eighty years before Columbus discovered the American continent, and a hundred years before Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe.
Zheng He's fleet not only shrugged off a century in time, but also had an advantage over Western fleets in terms of tonnage. Zheng He, who traveled for the first time, led nearly 30,000 crew members to sea on more than 240 sea ships, including "Treasure Ship No. 63, the largest is forty-four feet long, 18 meters wide, and the middle one is thirty-seven meters long and fifteen meters wide."
The largest ship is 138 meters long, 56 meters wide, with a deck area comparable to a football field and tens of thousands of tons of displacement, like a modern aircraft carrier.
In fact, Zheng He's "treasure ship" was not so large, and this historical record was copied directly from the novel notes due to the lack of relevant information at that time, and the people who edited the history book obviously exaggerated the facts.
As a result, Western experts began to make a big fuss about the size of Zheng He's "treasure ship", believing that ancient Chinese shipbuilding was all bragging. Although Zheng He's "treasure ship" is not as large as recorded in the history books, it is not inferior to those ocean-going boats in Western countries.
Are the ships in Zheng He's fleet all small broken ships? The passage recorded in the history books is not credible, and three sentences in the eunuch's tomb have completely silenced the foreign experts who ridiculed China.
The owner of this eunuch tomb, named Hong Bao, also went to the West with Zheng He, and archaeologists found such a passage in his epitaph, "Yongle Era, the deputy envoy of the Inner Carrier Depot, was given the former name." As a deputy envoy, commanding a sergeant, riding the Dafu and the number of five thousand material giants. He made edicts to the various countries of the West and to the distant people. The last three sentences of it show that this "five-thousand-material giant ship" is the "treasure ship" that Zheng He went to the West in that year.
In ancient times, it was a capacity unit, and five thousand materials were equivalent to the current displacement of more than 2500 tons, which was equivalent to the displacement of the Beiyang Marine Division Zhiyuan hundreds of years later.
It is not only Zheng He who confirms the strength of the Daming Navy that went to the West, but also the Luliang Naval Battle with Japan in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the Daming Marine Division", "cannons and drums in unison, arrows and stones, firewood thrown indiscriminately, the sound of killing and shouting, and the mountains and seas shook together." Many warships, most of which were burned", 500 Japanese warships, almost completely annihilated.
The strong are self-strengthening, and the weak are weak.