Word: zheng
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...home, I find an obscure monograph on the history of Cochin that provides more clues to the tiles. The author suggests they were presented to the Cochin Raja by the Chinese traders who were accompanied by Ma Huan, the treasure ship's chronicler, and an unnamed ambassador (probably Zheng He). The tiles, he claims, were meant for the Raja's palace, but some clever Jewish merchants spread the rumor that Chinese use cow's blood to make porcelain and the King, a devout Hindu, had to give them up - to the Jewish merchants...
...Varrier takes me to Silk Street, which was the Chinese quarter in Zheng He's day. But he warns me against getting my hopes too high: "There's nothing Chinese about it now." He's right. Silk Street is a narrow lane, not far from the beach, and none of the bungalows shows signs of antiquity. Where the Chinese once built a fortified warehouse and quarters for high-ranking traders - including, presumably, the admiral - now stands an Islamic school. Zheng He, a Muslim, might have approved. Next, we make our way to the center of town, the site...
...praise Buddha, Shiva and Allah in equal measure. According to the tributes, alms to each deity - 1,000 pieces of gold, 5,000 of silver, rolls of embroidered silk and taffeta, gold vases and scented oil - were offered in scrupulously identical lots. The offerings and the stela, erected by Zheng He on his third trip to the island, were failed bids at diplomacy. When his efforts were frustrated by the fractious locals, too busy fighting each other to pay adequate obeisance to the admiral, he invaded and captured one of their warrior leaders. Today religious and ethnic conflict rage...
...When a British engineer uncovered the stone in 1911 in the southern port of Galle, the 12-cm-thick slab, which was being used as a drain cover, caused a wave of excitement in the archeological world. Here was solid proof of Zheng He's odysseys. Today, the shoulder-high stone lies all but forgotten in a corner of the National Museum in Colombo. In Galle, a replica of the tablet - the town's sole record of Zheng He's passing - sits in the National Maritime Museum alongside pieces of the wrecked ships of later Dutch and Portuguese visitors. Although...
Buddha may still be weeping for this troubled land: certainly foreigners don't stay long in Galle anymore. The colonial mansions, the storehouses, the fort walls that jut south into the Indian Ocean echo more with the ghosts of visitors past. And like Zheng He, all trace of them, and of the hopes and ambitions they brought with them, is growing faint...