Word: zheng
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...reaching Mecca a personal goal, a secret motivation driving Zheng He onward? In his various writings, left on stone stelae scattered about his travels, Zheng He makes clear that imperial hubris was best left ashore: the success of these voyages depended on knowing his place between heaven and earth, on paying homage to the many gods worshiped by people along the way, starting with the constantly burning incense to Chinese sea goddess Tianfei. I jot down a note to myself: when the next typhoon approaches, light incense for Tianfei aboard my junk - and be friendly to any woman...
...Visiting Zheng He's Indonesian ports of call isn't exactly a scenic journey. There's beauty, not least in the spirit of people who will without fail return a smile with a bigger smile, but most of these places don't show up on postcards. The next leg on Sumatra is a prime example: between the dusty, trashy port town of Dumai and the city of Medan some 10 bumpy hours by car to the north, the eye catches on the bare-bones shacks with their thatched roofs and cleanly swept earthen yards, smarts through the smoke of fires...
...immaculate in their whites; by an overturned lumber truck, its wheels still spinning. And finally, having finished a bag of snakefruit bought on the Dumai docks, I reach Medan, a typically crowded and polluted Indonesian city in a region that was the Deli Sultanate when the lofty sails of Zheng He's fleets darkened these skies...
...Bangka, Chinese farmers have been growing pepper and other crops for generations. Zheng He's men passed this way, primarily to fight a Chinese pirate who had been terrorizing the strait from a Palembang stronghold. And though there were already Chinese settlements there, as well as in towns such as Tuban in Java, the Chinese on Bangka were mainly drawn by - or imported for - work as tin miners in later centuries...
...Later, on the island of Madura, a short ferry ride from Surabaya - where Zheng He would have anchored his boats during his visits - I meet Ma'ruf. At 27, married at 15 to a 13-year-old girl, he still has a boyish face and a loose-limbed manner. He was born and raised on Madura but, unemployed, unmoved by the prospect of spending his life in the tobacco fields, he left for Sampit in Borneo several years ago and found work as a driver. Last February, long simmering tensions between the Madurese and the native Dayaks erupted. The Dayaks...