Word: zheng
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...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...
...center of the world now seems to lie on the remotest margins. It's hard to believe that this torpid, sand-colored town, with its bored Indian shopkeepers sitting outside foodstuff-and-luxuries stalls and camels grazing outside the (largely empty) Hilton Hotel, was once the Dhofar that Zheng He's ships (though not, it seems, the admiral himself) sought out, in 1432 on their seventh voyage. The Salalah Holiday Inn slumbers near the spot where old Chinese coins were once discovered. The classified section of the Oman Daily Observer reports that someone named Zou Shichui has lost a Chinese...