Word: zheng
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...There is no Zheng He parallel in today's China. But perhaps that's a positive sign. Instead of one imperial hero, thousands of ordinary people are doing their part to open the nation to the world. Back in Shanghai, the 2,000 workers on Lansheng's assembly line overseen by manager Gong are molding, stitching and boxing the thousands of shoes, which will then be loaded into the 12-m containers that accumulate at Shanghai's Waigaoqiao port. There, the big shipping lines - American President, Mitsui OSK, Mediterranean Shipping - stack them up and move them out to the world...
...ports that launched Zheng He's fleets, they are long gone, destroyed by five centuries of tumult and neglect. But there are still treasure boats of a sort that ply the Liu Creek, where the armada once assembled. Fan Ping owns one of them, the Sutai Yuyou 503, a small steel ship that doubles as her family's home. It's just 10 m long; the engine a mere 20 h.p. But the 49-year-old matriarch uses the modest craft to ply the waterways for riches. She finds oil spills, sucks them up with a powerful hose and resells...
Unfortunately, over the centuries many people have. Conquered by Vietnamese invaders, plundered by French colonists and bombed by U.S. warplanes, My Son is now abandoned, one of the few vestiges of an empire all but forgotten. When Zheng He's ships first called on Champa, the powerful Hindu kingdom had dominated central Vietnam for more than 1,000 years. The haven described by the fleet's Chinese chronicler Ma Huan was the rough port town of Qui Nhon, where sarong-wearing, wiry-haired Cham ivory merchants and slave traders plied their wares. Yet in 1471, less than 70 years later...
...have exhausted their film and are herded onto their air-conditioned buses, they are driven to Cochin's second most famous landmark: the synagogue, set amid the blue-shuttered pepper warehouses in the neighborhood known as Jew Town. There, on the synagogue's floor, may be another clue to Zheng He's visits: Guangzhou-made porcelain tiles, several centuries old. The synagogue is the legacy of a Jewish presence in Kerala dating back to A.D. 70. But it's not much to look at, just an ordinary house on an ordinary street. Built in 1568, it now caters...
...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...