The Treasure Fleet’s first important destination was Calicut, on India’s southwestern coast. Chinese explorers had reached this city overland eight centuries before, but the Treasure Fleet’s arrival prompted an outpouring of generosity from Calicut’s ruler, who conferred lavish gifts in the form of sashes made of finely spun gold, pearls, and precious stones.
While in Calicut, the men of the Treasure Fleet became aware of an unusual legend in which characters named Moses and Aaron figured prominently, along with a golden calf. The mysterious legend was recorded by the Treasure Fleet’s official chronicler, Ma Huan, who performed approximately the same function for Cheng Ho as Antonio Pigafetta did for Magellan. He wrote of a “holy man named Mouxie [Moses], who established a religious cult; the people knew that he was a true [man of] heaven, and all revered and followed him.” As it happened, the holy man had a younger brother with “depraved ideas.” According to the story, he made a “gold calf and said, ‘This is the holy lord; everyone who worships it will have his expectation fulfilled.’ He taught the people to listen to his bidding and to adore the gold ox, saying, ‘It always excretes gold.’ The people got the gold, and their hearts rejoiced; and they forgot the way of Heaven.” Later, when Mouxie returned, “He saw the multitude, misled by his younger brother . . . corrupting the holy way; thereupon he destroyed the ox and wished to punish his younger brother; [and] his younger brother mounted a large elephant and vanished.” This was, of course, a modified version of the biblical account of Moses and Aaron, but the Chinese did not understand its true origins. They assumed it came from India because that was where they first heard it.
Cheng Ho returned from the Treasure Fleet’s first voyage as a national hero, and he was soon making plans for future voyages. He stayed in China for the second voyage, and returned to sea for the third, commanding a fleet of forty-eight ships and thirty thousand men. With an eye to the future, they established trading posts and warehouses wherever they went. So it went for three more voyages, each lasting approximately two years as the Treasure Fleet established and maintained the first international maritime trading network. The Treasure Fleet explored the African coast all the way south to Mozambique, the Persian Gulf, and many other points throughout Southeast Asia and India. The lure and romance of ocean exploration spread throughout China. “We have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising sky-high,” Cheng Ho wrote, “and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds, day and night continued their course like that of a star, traversing the savage waves as if treading a public thoroughfare.”
In 1424, the emperor, Zhu Di, died. His funeral was as excessive as his life, involving ten thousand mourners who watched as he was buried along with sixteen of his concubines. The unfortunate women had been hanged or ordered to take their own lives in preparation for the event. Their tomb was surrounded by a mile-long line of stone carvings representing soldiers, beasts, and officials. His son, Zhu Gaozhi, canceled all future voyages for the Treasure Fleet. Like other rulers during the Ming dynasty, Zhu Gaozhi was caught between followers of the Confucian traditions, who urged him to look inward and disdain traffic with foreigners, and the eunuchs, who encouraged international trade and grew rich off the proceeds. Zhu Gaozhi allied himself with the Confucians, and the admiral Cheng Ho, once the most powerful man in China next to the emperor, was reassigned to Nanking. The great shipyards, where thirty thousand men once toiled, fell silent as shipbuilding ceased.
That would have been the end of the Treasure Fleet, had Zhu Gaozhi lived. But he died a few years later, and his twenty-six-year-old son—Zhu Di’s grandson—turned to the palace eunuchs, who quickly restored the Treasure Fleet to its former glory. In 1431, on its seventh voyage, the fleet consisted of 300 ships and 27,500 men. Cheng Ho was charged with restoring peaceful relations between China and the kingdoms of Malacca and Siam. After completing the mission, part of the fleet sailed on and probably reached northern Australia. This much has been strongly suggested by Chinese artifacts recovered in Australia and by the oral traditions of the Aborigines. The remarkable journey turned out to be the Treasure Fleet’s last adventure; Cheng Ho, who inspired the enterprise, died on the voyage home.
The emperor mothballed the Treasure Fleet, shut down the Nanking shipyards, and destroyed records documenting its accomplishments. Chinese science and technology, especially regarding exploration, fell into decline. By 1500, an imperial edict made it a capital offense for a ship with more than two masts to put to sea; in 1525, officials set about destroying the larger ships of the Treasure Fleet. China abandoned the huge transoceanic trading empire created by the Treasure Fleet and, guided by Confucian precepts, turned inward, never to explore the ocean again.
Cheng Ho’s voyages demonstrated that China was once the most powerful nation in the world, a seagoing empire that Spain or Portugal would have feared and envied, had they known of its reach. The reputation of the Treasure Fleet never made it to European shores. Portuguese and Spanish explorers sailed into the vacuum of power left by China. Like the Chinese, they came in search of wealth, but quite unlike them, they fiercely battled for territory, for commercial and political advantage over one another, and for religious conquest.
Driven by these imperatives, European progress into the regions formerly under the spell of Chinese commerce was swift. In 1498, Vasco da Gama and his men came across evidence of the vanished Chinese presence in East Africa: natives wearing green silk caps adorned with fringe. The inhabitants spoke of white ghosts wearing silk: a distant memory of the Treasure Fleet, which had visited these shores eighty years before. Now, in 1521, Magellan’s Armada de Molucca arrived in the Philippines, claiming vast territories renounced by China. Magellan, like other Europeans, had no direct knowledge of the Treasure Fleet, but he and his men kept stumbling across artifacts of the vanished Chinese empire: silk, porcelain, writing, and sophisticated weights and measures were everywhere in evidence.
The Chinese experiment in maritime diplomacy and trade lasted for a single generation, but the rapacious and daring Europeans were here to stay. By the time Magellan arrived in the Philippines, Chinese influence was rapidly waning, and even a modest fleet such as the Armada de Molucca could have a major impact on the region. The era of Chinese colonization had ended; the era of Spanish colonization was just beginning.
The sprawling Philippine archipelago did not exist on European maps, and neither Magellan nor his pilots knew what to make of their discovery. Magellan led his ships closer to the island of Samar, but within a mile or two of the shore, he found only unforgiving cliffs rising from the water, and nothing resembling a safe harbor. He changed course once more, heading for diminutive Suluan, where the armada dropped anchor for a few hours’ respite.
It was the fifth Sunday in Lent, with Easter fast approaching. Appropriately, Lent is dedicated to Lazarus, risen from the dead, and like him, the surviving crew members had overcome illness to regain their strength and persevere. Magellan decided to name the archipelago after Lazarus, but twenty-two years later, another European explorer, Ruy Lopez de Villalobos, reached these islands and later named them Las Islas Filipinas—the Philippines—after King Philip of Spain.
Magellan’s next landfall proved more satisfying than Samar. Homonhon Island did have a safe harbor, and Magellan, with tremendous relief, finally gave the order to drop anchor. He led his men ashore, to an oasis of dense rain forest, palm trees, and abundant water, where they erected two sheltering tents. At last they were free of the stench of the ships’ holds. Instead, their nostrils twitched with the mingled fragrances of palm trees, wet sand, and decaying vegetation. They slaughtered a sow they had brought from Guam and prepared a great feast for themselves. For a time, their bellies were full, and the long-suffering sailors content.