China In Africa + Remembering Zheng He's (Cheng Ho's) Epic 15th Century Voyages

China's links with Africa go back five centuries at least, with huge gaps in time in-between, of course. It is a history with many awe-inspiring and charming anecdotes (and not a whiff of colonization or slave trading) -- including reciprocal visits by Kenyans, so long ago (nobody tells us, though, whether they ever returned to our dear motherland). It tells of the export to China, by Chinese voyagers themselves, of giraffes and, you got it, celestial horses (zebras), which ordinary Chinese, royalty and glitterati simply couldn't get over. We hear of the gift, to a Malindi prince, of a 'dwarf' bride from some Chinese province. Truth of strangers bearing gifts, and only gifts, then. Wonder how much she cried when the last ship in the last armada left Malindi port. Wonder what it took to soothe her, and what became of her, there in Malindi. Wonder what language dey spake ober dere inde streets of Beijing, and if there was ever a hint of sheng, a gift of it, there, already.

What prompted me to write this piece, belatedly (I admit), is a re-reading of a March 2010 piece in Time magazine about China's seeming encroachment into Africa, some people else's imagined spheres of influence; including its not-too-unflattering allusion to the exploits of that great commander and voyager, Zheng He (Cheng Ho has a better ring, and read, though).

READ More on China in Africa Here

That Time piece also reminded me profoundly of Joseph Needham -- whom I first encountered a decade or so ago off the shelves of the Main Library (JKML) at the University of Nairobi (UoN) -- who spent decades writing wonderful scientific-historical narratives about China.

In there somewhere in all that amazingly voluminous text is also to be found, if I remember correctly (I have rather 'copious' soft notes on this somewhere, which I cannot get to just now), his own account of Admiral Zheng He's (Cheng Ho's) epic voyages, including a visit to what was to become Kenya -- in my father's time and, so, mine -- so long after he'd gone. In there, yes, as an integral part of his own epic, meticulously researched, account of China's deep-rooted and multi-faceted contribution (little acknowledged in the West) to important aspects modern science and technology.

One of the great mysteries of history, I think, was China's dramatic withdrawal from all that sea-faring, all that going, some fifty years or so before the Portuguese, spearheaded by Vasco DaGama, rounded the South African cape and sailed up the Eastern African coast. World history would very likely have turned out very differently from what it became, had the Portuguese met and provoked the Chinese armada, in its full swing off East African; for they (the Portuguese) would most likely have been blown out of the water. But 'fate' would not have it thus, and colonial (and world) history unfolded as we know it did -- all the way to the Indian sub-continent, and Hong Kong, and Macau.

Edward L. Dreyer (who reassures my recollection of Needham's account of Cheng Ho's exploits) might not agree with this reverse-history of mine -- OK, hypothesis -- which I have espoused for a few years. I am just finding out via a cursory reading of his Roads Not Taken chapter, just now accessed for the first time, as I get set to post this piece. I'm finding out that not everything was all that rosy; for there was a rot accumulating under the military might of the Ming Dynasty, even as Cheng Ho proudly carried the flag to distant waters. So be it, for now.

Read these excerpts, for a taste of what Needham had to say (do make time):
1. Science and Civilization in China. Vol I: Introductory Orientations
2. Science and Civilization in China. Vol IV: 3 Civil Engineering and Nautics
3.  Science and Civilization in China. Vol VII: 2: General Conclusions and Reflections

Before You Know It, a Century's Gone By

Before you know it, a century's gone by. Then another. Then all you can talk of is a distant place (this here) and another Time altogether, with which you are only in the slightest connected. Of people who, though quite who we are, we're quite, quite unlike. And so Time flies. In the main, though the emotions of roots and certainties of history remain, we're soon not really connected to any person we truly and personally know there, in the bygone Time.