History Express: The Great Explorer Cheng Ho

Columbus, de Gama and Magellan are all familiar and loud-sounding names to us from the western Great Age of Exploration (1400-1550). Columbus is well known as the discoverer of America; de Gama is the first European to sail to India; and Magellan is believed to have completed the first circumnavigation of the globe. However, such common-sense knowledge has met a serious and subversive challenge with the rediscovery of the great Chinese navigator and explorer Cheng Ho (1371-1435). Over a span of twenty-eight years from 1405 to 1433, he directed seven large-scale voyages to the western Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, having left his mark in over thirty countries in Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia and East Africa.