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  Serving as an official translator, Ma Huan travelled on three of Cheng Ho's voyages ― the fourth (1413-1415), sixth (1421-1423), and seventh (1431-1433).  In a 'Notice' or 'Foreword' written in 1416, after his first journey with the Ming fleet, he declared:        "I followed the [mission] wherever it went, over vast expanses of huge waves for I do not know how many millions of li ; I saw [these countries] with my own eyes and I walked [through them] in person. So I collected [notes about] the appearance ['ugliness or handsomeness'] of the people in each country, [and] about the variations ['dissimilarity or similarity'] of the local customs, also [about] the differences in the natural products, and about the boundary-limits. I arranged [my notes] in order so as to make a book, which I have entitled The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores  [ Ying-yai Sheng-lan ]." In fact, it is doubtful that Ma personally visited every one of the tw...

  Eunuch admiral Cheng Ho was a tall, imposing figure, and so was his fleet. In his own words, he "commanded several tens of thousand government soldiers and more than a hundred oceangoing vessels" in a series of seven voyages "to the barbarians". Even when subdivided into smaller flotillas to reach separate destinations, his big "treasure ships" made an impressive entrance. A contemporary history of the Rasulid Sultanate in Yemen records one such visit:         "Arrival of Dragon-ships in the protected harbour city [of Aden] and with them messengers of the ruler of China with brilliant gifts for his Majesty, the Sultan al-Mik al-Nasir in the month of l'Hijja  in the year 821 [January 1419]." The sense of awe created by Chinese military might was an important part of these missions, underpinning its economic objective. The Emperor of China sought a monopoly over international trade. He wanted a direct exchange of valuable goods between rulers...

Born in 1311, Wang was 19 years old when he set out from the port of Quanzhou, on the first of two long voyages to the Eastern and Western Seas. He simply says, "I attached to a boat when I was young to go for sea-travel". Between 1330 and 1334, and again between 1337 and 1339, he accompanied merchants on a commercial junk bound for distant points of trade. Wang does not seem to have been a businessman himself. Instead he gathered information from more than a hundred different places and published his account of them as Tao-yi chih-lio , or 'Brief Records of Island Barbarians' in 1349. His notes suggest he was as much interested in the nature and customs of the populations he visited as he was in the commercial details of what goods were traded and how much tax was demanded by local rulers. He may also have been an educated man. He took great care to organise his writing according to a particular format. "The division between Eastern Ocean and Western Ocean...app...

  Chu Ssu-pen (1273-1337) was a Chinese map-maker during the period of the Yuan Dynasty. In the decade between 1311 and 1320 he compiled a large roll-map of China and its surrounding regions according to the information available to him at the time. Chu wrote in his preface that among the sources he consulted was the Yu Chi Ti , or Map of the Tracks of Yu , dated 1137. His choice was an important one because it established him in a more accurate tradition of Chinese map-making, based on a grid of squares to indicate distance. The scale adopted by this map was one side of each square equalling 100 li , approximately 33 miles. A major concern for Chu was that the information from which his own map was to be drawn was reliable. It is uncertain how far the coverage of his new map actually extended. The original manuscript has since been lost, although his preface has survived. What is clear is that Chu expressed personal reservations about representing the regions beyond the Empir...

  Chau Ju-kua was Inspector of Foreign Trade at the Chinese port of Ts'uan-chou. In about 1226 he wrote a book called Chu-fan-chih , which translates to 'Description of Barbarous Peoples' or 'Records of Foreign Nations'.  The contents of his book are neatly summarised in a contemporary catalogue entry:        " Chu-fan-chih , the Inspector of Foreign Trade, Chau Ju-kua, records (in this book) the several foreign countries and the merchandize which come from them".                              (Ch'en Chen-sun, 'Descriptive Catalogue' of family library, ca. 1234-1237) It is evident from this short review that Chau had two advantages for producing a useful text. Because of his official role at the port, he had access to reliable data on the type of goods imported. In addition he had the opportunity for face to face communication with foreign merchants and ship-captains to supplement the...