Annex 4 – Evidence of Chinese Fleets visit to Africa – East Coast
1. Maps
- South Africa Coast – Kangnido
2. Chinese Records and Claims
- Mao Kun/ Wu Pei Chih (1422) show Chinese fleet proceeding south off East African coast.
- South Africa Coast – Wu pei chih (Directory of Ming Biography)
- Kerguelen – Wu pei chih – “Chinese fleet reached here!”
- 1996 Chinese publication claims to have documentation of a Chinese rounding of the Cape of Good Hope and reaching the Atlantic in 1420. This document is part of the collection of Prince Youssuf Kamal (Monumenta Cartographia Africae et Aegypti, Vol X, pt 4, 1409 sq)
Reference: Shen Fuwei, Cultural Flow Between China and the Outside World Throughout History, 1st edition, 1996, Beijing: Foreigh Language Press Pages 183 & 191.
(TH LOH)
3. Accounts of Contemporary European Historians and Explorers
- Father Monclaro, an early Portuguese missionary, reported the honey skinned ‘Bajuni’ people of Pate Island considering themselves descendants of Chinese seafarers and they presented the Emperor of China with a giraffe (1416)
- On the arrival of the Portuguese in East Africa – they found the Kings and Queens of Pemba dressed in fine Chinese silk, living in stone houses decorated with Chinese porcelain.
- Craftsmen from Pate also specialised in laquerwork – a craft unknown to medieval Africa
- The people of Pate also wove baskets using the same technique as that of Southern China
- When the Portuguese reached Lorenco Marques, Mozambique, they found a very learned culture, and a large number of maps and charts. They took over everything. And among other things, spread the dark Africa stories to keep others out. Accurate maps and information were rare. Highest profits if they stayed that way. – (Lloyd Ellsworth)
4. Accounts of Local People
- Lemba tribe of Zimbabwe’s oral tradition holds that their ancestors arrived by sea in search of gold – more research needed.
- Professor Robin Pingree tells how south of Mobasa is the small island known as “Wasini.” Apparently this in Swahili, means ‘people of the China tribe’. There are old Chinese tombs on Wasini, and he reports also coming across an item described as a small 500 year old stone coffin of Chinese origin (for a child) in Gedi, north of Mombasa – Robin Pingree
- Visitors to our website have commented on how Khoi-san people have particularly mongoloid features, as have certain peoples of the Xhosa nation, both of which peoples occupied the southern and eastern parts of South Africa when the Dutch first settled the Cape in the mid-1600s – David Slater
5. Linguistics
- Xai-Xai, the capital of Gaza in Mozambique could be translated to mean zhai zhi – villages/ stronghold with fence or perhaps a person’s name – to be verified (Shao Jia Hui)
- Chang Ane River facing Madagascar can be translated into Chinese to mean perpetual peace – to be verified (Shao Jia Hui)
- Words from the local Kenyan dialect (Kalenjin) also used in Fiji. People from Fiji speak of having come from Tanganyika. Also, Chinese pottery was often found in the ruins at Jeddah on the Kenyan coast. Could high-country slaves have been ship-wrecked in a Chinese vessel in the Fijian islands? (Keith Livingstone)
- The people of Pate Island off Kenya claim to be Chinese origin and call themselves “WoShangGa” people. (Wo (or Wa) = I / me (first person pronoun in putonghua, Minnan dialect and many other dialects) Shang = upper (Cantonese, Hakka, putonghua) Ga = home (Cantonese, Hakka, southern dialects)) They call themselves ShangGa people meaning they are from the north – Siu-Leung Lee, PhD
- Links between China and the Shona people of Zimbabwe? A Reader heard a learned Shona man speak on his travels to China, and he asserted that the Shona people’s ancestors were in fact the Chinese. He based his theory on linguistic and cultural similarities between the two: from memory he cited the word for ‘elephant’ – ‘nzou’ in Shona – as being an exact match phonetically. Great Zimbabwe, an enormous maze of stone ruins, is believed to be the medieval trading centre of Southern Africa. Chinese artefacts have been discovered here, and it has been claimed that gold mined in the area was traded for rice and other agricultural product. Suddenly and inexplicably, in about 1450, the empire collapsed and split into several tribes that moved north towards better agricultural land – a result of China closing its borders to trade several years earlier and abandoning its mining ‘colony’? (Michael Bailey)
6. Shipwrecks/ Chinese anchors and fishing gear
March 2006 – Chinese to excavate 600 year old ship in Kenya – please see following link for full article: http://www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news.php?articleid=37618
7. Chinese Porcelain and Ceramics
- Substantial early Ming blue and white length of East African coast (Philip Snow)
- Ming blue and white china found in tunnel in wall of mud hut at Great Zimbabwe
- On the arrival of the Portuguese in East Africa – they found the Kings and Queens of Pemba decorated their stone houses with Chinese porcelain.
- Transkei Wild Coast, South Africa – broken pieces of blue and white porcelain can often be found as can lovely glass beads (Linda Murray)
- Bassas da India (half-way between Mozambique and Madagascar). Readers have dived wrecks of unknown origin here, and have found Chinese porcelainware
- Chinese pottery was often found in the ruins at Jeddah on the Kenyan coast. Could high-country slaves have been ship-wrecked in a Portugese or Chinese vessel in the Fijian islands? (Keith Livingstone)
- A Reader who grew up near Durban, South Africa, found shards of ceramics (in earthworks for a new housing estate) which were similar to those in the history museum in Durban which are from the Ming Dynasty. The history museum in the centre of Durban has/had a number of references to the Ming Chinese trips including locations where ceramics had been found. (Ken Grubb)
8. Pre-Columbian Chinese Jade found in the wake of the Chinese Fleet
Further research needed
9. Artefacts, gems, votive offerings, coins and funerary urns
- Shimoni is a village about 40 miles south of Mombasa and in Swahili means ‘in the hole’. Here there are caves where slaves used to be held in transit. Just south is the small island called Wasini (Swahili for ‘people of the China tribe’). There are Chinese tombs on this island. (Prof Robin Pingree)
- A reader points out that, with regards to the shipwreck off the Transkei coast, South Africa mentioned in 1421, after certain storms in that area, cornelian beads wash up on the rocks. (Caroline Hunt)
- Links between China and the Shona people of Zimbabwe? A Reader heard a learned Shona man speak on his travels to China, and he asserted that the Shona people’s ancestors were in fact the Chinese. He based his theory on linguistic and cultural similarities between the two: from memory he cited the word for ‘elephant’ – ‘nzou’ in Shona – as being an exact match phonetically. Great Zimbabwe, an enormous maze of stone ruins, is believed to be the medieval trading centre of Southern Africa. Chinese artefacts have been discovered here, and it has been claimed that gold mined in the area was traded for rice and other agricultural product. Suddenly and inexplicably, in about 1450, the empire collapsed and split into several tribes that moved north towards better agricultural land – a result of China closing its borders to trade several years earlier and abandoning its mining ‘colony’? (Michael Bailey)
10. Stone: Buildings, Observation Platforms, Carved Markers and Roads
- Houses of the Kings and Queens of Pemba and Zanibar lived in stone houses
- ‘Great Zimbabawe’ round solar observation tower –
11. Mining Operations found by the Europeans when they reached the New World
Further research needed
12. Advanced Technologies found by first Europeans on their arrival
Further research needed
13. Plants found indigenous to another continent
- Guava that grows in the jungle in Mauritius is called “goivre de Chine” (Grace Chew)
- In Madagascar there is an abundance of lychee trees. Locals insist that these were transplanted from China by Zheng He’s fleets – Griff Lloyd
14. Animals found indigenous to another continent
- From Rhodesian Ridgebacks by Frank C. Lutman M.S. pages 11 and 12 (T.F.H.
Publications) “…The Hottentot Hunting Dog is considered to be extinct in Africa, but dogs with ridges are still found in Cambodia and on the island of Phu Quoc in the Gulf of Thailand. Both are believed to be descendants of the Hottentot Hunting Dog, transplanted along the thousand-year-old trade routes of seafaring merchants and slave traders. The Phu Quoc dog, by its island isolation, has retained its genetic identity and is considered to resemble exactly its ancestor, the Hottentot Hunting Dog…” – Nick Pawley - The Basenji dog of Central Africa resembles the Australian and Thai dingos, and it was long thought Polynesians brought them from the Malay Archipelago to Madagascar. However recent DNA analysis suggests basenjis are closely related to dogs of Japan and China.
15. Art
Further research needed
16. Chinese customs, games, clothes and legends
Further research needed
17. Armour, metal weapons, cannons and implements found
Further research needed
18. Diseases
Further research needed
19. DNA
- DNA Print Genomics DNA Test of Island People of Pate (Kenyan Coast) – Tony Frudakis PhD, CSO – Work in Progress
DNA Print Genomics DNA Test of Island People of Pate (Kenyan Coast) – Tony Frudakis PhD, CSO – Work in Progress
View map: The Cantino world map
