The United States of Penglai: on How China Conquered the World

By Lewis Bakkero

The story of the greatest Chinese sailor of all times: Zheng He, the great admiral.
The forge of a myth from his early years in rural Kunyang until he became one of the most powerful men on Earth.
In his long journey, adverse circumstances forced Zheng He to make a decision between family and personal happiness and the chase of the sacred mountain of Penglai. What he did not know is that these two apparently contradictory goals would be closely related.
Castration, loss of beloved ones, new encounters, and life in the Ming Forbidden City, palace intrigues, friendship, love, assassination, war, sailing adventures, and unexpected acquaintances accompany the works of this exceptional character.
A unique eunuch searching for a mythical land of gods and never ending riches. Zheng He fought against all odds to make his dreams come true; he was very well aware that success could mean the onset of China’s primacy in the world order from the 15th century onwards.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lewis Bakkero
• Release date: Apr 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310326165

Lewis Bakkero

Dr. Bakkero holds a M.Sc. in Pharmacology and Human Therapeutics, a M.Sc. in Computer Science, a Ph.D. in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Medicine and Surgery from the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain, EU) alma mater of the Medicine Nobel laureates Prof. Ramon y Cajal and Prof. Severo Ochoa. After graduating he has been full time researcher and lecturer in several industrial and academic research institutions.

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All rights reserved. Copyright 2015 Lewis Bakkero . Cover by Martha Branch.

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To my beloved family.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: 1371

Chapter 2: War

Chapter 3: Eunuch Service

Chapter 4: Go Get Me the World

Chapter 5: Home Sweet Home

Chapter 6: Discoveries

Chapter 7: The Quest Continues

Chapter 8: Back to Penglai

Prologue

It was a warm early autumn day in a small country-side high school in Massachusetts. The sun of the early morning blinded people and warmed their faces as they got ready for the day. An almost constant procession of yellow buses were arriving to the big complex of buildings, forming what from the distance looked like a very long yellow river of shiny metal.

The high school was surrounded by a couple of pine tree woods where the school teams usually trained when it was warm and dry before classes got started. The main entrance to the high school, right after the immense parking area for buses, was usually very crowded with students playing or talking laying on the yellowish green grass.

The first bell of the day rang and the latest students rushed inside the buildings finding their ways to their own classrooms. Punctuality was one of the most observed behaviours of that high school and no one wanted to get a detention slip and spend the early evening confined in a classroom doing homework.

The 10th grade History class got started, a circumspect teacher recited the marks students had obtained in a recent exam on the early history of Massachusetts.

‘All right then, the first question was about the origins of the name Massachusetts. Most of you got it right and remembered the name comes from the native people of this land, the Wampanoag, name meaning 'by the range of hills'. Well done guys!’

‘You have nailed pretty much everything that had to do with the colonial period and all that came after independence for our big country; that is good too. I am not so satisfied about all the answers for questions on the pre-colonial period, though. How come is this tougher to get?’

‘Well, perhaps is just because that part of our history is not actually ours, but it belongs to our colonisers’, one of the top students in the class said in a shy tone. The teacher turned around and wrote it on the whiteboard while whistles sounded and paper balls were headed towards the student.

‘Please guys, you can all contribute with your answers and there is no wrong or right, we just need to find out why is this being a bit more difficult to grasp’. He asked one of the absent-minded cheerleaders what was her take at the lower performance in this type of questions.

‘Uuhhmmmm, I do not really know. It is not that I analyse that a lot, you know’. Unanimous laughter followed, but the teacher was not in the mood to laugh.

‘OK miss, but this is a great time to give it a go and get your gut feeling’.

‘All right then, in that case I believe it is just because it is a very long period of time, crowded with names and dates and battles against countries that are far away and some of them do not even exist anymore’.

After writing these ideas down, the teacher frowned and his forehead got wrinkled like an old poorly handled sheet of paper. He loved history and teaching was his dream job. Indeed, the years of the discoveries, that period that preceded colonisation, were his favourite part of the course. How could it be that he could not transmit his passion for this topic? What was he doing wrong?

The bell rang and the students left the room like a wave getting back to the ocean after sweeping a sandy beach. A little bit later, almost at lunch time, the teachers got together and discussed the main news and shared anecdotes from last night prime time TV shows.

After completing the class schedule for the day he got home, cooked a fast bowl of rice and ate it with his chopsticks. He thought it was a really dull lifestyle and envied those brave sailors and discoverers of 600 years ago. Those were good old times!

A good night of sleep leaves plenty of room for dreaming and gathering the strength one needs to get a new day started. Commuting to the High School was just a short drive from New Beijing down town. New Beijing Liang High School was located in the outskirts of the biggest city of the Republic of Massachusetts.

When he got to the High School on one of the buses the state provided for teachers, he felt enthusiastic and energetic. He got a plan to improve the learning process and outcomes of his students.

He looked at the semicircle formed by the yellow Ming symbols in the country's flag, each representing one of the Republics that won their independence from China after a bloody war. He looked at the red stripes. He sometimes wondered if red was the lucky colour (so they said at least) or it better represented the blood spilled to gain freedom for the people.

That grim feeling could not stop his smile from showing up: he had a plan. He could not stop walking around before class, telling about his plan to everyone who was willing to listen to it. His plan to make students love pre-colonisation history should work out perfectly! He would make them super enthusiastic about the period where China conquered the world! He knew how to do it!

Mr. Chen Yu entered his classroom ready to put his plan in practice. ‘All right! After some thought, I think I have the best approach for you to improve your knowledge of this crucial period of our history.’

‘Excuse me, sir’. One of the students said. ‘Can I make a question?’

‘Of course, Li Jun, go ahead!’

‘Well, I was just wondering if we are going to have to memorise everything, as it happens with most of our other classes. In that case all the effort falls on our side only’, Li Jun complained.

‘That is a very good point, xiao Li!’ Mr. Chen Yu had known every single one of the Li family. They had all attended the New Beijing Liang High School and he could certainly tell young (xiao) Jun was the brightest of all.

‘I know you are all very fond of the part of our national history that deals with how The United States of Penglai won their independence from China. We are all aware that our weakest point in all the scores is pre-colonisation, though’, Mr. Chen Yu explained to the class.

‘We are going to write a collaborative book on the matter. One that could be understood even by Europeans, who are not familiar with over sea colonisation’. The teacher thought that taking this wide opening view would really help his students to understand the Chinese colonisation process and what it meant to the world as we know it today.

‘But Mr. Chen Yu!’ replied one of the laziest students. ‘What if we do not remember all the details, dates and relevant facts?’

‘Do not worry about that, I am pretty sure all the needed knowledge is already in your heads and we just need a way to pull it out!’ was Mr. Chen Yu's answer. ‘In any event, I will be here to guide you and verify the correctness of the facts that we decide to write down in the book’.

‘Shall we then get started?’

A unanimous ‘yeeeeesssss’ could be heard across all the long corridors of the High School building, which were now empty except for the lockers. Chen Yu felt really motivated.

‘What year should we use as starting point, then?’ After some initial hesitation a few arms started to raise and a soft low tone voice said: ‘1371’? Then the girl who owned that voice lowered her head as if she was embarrassed to know some of the details.

Many other students raised their voices in deep disagreement. ‘What kind of year is that?’, ‘She is making that up; that is not a good way to get started!’

When the discussion got too heated to be constructive, Mr. Chen Yu intervened: ‘Liu Yang is 100% correct, let her proceed with her explanation, please.’

The shy little girl, who had deep brown bright eyes, long shiny dark hair arranged in a ponytail and a very white skin, gathered together all her strength and said:

‘Our Han calendar is different to that of other people in the world. Even when it has become the international standard and many nations now use it, some countries are still using their own calendars’, Liu Yang explained gaining more confidence as she spoke.

‘Mr Chen Yu told us to think like one of those Europeans; 1371 is the year we are referring to in their way to count time, which is based on their religion’.

‘How could she know that?’ The other students wondered. No one really knows much about the history of such that small and isolated corner of the planet called Europe; they were just a bunch of very similar barbarians who have been killing each other for millennia, keeping very little contact with the outside world over the last 500 years.

‘That is totally correct!’ said the teacher. ‘Let's take turns to try to make a continuous narrative of what is known from 1371 until our beloved Republic of Massachusetts is colonised by Chinese settlers a few hundred years ago. Shall we get started?’

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Chapter 1: 1371

It was a rainy and grey morning in the city of Kunyang in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan.

The Ma family gathered together to welcome their new son, Hajji Muhammad Shams. It had been a very long hard labour but both, mother and child, were safe in the small family house.

Now that the baby was bathed, it was time for his father to say the Islamic calls to prayer, adhan and the iqamah, in the ears of the child. This way that the very first words a baby hears would declare the greatness and majesty of Allah. The Ma family was proud of their Muslim ancestry. The Ma name did not come from its regular Chinese meaning (horse), but it was an abbreviation for Muslim (Mohamed).

They lived in the outskirts of the town. The father (known as Ma Hazhi) had built the house in the centre of a fenced yard, with bamboo stands, fruit trees and a small vegetable plot. He had to work very hard to make the house elevated off the ground. It was based on 14 pilings arranged in 2 rows of 7. The hardest part was the roof framing, however. For that he had to take whole bamboo stems! Woven bamboo strips were used in making the floor and walls.

This type of raised and well-ventilated construction provided good shelter from heat and humidity, as well as from wild animals, insects and flooding. Inside, the 60 square meters house was split in two by a central divider made of bamboo matting. On one side there was the living space with a fireplace for cooking, while the other side was used for sleeping. They kept domestic animals at the ground level. The Ma family was happy they had a poor, but neat and sufficient, house to call their own.

‘Now it is time for mum to get some good sleep and recover as soon as possible’ Ma Hazhi said proud of how beautiful his new-born son looked to him. Luckily, his wife's family was there to help! Driven by Confucius' philosophy, the relationships among family members followed a hierarchy of status according to generation, age, and gender. Elders held a higher position than younger members of the family and men were absolutely superior to women.

Ma Hazhi had worked as unskilled labourer on the fields of richer people and members of the Yunnan government. He had always wanted to become a soldier and trained hard when he has young, but his wife forced him out of warfare into a ‘more settled life that is compatible with fatherhood’. The Ma family sometimes felt a bit nostalgic of the good old times where they had had an elevated social status.

Indeed, Ma He's great-great-grandfather, Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, was a Persian-origin governor of the Yunnan province under Emperor Kublai Khan, founder of the previous dynasty that ruled China from 1279 to 1368 (the Yuan Dynasty).

The Yuan Dynasty was of Mongol origin and thus an ethnic minority in China. This was a good reason for the Yuan emperors to favour foreigners and minorities and give them very prominent positions at the government, exactly as happened to Ma He's ancestor.

Ma He's grandfather and his own dad inherited little to none of that status. They were both Hajis (Muslims who had visited Mecca for their pilgrimage), but things had changed when the Ming Dynasty started to rule the fate of the Empire.

‘Dad, can I play with the baby? Will my brother play 'war' with me soon?’ Ma Wenming asked eager to get to fight with wooden bows as ‘real warriors do’.

‘You'll have to wait just a little bit for that, my son’ Ma Hazhi replied while staring at the horizon without actually fixing his focus on anything. He was already thinking about all the extra work he had to assume now that his beloved wife would be unable to help for a couple of weeks. Ma He's mum would not have much time to recover from pregnancy: she needed to get back to work as soon as possible.

Life went by easily with little more incidents for the Ma family. They were a normal size family (2 sons and 4 daughters) and the small family house had very little floor left for anyone else to be able to lay down and sleep. Ma He was 10 years old then and most of his first memories date fondly back to that time.

‘Up! Get up! Now!’

Ma He woke up with a start. His mum rapped on the door again.

‘Up!’ she screeched. Ma He could hear her hurrying outside and then the sound of a dog barking. He rolled onto his back and tried to remember the dream he had been having. It had been a good one.

There had been a gold-made hill where trees had diamond fruits and flowers and people did not age. He had a funny feeling he'd had the same dream before.

His mum was back outside the door.

‘Are you up yet?’ she demanded.

‘Nearly,’ said Ma He.

‘Well, get a move on, I want you to look after the animals and water the trees outside!’

Ma He groaned.

‘What did you say?’ his mum snapped through the door.

‘Nothing, nothing . . . I am just coming’

Ma He had to continue working in order to contribute to sustain the economy of his family. One of the first tasks Ma He had to do was selling stuff from domestic animals (mainly meat) and fruits from the trees in their yard.

Most of the other kids in the neighbourhood did not attend school at all. ‘These are hard times and one needs to put first things first’, his dad used to hear on a daily basis. Ma Hazhi did not agree with that; his family had always understood that education was a key driver for success in life.

The school was just a bunch of kids of different ages that got together under the supervision of an adult playing the role of teacher (there was no formal training for that at the time). Yang Su was the first teacher Ma He ever had. He was very old, too old for working on the fields or going far away in long trading trips. Maybe that is why they chose him for teacher, but he liked to think it had something to do with his own training and life experience too.

Ma He really enjoyed school. He had real fun learning and repeating the symbols of the Mongol and Chinese languages; he could understand and speak with no problem, but reading and writing were not at all that easy for him. He struggled to differentiate some of the symbols and it took him ages to write one of them in a way Yang Su could agree was a ‘nicely done one’. It was especially harder for him since his family spoke a local dialect derived from their original Arabic language with huge Chinese and Mongolian influences. Borders moved a lot at the time and there was a huge cultural, technical, scientific and social intermixing between neighbouring countries.

School was over in the early evening but xiao Ma's duties were not over yet. An important task for the Ma family was supplying the little house with fresh water for the family and animals to drink and also for watering the fruit trees and vegetable pots in their yard. After all, these were a major source of income for their family. The work Ma Hazhi did depend very much on the vagaries of noble families and sometimes they did not pay him in time.

The fountain was at the periphery of the city surrounded by ancient and majestic trees of heaven (ailanthus). These trees were tall reaching up to 30m with a diameter of about 1m. The bark was smooth and light grey and the leaves were long dark green, departing in large number from the stem.

All parts of the plant had a distinguishing strong odour that was often likened to peanuts, cashews or rotting cashews. The roots, leaves and bark of the tree were a key ingredient in many recipes of the traditional medicine, dating thousands of years back to the Tang dynasty and even before the Erya, the oldest Chinese dictionary, was compiled. Its usages included itches, mental illness, haemorrhages and infections. Ma He knew it because his grandma often used bark infusion to keep his childish diarrhoeas at bay, as an astringent. In addition to its medical properties, the tree was also home for the silk moth. So in that sense these trees were another valued and respected member of the community.

A very crowded market street led to the ailanthus wood and the fountain. The heads of the people resembled a sea that waved slowly, hitting every single corner of every small shop on their way. The wind blew between the branches full of leaves and the sun of the early evening cast a long shadow on the market street. Many sellers went to the woods to rest in the shade or have a nap in the warm days; they also loaded water for their small businesses. The queue to get water was usually very crowded.

The Ma family went there when the market opening hours were almost gone, so they did not have to wait much.

Ma He could never forget those evenings coming back with water from the fountains, the crowd dispersing and getting back home, the long shadows projected by the evening sun. One of the most vivid smells was that of the colourful spices from all over the world and the blood of the recently killed animals. Their blood run downhill sparking in the evening sun in the market street. It was right there that Ma He learned about all the tricks people used while bargaining the prices of different goods from busy conversations.

‘Hey kids! I could take that home for you for a very low price!’ said one of the men in the fountain queue as he saw the kids coming closer. His aspect was a bit contradictory: long bearded, dressed in dirty rags, with a nauseous smell of dried perspiration and unwashed clothes for several full moons, but with gentleman manners and a quick tongue, one that seemed capable of selling sand in the middle of the dessert.

‘I'm afraid we cannot afford paying anyone sir’ replied one of Ma He's sisters, contravening everything her mother had always told her about addressing strangers, specially ‘this kind of men’.

‘All that can be arranged. I am willing not to be paid, but that would require some other favours, of course, if you know what I mean.’ He took Ma He's sister by the wrist and pulled her against his body.

The young little girl panicked; her mind was running too fast with thoughts of rapes that had happened to other young girls in the woods near the fountain in the past.

Her mind might be running fast, but her body was frozen. She did not dare to move a single inch. She could feel his dirty and strong hand under the blouse of her ruqun (the wrap around skirt of the ruqun left little room for indiscreet unsolicited hands).

Ma He felt his heart pumping rapidly, a strong pressure making the temple of his head close to exploding and his eyes go blurry. The next thing he realised is he was up on the shoulders of the stranger trying to introduce his finger into one of the two eyes of the man. This is one of the first learnings his brother, Ma Wenming had taught him in their fighting plays: one single finger can kill a man when applied to the right part of the enemy's body.

Ma He was way taller than most kids of his age and even slightly taller than most adults; he was 5.8 feet (1.76 m) and really skinny, but he had very strong muscles: he trained daily by carrying goods and water. This was still not enough for succeeding in his attack to a grown up man and Ma He ended up immobilised with his head under the foot of the man. Ma He's sisters started to run and screamed for help! Most people turned a blind eye at the scene.

Ma Wenming was in the area playing chess with some co-workers after work and recognised the voice of his daughters in the distance. He run closer and saw the man hitting very hard at Ma He.

‘Hey, coward! Why don't you pick on someone your own size?’

‘It seems there is somebody else looking to get kicked in the ass! Why don't you mind your own businesses, piece of shit?’

Ma Wenming hit the man hard with his bow and the man felt on his knees; the presence of Ma Wenming's colleagues intimidated the other men, who run into the woods. The two brothers hugged and Ma He, passed the shot of extra adrenaline, started to feel the pain of all the punches he had received.

Other ladies in the queue approached them with relief after and started to chat about similar episodes going on with a less happy ending; more than 10 ladies had suffered similar attacks in the last two months and the men of the area had organised a watch group, but that had not reduced crime significantly.

After a short wait in the queue, the conversation was over and their hands got into the cold flow of water trying to hold the buckets stable under the strong push of the water.

‘xiao Ma, xiao Ma!’ exclaimed one of his sisters as they left the fountain after loading all the buckets.

‘It seems your 2 buckets are leaky! Look at the trace you are leaving on the ground behind you! If they keep leaking like that, they will be empty by the time we get home! Not sure we have money to buy a new set of buckets, though.’

‘No worries, I will fix them myself!’ he said with huge confidence and enthusiasm.

Ma He run rapidly back to their house and took the needed tools to fix the old wooden buckets.

‘Xiao Ma, don't!!’ muttered her sister; it was already too late, all she could see now is Ma He's head bouncing up and down in the crowd. It was too late and too noisy for him to be able to hear her voice.

The buckets were not a single piece of metal, those were too expensive for their budget. Instead, the buckets consisted on vertical wooden tables hold together by a circular belt of metal that reduced the space for water to leak outs between the tables. After more than 30 minutes of slamming the wooden tables of the buckets, he tried filling them again.

‘Yeesssssss, you see? I knew I could fix them!’ he exclaimed.

Ma He and his sisters resumed the journey home with the ‘magic fluid’ (as his dad used to call it). It was just the first of a series of trips to the fountains. 5 more were needed to get the daily quantity they needed.

Although they were a bit scared by the recent rapes, the proximity of Ma Wenming and the brave character of Ma He made them feel a bit safer. Also, their Muslim origins helped them to establish good relationships with many of the tradesmen, who were themselves from Persian or Arabic origin.

Some of these men became so close that they were often invited home for dinner. They used to talk about the marvels of Mecca and the beauty of the pyramids of Egypt. Many of these men were living there only temporarily: they stayed for long enough to sell and buy goods before heading off back home again. Those trips could last for years and they were lonely and willing to talk.

Ma He's dad used to treat them with the utmost hospitality and some of them were often invited home for dinner, especially during the Holy month of Ramadan.

Ma He really enjoyed listening to their stories, the type of lives they lived and getting to know more about far and exotic places, some of which were an important part of the Muslim past of the Ma family.

Ma He could picture himself travelling the world with the saddlebags on the mules crowded with goods to be traded. He'd love to go to do business to Mecca, so that he could also take part in sacred ritual of the tawaf to revere the black stone that is kept within the Kaaba.

‘Dad, why is it that we walk around the Kaaba during hajj (pilgrimage)?’

‘I think we are lucky to have our guest tonight. Mr. Wang Gui here knows a lot about Islam and I will personally be delighted to hear an educated response from someone like him’ said Ma He's dad trying to honour his guest.

Most men really enjoyed explaining basic precepts of Islam to young boys, they felt it was part of their religious duties, but they also had a huge pleasure in the astonished faces of the young ones when they introduced them to some of the stories.

‘Well, I am flattered to have this unique opportunity, thanks a lot Mr. Ma Hazhi!!

‘This black stone is about five feet tall and we believe the first human being, Adam, originally received the black stone from God and used it as part of an altar for worship. Then, the stone was lost for a large number of years and remained hidden on a mountain. It wasn't until many years later that the archangel Gabriel brought it to Abraham for him to use in another altar: the altar where Allah tested Abraham's faith by calling him to sacrifice his son Ishmael’.

‘Why is it black Mr. Wang Gui?’ exclaimed Ma He under the harsh look of his dad, who did not say anything, aimed at making Ma He’s inquisitorial character hold his horses until their guest had finished his story. Glances are often much more powerful than any words and Ma He got the message in the blink of an eye.

‘Ehm, well its black colour comes from it having absorbed people’s sins’

‘The black stone symbolises Allah’s right hand. This way, we believe that touching or pointing to it relights the covenant between Allah and man, by which Allah is our lord and we are His servants.’

It seemed Mr. Wang Gui's response was finished. Ma He was bouncing up and down on his seat, really excited with curiosity and real need to know more; the way boys his age usually are. That time he managed to prevent his mouth from opening before their guest was done, but he looked eagerly at both the guest and his dad, as if he was asking for their permission to talk’.

‘Go ahead Ma He, it seems that if you do not let it out it will chase you all night long’ said Ma Hazhi laughing at his son’s willingness.

‘Well, that still does not solve the question of why do we have to walk around the Kaaba containing the stone’ said Ma He determined to get an answer. His dad's eyes were nearly burning of rage about the disrespectful way Ma He had chosen to phrase the sentence.

Lucky for him that Mr. Wang Gui started to laugh at the boy's spontaneity and swift mind.

‘That is absolutely right, my boy. As you'll see sometimes old people start talking and deviate and miss the point. Your question is fair enough’.

‘The Kaaba is believed to be a replica of the house of Allah in the seventh heaven. This way when we circle around, we are duplicating the movements of the angels continuously circling around the throne of Allah.’

‘In case you are wondering, my curious little friend, the stone is just a mark to indicate the beginning and end points of pilgrims' circumambulations during tawaf. One is required to either kiss the stone or salute it from afar on each of the seven circumambulations.’

Ma Hazhi could see that the response was not enough for Ma He and rapidly changed the subject of the conversation to a more mundane one, in this case the health of distant relatives his father was still fond of and lived in what they knew as the Middle West (Arabia and the Persian Gulf), to differentiate from the far West (Europe).

Ma He kept fond memories of his visits to the Grand Mosque on every Friday. During the later years of the Qing Dynasty some young Chinese Muslim students went to Egypt to study in Al-Azhar University in Cairo and about a hundred people went on a pilgrimage to Mecca. They wanted to bring some of the marvels they had seen on their trip back home, so they had to content themselves with a very good replica of the magnificent mosques they had seen.

It was very hard for Ma He to imagine anything bigger or better than one of those poor replicas. He remembered walking by the hand of his father together with his brother, the shiny white marble floor and gold capitals of the columns surrounding the inner court yard, with 4 tall minarets on each corner of the rectangular building.

Ma He especially liked the carpet in the main prayer hall, which was considered to be the one of the world's largest carpets at the time. Gold fibres were interwoven with the finest silk to create geometric forms that mirrored the huge arches that sustained the white marble ceilings over the gold friezes. It definitely looked huge and majestic to his young eyes. After leaving the shoes or sandals on the shoe shelf at the entry of the prayer hall and cleaning his feet properly, it was very comforting to feel the soft and delicate touch of the carpet