On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had
ever seen sailed from its base in China. The ships,
huge junks nearly five hundred feet long and built
from the finest teak, were under the command of
Emperor Zhu Di’s loyal eunuch admirals.
When they returned in October 1423, the emperor
had fallen, leaving China in political and economic
chaos.
Lost in China’s long, self-imposed isolation that
followed was the knowledge that Chinese ships had
reached America seventy years before Columbus and circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan.
Also concealed were how the Chinese colonized America
before the Europeans and transplanted to America,
Australia, New Zealand and South America the
principal economic crops that have fed and clothed
the world.