Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from stuff works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Today we are going to talk about Jung Hu and that has been requested by at least two listeners, Fara and Eric. Jungha led expeditionary voyages from China in the fifteenth century, and there are some people that claim that he made it to the America's and Australia, and that he circumnavigated the globe, and that he solved a long two problem, and that he found the city of Atlantis, basically, that he was some kind of godlike maritime super genius. The historical record does not support any of that, but none of that embellishment is necessary at all, because the whole story is extremely impressive already without any of those false things. Jungha's expeditions were huge, that the ships themselves were enormous, and they there were so many in the fleet that often the fleets population was bigger than the ports that it was visiting. Plus Jungha himself is a really interesting character. Also, he served as a palace eunuch in the Ming dynasty, so parents and teachers. It's explaining what a eunuch is is not something you really feel like doing today, and this is a good time to put this episode aside for a while. Jungha was born Maha and what is now Yunnan Province in southwestern China. He and his family were Muslims, and, based on his father and grandfather both taking the name Hajji, both likely made a pilgrimage to Mecca. At some point in thirteen eighty one, MAHA's father either died or was killed, and the same year, Maha, who at this point was about ten, was captured by the Ming army during its invasion of Yunon In thirteen eighty five, when he was roughly thirteen, Maha was castrated. It was common for the Ming army to castrate the young stuns of its captives, many of whom did not survive that process. It's not entirely clear why Maha wasn't castrated immediately when he was captured or why he was roughly three years later. Regardless, after this castration, Maha was sent to serve in the household of the fourth son of juyuang Jiang, the hung Wu emperor, as a palace eunuch Eunuchs had become established as part of the Chinese court all the way back to the Han dynasty, which was more than a thousand years before this point. However, the Whoo Emperor just didn't trust them. By being assigned to Judy, who was the emperor's son, Maha had a considerably bigger list of privileges, including more responsibilities and better access to education than he would have been serving elsewhere in the emperor's court. Even though he was still fairly young when he was castrated and probably hadn't entered and definitely would not have completed puberty, Maha wound up defying Chinese expectations of men who were castrated as children. Rather than remaining petite with a high voice and typically feminine mannerisms and interests, he grew to be quite tall and quite broad, with a voice described as quote loud as a huge bell, and he developed an in depth knowledge of warfare. He accompanied the Prince jud on multiple military expeditions. During these expeditions, Maha and Judy became friends, and it turned out that this friendship with the emperor's fourth son would serve Maha incredibly well in his later life. In thirteen two, the emperor's oldest son died. Typically, that son's eldest son, Julia n Win, would have then been named crown prince, but the hung Wu Emperor thought Ju d might be a more capable leader. This was an opinion that Judy himself also shared, so it's not surprising that after his father died and the throne passed to Julia and Win as normal, this power struggle uh played out and it turned into this outright civil war. Now this could be an entire podcast, and we're not going to get into the details because it's really outside the focus of what we're talking about today. But overwhelmingly, Judy over three his nephew and took the throne, something that he was able to do in part because of information he got from escaped court unis about the layout of the city and how it was defended. Once he was on the throne, Judy named himself the jung La Emperor, which means lasting Joy. Maja's position became immensely more powerful. The Young La Emperor renamed him as a gift, replacing his surname of Ma, which was a common surname among Chinese Muslims. With the more prestigious surname Jung. The new emperor also gave the eunuchs who had helped him in this rebellion far more power than previous emperors had been comfortable bestowing upon eunichs. This actually set up an ongoing power struggle between the Unichs and Confucian advisors at court, the latter of whom were far more conservative and generally opposed to outward expansion and exploration from China. In fourteen oh three, the Young La Emperor ordered the construction of the largest fleet of ships in China's history to undertake a huge trading expedition through the China Seas in the Indian Ocean, and its commander was to be jung Hu. This is the first time in Chinese history that a eunuch had been placed in such an important military role. We're gonna talk more about the fleet uh that Jungha commanded, but first we're gonna have a brief sponsor break. A common misperception about Chinese history is that the nation has for most of that history been extremely, almost obsessively isolationist, with the only real form of trade being the Silk Road. That is Dupu extremely simply false. While China has, at various points definitely taken a much more isolationist view of the world. It has also undertaken periods of exploration and trade over great distances throughout most of its history. This maritime tradition started with canoes and sailing rafts thousands of years ago. By two during the Sung dynasty, the emperor established China's first official permanent navy, and within a century the navy boasted about six hundred ships and fifty two thousand conscripted men, and from the twelfth to fifteen centuries, the nation continually refined its tools and methods for shipbuilding, naval warfare, and navigation. The Young La Emperor's treasure fleet simply would not have been possible without all these centuries of nautical experience. The treasure fleet was much much too big and too complex to basically be the product of a nation's first ever attempt at building a boat and helming an expedition across a long distance. By fourteen oh seven, China had either built or refit one thousand, six hundred eighty one ships for the treasure fleet Emperor Judy Has had ordered. This required a huge increase in China's lumber industry, with timber being farmed inland and floated down rivers to the coast. Craftsmen and laborers, along with their families were transferred to the coast as well, with hundreds of households relocating to work in the shipyard. Among the ships built in these ship shipyards were enormous junks that were built specifically for sea travel. These were called bouchwan or treasure boats, or long Chon, which was dragon boats. They combined aspects of two existing ships. One of these ships was a flat bottom junk that had been made to travel the relatively shallow Yellow Sea, where the biggest threat was running into ever shifting sandbars. So these were ships that that sort of road high in the water and their bottoms were really flat. The other was a four decked ship that had been made for sea travel. This one has a much deeper and very pointed keel and very wide decks and a strong prow that was suitable for ramming things. Ramming things was one of the Chinese Navy's favorite ways of attacking. And another ship, the treasure ships. Masts and rigging were like the sand boats of the Yellow Sea to catch the most wind, and their hulls were more like the existing ocean ships to stay upright in rough seas. The treasure ships were enormous. Exact dimensions have been tricky to calculate because the units of measure that we're being used at the time weren't exactly standardized, but the general consensus is that the biggest dragon ships were between three hundred and nine and four hundred and eight feet long and one d sixty two one hundred and sixty six ft wide, So that's roughly a hundred and twenty long and fifty wide. That is a lot of ships. That's multiple ships, like multiple of Christopher Columbus's ships could have fit into one of these, Like I think Christopher Columbus's entire all of them, all of them could have gone here. It's like a small cruise ship. It's a gigantic. These ships used ballast rudders, anchors, and holes that would partially fill up with water, daring rough seas to make them more stable. They also had nine staggered masts that bore twelve square sales that would catch the land. They were armed with cannons, although they weren't really meant as fighting ships. Their defense was really the work of warships that were also part of the armada. In addition to huge cargo areas for carrying treasure from and back to China, there were also luxurious accommodations on board meant to carry both Chinese envoys and envoys that went back to China from other nations. And you could say the ships themselves were luxurious as well. The sails were made from red silk, and the bodies were extensively carved and painted with things like dragons and phoenixes, really dramatic on the water. The treasure ship's cargo it basically included the best that China had to offer, including porcelains, silks, tapestries, cotton, lacquer ware, art, hemp, oils, and candles. They were hoping to trade for things like ivory, tortoiseshell, incense, pearls, precious stones, woods that were either rare or couldn't be obtained in China, and substances that were used as medicine like sulfur, rhinoceros horn, deer, antler, incense, and aromatic herbs and spices and it Asian to the treasure ships, these fleets also included warships and patrol boats, horseships that carried horses. Both were trading for the cavalry. Water tankers and completely separate supply ships. Communicating across this immense armada in a day when there was no radio, Just text them right. This required flags and lanterns to make visual signals from one ship to another, a loud drums to warn the fleet of instorming incoming storms really quickly, gongs and bells to sound signals aboard each ship, and then carry your pigeons for long distances across the fleet. Stars and instruments were used to measure latitude. Time was kept on board via graduated incense sticks, which I love that idea. That's how I'm going to keep time from now on. So if I run a little late, I'm adjusting instead of the hour glass on your on your desk, we will, we will burn graduated incense sticks. That speed was measured by throwing an object overboard and then following it as the ship passed it, using a chance to measure out the pace, sort of like a more poetic version of counting one Mississippi to Mississippi to account how many seconds have passed since that lightning happened. I'm still back on the drums, wondering if drum noise would ever get confused with thunder. That's a good question. I imagine they could recognize the difference. I would probably the drumbeats being used were distinctive enough, sound quite as muddled as thunder usually does. I would think, I'm just thinking about sound carrying across water. But yes, this might be a good experiment. Let's go on a boat trip. Okay uh. It took as many as twenty eight thousand people to crew a fleet of this size. So again, massive aboard where soldiers, sailors, astrologers and geomanswers, translators, medical officers, envoys, and a number of government ministers to oversee operations. Most of the rank and file soldiers and sailors were criminals who had been banished and sentenced to the work. The Emperor's UNUS commanded the entire operation. There were seven directors, ten assistant directors, and fifty two others whose ranks were not specified. And then, of course there was Junghu, the commander in chief. In addition to acting as ambassadors and imperial representatives, the UNIX basically supervised the military activity aboard Jungaha traveled with all but the second of these seven voyages. That one he skipped to see to see to other tasks in China. And we're going to talk about what happened during these voyages, but first we will pause once again for a brief word from a sponsor. To return to the expeditions. From fourteen oh five until fourteen thirty three, China sent massive fleets of treasure ships and all these other ships on seven different voyages. Strictly speaking, they were not voyages of exploration. The trade roots that they were following had already been established, many of them from the opposite direction, by traders and explorers who had been headed to China. This includes even Betuda of Morocco, who sailed to China along with many, many, many, many many other places about a hundred years before the first three fleets set sail in fourteen o five, fourteen o seven, and fourteen o nine, and if you can do the math, you would judge that they lasted about two years apiece. They traveled from Nanjing on the eastern coast of China to Kasha Code then known as Calicut, on the western coast of India, with stops along the way at various ports in Southeastern Asia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka then known of course as Ceylon, along with other ports in India. Each of these first three voyages had really similar goals. They re established trading and diplomatic relationships that the whom emperor had previously pretty much shut down. They reinforced these relationships with each subsequent visit, including setting the expectation that tributes paid to the emperor. The fleet would pick up ambassadors, or the ambassadors would travel to China separately bearing that tribute. Ambassadors then returned home, either on subsequent voyages of the Treasure Fleet or by other means. The voyages were also meant to help ensure peace in the region. The first and largest fleet, with its three D and seventeen ships, was particularly important in this regard. It defeated a pirate known as chen zu Ye, who had been plundering ships in the Strait of Malacca, which connects the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. The first our Mada captured seven of his ships, and they burned ten others. With chen Zui out of the way, subsequent expeditions sailed with far fewer ships. During the Third voyage, China recognized Malacca as a sovereign nation, putting it on equal diplomatic fitting with its neighbors and making it less likely that those neighbors would try to conquer it, since if they did, that would anger the Chinese and it's obviously vast navy. On this and other voyage is Jungha also erected stone tablets which documented the voyages and offered thanks to multiple deities and multiple languages, it's actually one of the ways that we know where he went and went. Not all of China's peacemaking efforts were as cut and dried as ousting a pirate or recognizing a nation's sovereignty, though. The third voyages stopped in Sri Lanka then known as Ceylon, as we mentioned earlier, met with some trouble, and the Chinese and local accounts of what happened very really drastically. According to local history, the Chinese stole a relic believed to be one of the Buddhist teeth and kidnapped local leaders. The Chinese perspective was that it stopped worrying among the nation's three factions and relieved it of someone who was trying to usurp the genuine rulers. Now. Regardless of how it actually played out, the Emperor wound up claiming sovereignty over Ceylon and demanding that its rulers pay tribute to him. It's consensus is that it was probably a little of both. As far as what actually happened. It sounds like one of those instances of cultural tone deafness where someone goes, I can solve this problem. I will just remove this obstacle, but that obstacle is a really important thing. Yeah, yeah, it's that this is one of the cases, like a lot of people who talk about these expeditions or like this is an entirely peaceful thing, not really Like you don't travel with a gigantic fleet of warships on an entirely where then you also have something like this play out that obviously was was somewhat violent and uh and not really appreciated by the local population. China's fourth expedition, ordered in fourteen twelve and launched in fourteen fourteen, went a lot farther than the first three, with the Emperor wanting to reach the port of Hormas in the mouth of the Persian Gulf, There they traded for precious gems, corals, pearls, and carpets, hormas, and the neighboring city states, also, like the ports that had been visited on the prior expeditions, sent emissaries and tributes back with the fleet. These tributes included animals as well, including lions, leopards, and horses. Other emissaries that made their way back to China by other means also brought giraffes, which has become one of the really famous things that came back its tribute. One eunuch that was leading another expedition actually mistook the giraffe for a mythical sacred Chinese animal known as the Chilen. The next two expeditions, led by Jungha, which departed in fourteen seventeen and fourteen one, stretched farther still, all the way to the western coast of Africa, once again to trade and return with emissaries to the Emperor. Each one also returned emissaries who had come to China on or after the one before, and these once again followed the same routes as earlier expeditions, visiting many of the same ports before continuing on to what is now Oman Yemen, Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania for reasons that aren't entire cleared. Jengha himself returned from the six voyage nearly a year before the rest of the fleet did. It was possibly to take part in the ceremony for the completion of the new Forbidden City. In the years between Jengha's return from the sixth Voyage and his departure on the last and seventh one in one, after a much longer gap than any of the previous expeditions, the emperor started to experience a number of problems. A scandal involving cortisans having intimate relations with the eunuch swept the court. His favorite concubine also died. The Emperor himself was hurt in a hunting accident, and on maynight, the brand new Forbidden City was struck by lightning and heavily damaged in the fire that followed that strength, the nation began to experience financial problems, brought about by everything from epidemics to military struggles with neighboring nations to the strain on the lumber industry for the wood needed to repair the Forbidden City. The young La Emperor Judy died on August twelfth, Jungha was away on a separate, smaller voyage unrelated to these huge treasure voyages. When the emperor died, he didn't actually return home until after the emperor's son, Ju Gaujer, the hong Shi Emperor, was on the throne. Ju Gauger's first edict was that all the treasure voyages were to be stopped. No new ships would be built, no existing ships would be repaired. He returned to Confucian ideals that put the focus on the world within China's borders, not outside of it. But after just nine months in power, Ju Gaujer died. Following him was his son Jiujanji, the Shwanda Emperor uh and when he became emper he rolled back a lot of his father's more conservative direct directives. Jujanji ordered another expedition, and it seems it was clear from the outset that it would be the last one. It was at least as large, and possibly larger than the first had been. Before leaving, Jungha documented the achievements of his previous voyages on a pair of stone tablets, purportedly as thanks to the patron Goddess of Sailors, but possibly also to make sure some evidence of the voyages survived that presented them in a positive light, since they were now well out of favorite Court. The seventh and last fleet collected cargo and crew along the Chinese coast until January twelve, four two. It arrived in Calicut on December tenth of that year. From there, the fleet actually separated into smaller groups that followed different routes on the Arabian Peninsula. A caravan from the fleet traveled to and from Mecca, although it appears that Jungha himself did not due to his poor health at the time. The fleet later reconvened at Calicut and returned to China. Somewhere along the way, Jungha, by then in his sixties, died and was buried at sea. After this last voyage, emissaries from other nations gradually slowed on and being sent to China. After a while, smugglers, instead of giant fleets of traders and ships, became the primary means for foreign goods to get into China. The size of the navy got smaller and smaller as China's military focus turned to land based defense and against increasingly aggressive neighbors. One reason why people have invented a much inflated account of Jungha's already extremely noteworthy voyages. Was that in fourteen seventy seven his logs and documents were lost, possibly deliberately destroyed, in ongoing struggles between Confusions and imperial unix, who, as we mentioned earlier, had vastly different worldviews vastly different opinions on how these voyages had gone. Until archaeological excavations of the shipyards began in far more recent history. Most of the documentation we had existed in the form of items that have been traded during the voyages, as well as histories of other nations that the Chinese had visited and the stone tablets that Jung himself had erected. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Europe took China's place as the world's greatest maritime power, albeit with much much smaller ships that traveled in much smaller fleets than what China was using. However, according to the lore, the nations where their their expeditions overlapped with where China had gone during Jung hust voyages weren't exactly impressed by the goods that the Europeans brought to trade. When Vasco da Gama landed in Eastern Africa in fourte the Africans who met him basically thought that Portugal's goods were trinkets compared to China's. That kind of the whole image of that cracks me up, Like it had been at this point six year eighty years between the last time that China was there and when folks from Portugal should showed up, And I'm sort of imagining people like, Okay, what is this? We had silk and beautiful lacquer before, and now we have this like basin that you wanted to trade. There is a replica of one of Jungha's ships that was built built for the Jungha Treasure Boat Factory Ruins Park in Nanjing. A second project was meant to build one that can actually sail and to recreate one of his voyages. That multimillion dollar project was expected to launch in two thousand and eight. It has clearly been a little while since then that project has been plagued by delays and is apparently now on hold. Yeah. I tried to find a definitive answer to what actually had happened, and I could not find anything particularly recent about it other than that you know, there was definitely a replica that was built for the museum that there are plenty of pictures of them people launched, but this one that was actually meant to undertake a replica voyage is apparently just sort of what's the status Gland, We don't know. If you want to learn more about this um, there's a book called wind China Rolled the Seese, The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Flow Dragon Flown Dragon Throne fourteen O five to four, Team thirty three, which is from Oxford University Press, which I really really liked. One of the things I've started doing when I am trying to make sure that I have good sources for things is that I will read the reviews in academic journals of books that have been published in academic presses. And all of the reviews of this are like for people who are new to this, it's a great introduction if you are already an expert. It contains nothing new, and I was like, that's perfect, Yes, that's exactly what I'm looking for. So uh that is again called win China Ruled Disease. It's really quite good and very accessible. Do you also have a listener mail Dear Tracy hid. My listener mail is from Manda h And I'm not going to read all of it because, um, it is a it is a more lengthy mail. Um. And this is actually actually about an episode that Holly did the research on, and Manda says, Holly and Tracy, I cannot even begin to tell you the absolute joy that filled me when I saw the podcast title today Knitting's early history. I've been an avid knitter for the last three and a half years, teaching myself entirely on YouTube. I'm not afraid to try any new technique, and I've never shied away from a pattern I have. I even had a local yard shop owner tell me the advanced project I had taken on within a year of learning to knit made me a masochist. I was completely enthralled through the entire podcast, but especially at the end when I learned I am a Yorkshire Dale. I have a knitting bag that I carry around with me at waste level. I knit while I walk, travel, play games with friends, attend trainings while I work. Basically wherever whenever, I will knit. This began because I have attention depths, a hyperactivity disorder that was diagnosed as an adult. I always doodled in classes while I was getting my associates degree, but it wasn't enough to keep me super focused on what I was supposed to be learning like I wanted. I decided that I needed to find something to do with my hands to keep me focused and tried crochet. That did not work for me, so then I thought maybe knitting would be better. Knitting was the perfect activity for me. And then she goes on to talk about attributing many, many off some awesome life successes to being able to focus through knitting, which I thought was extremely awesome. Um. And then she goes on with the side note that is actually the thing that made me want to be the one to read this. She says, Tracy, congratulations on your upcoming wedding. I hope it's everything you dreamed of and more. On the knitting podcast, I thought of emailing you to say, make a gauge, but then I thought, don't do that. Everyone will tell her to knit a gauge. Then you said, I know I could make a gauge, but I'm lazy. I literally laughed out loud because I used to be the exact same, exact same way until the sweater dune, dune done. I decided, as a gift to myself for my hard work getting into the one year master's program, I was going to knit myself as wetter. It was complicated, hundreds of cables. I had to learn a lot of new techniques to make it. It took me months because the pattern was so difficult, and then when it was done, it didn't fit. Now I knit a swatch, wash it, dry it, and block it every single time. It was definitely a face pal moment. And I didn't get to wear a graduation like I planned because I didn't knit a gauge. Uh. And then she goes on to say another couple of things and says, thanks again, Manda. You're looking at me like you have a thought. Well, because I realized while listening to you read that letter that she hit upon one of the other reasons I'm not a knitter. Oh, yeah, I can fix any size problem in a garment. Yeah, I can add or subtract. I've gotten pretty artful at putting in panels that blend, but knitting I would be so angry if that happened. Yeah. Well, so many, many, many people thank you for your advice. Have written in to say that I should have blocked my shawl. That was definitely not the problem. It was all yeah, like it was perfect and beautiful and so so tiny. I had definitely been knitting much too tightly for what the pattern called for, which would have been prevented if I had done a gauge watch first, which I did not do. So while I appreciate everyone and everyone's enthusiasm about blocking, uh that that was not the problem. Uh. And no one else needs to suggest that I block my shell because I also don't have it anymore. That was years ago and I have moved nine d miles since then. So thank you again, Amanda. Thank you to everyone who has written in about UM about blocking and other tips for that project's gone. It's it cannot be salvage now, it's super gone. Uh. We also had a couple of folks who wrote in to talk about how um they do various different crafts and sewing work and etcetera, and are also blind. After we had talked about how it's how I think it's easier to knit in the dark than to maybe do other things in the dark. So thank you to all the folks who have written in, Because I had not really thought about that. Um. Obviously if you do not have sight, you can still do the same things. Yeah, I think I think for um, for me and probably anyone that is cited, is so hard to make that leap of like how on earth would you figure it out? But you do? Yeah, Yeah, I think if you're a cited person, it is probably easier uh with like something that's big and tactile like than something that is like it would be harder for me personally as a cited person to like figure out where I had sown my seams uh in a in a delicately sowned garment than with my big junkie wooly knit uh knit stuff. So thank you. Um, we have heard from I think knitters and crochetars and sculptors and seamstresses. Yeah, which was awesome. So thank you so much everyone for writing in. If you would like to try to us about this or any other podcast, we are at History Podcast at tas stuffworks dot com. We're also on Facebook at facebook dot com slash miss in history and on Twitter at miss in history. Are Tombler is miss in history dot tumbler dot com. We're also on Pinterest at pinters dot com. Slash missed in History. I'm getting sing saggy with this today. Uh. If you would like to learn more about what we talked about today, you can become to our parent company's website, which is how stuff Works dot com. Put whatever you're looking for in the search bar. We've got all kinds of information. Then you didn't come to our website, which is missed in history dot com, where we will have show notes for today's episode that will include everything about that book that I mentioned at the end. We also have an archive of everything we have ever done lots of cool stuff, so you can do all that and a whole lot more and how stuff works dot com or missed them history dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from stuff works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Today we are going to talk about Jung Hu and that has been requested by at least two listeners, Fara and Eric. Jungha led expeditionary voyages from China in the fifteenth century, and there are some people that claim that he made it to the America's and Australia, and that he circumnavigated the globe, and that he solved a long two problem, and that he found the city of Atlantis, basically, that he was some kind of godlike maritime super genius. The historical record does not support any of that, but none of that embellishment is necessary at all, because the whole story is extremely impressive already without any of those false things. Jungha's expeditions were huge, that the ships themselves were enormous, and they there were so many in the fleet that often the fleets population was bigger than the ports that it was visiting. Plus Jungha himself is a really interesting character. Also, he served as a palace eunuch in the Ming dynasty, so parents and teachers. It's explaining what a eunuch is is not something you really feel like doing today, and this is a good time to put this episode aside for a while. Jungha was born Maha and what is now Yunnan Province in southwestern China. He and his family were Muslims, and, based on his father and grandfather both taking the name Hajji, both likely made a pilgrimage to Mecca. At some point in thirteen eighty one, MAHA's father either died or was killed, and the same year, Maha, who at this point was about ten, was captured by the Ming army during its invasion of Yunon In thirteen eighty five, when he was roughly thirteen, Maha was castrated. It was common for the Ming army to castrate the young stuns of its captives, many of whom did not survive that process. It's not entirely clear why Maha wasn't castrated immediately when he was captured or why he was roughly three years later. Regardless, after this castration, Maha was sent to serve in the household of the fourth son of juyuang Jiang, the hung Wu emperor, as a palace eunuch Eunuchs had become established as part of the Chinese court all the way back to the Han dynasty, which was more than a thousand years before this point. However, the Whoo Emperor just didn't trust them. By being assigned to Judy, who was the emperor's son, Maha had a considerably bigger list of privileges, including more responsibilities and better access to education than he would have been serving elsewhere in the emperor's court. Even though he was still fairly young when he was castrated and probably hadn't entered and definitely would not have completed puberty, Maha wound up defying Chinese expectations of men who were castrated as children. Rather than remaining petite with a high voice and typically feminine mannerisms and interests, he grew to be quite tall and quite broad, with a voice described as quote loud as a huge bell, and he developed an in depth knowledge of warfare. He accompanied the Prince jud on multiple military expeditions. During these expeditions, Maha and Judy became friends, and it turned out that this friendship with the emperor's fourth son would serve Maha incredibly well in his later life. In thirteen two, the emperor's oldest son died. Typically, that son's eldest son, Julia n Win, would have then been named crown prince, but the hung Wu Emperor thought Ju d might be a more capable leader. This was an opinion that Judy himself also shared, so it's not surprising that after his father died and the throne passed to Julia and Win as normal, this power struggle uh played out and it turned into this outright civil war. Now this could be an entire podcast, and we're not going to get into the details because it's really outside the focus of what we're talking about today. But overwhelmingly, Judy over three his nephew and took the throne, something that he was able to do in part because of information he got from escaped court unis about the layout of the city and how it was defended. Once he was on the throne, Judy named himself the jung La Emperor, which means lasting Joy. Maja's position became immensely more powerful. The Young La Emperor renamed him as a gift, replacing his surname of Ma, which was a common surname among Chinese Muslims. With the more prestigious surname Jung. The new emperor also gave the eunuchs who had helped him in this rebellion far more power than previous emperors had been comfortable bestowing upon eunichs. This actually set up an ongoing power struggle between the Unichs and Confucian advisors at court, the latter of whom were far more conservative and generally opposed to outward expansion and exploration from China. In fourteen oh three, the Young La Emperor ordered the construction of the largest fleet of ships in China's history to undertake a huge trading expedition through the China Seas in the Indian Ocean, and its commander was to be jung Hu. This is the first time in Chinese history that a eunuch had been placed in such an important military role. We're gonna talk more about the fleet uh that Jungha commanded, but first we're gonna have a brief sponsor break. A common misperception about Chinese history is that the nation has for most of that history been extremely, almost obsessively isolationist, with the only real form of trade being the Silk Road. That is Dupu extremely simply false. While China has, at various points definitely taken a much more isolationist view of the world. It has also undertaken periods of exploration and trade over great distances throughout most of its history. This maritime tradition started with canoes and sailing rafts thousands of years ago. By two during the Sung dynasty, the emperor established China's first official permanent navy, and within a century the navy boasted about six hundred ships and fifty two thousand conscripted men, and from the twelfth to fifteen centuries, the nation continually refined its tools and methods for shipbuilding, naval warfare, and navigation. The Young La Emperor's treasure fleet simply would not have been possible without all these centuries of nautical experience. The treasure fleet was much much too big and too complex to basically be the product of a nation's first ever attempt at building a boat and helming an expedition across a long distance. By fourteen oh seven, China had either built or refit one thousand, six hundred eighty one ships for the treasure fleet Emperor Judy Has had ordered. This required a huge increase in China's lumber industry, with timber being farmed inland and floated down rivers to the coast. Craftsmen and laborers, along with their families were transferred to the coast as well, with hundreds of households relocating to work in the shipyard. Among the ships built in these ship shipyards were enormous junks that were built specifically for sea travel. These were called bouchwan or treasure boats, or long Chon, which was dragon boats. They combined aspects of two existing ships. One of these ships was a flat bottom junk that had been made to travel the relatively shallow Yellow Sea, where the biggest threat was running into ever shifting sandbars. So these were ships that that sort of road high in the water and their bottoms were really flat. The other was a four decked ship that had been made for sea travel. This one has a much deeper and very pointed keel and very wide decks and a strong prow that was suitable for ramming things. Ramming things was one of the Chinese Navy's favorite ways of attacking. And another ship, the treasure ships. Masts and rigging were like the sand boats of the Yellow Sea to catch the most wind, and their hulls were more like the existing ocean ships to stay upright in rough seas. The treasure ships were enormous. Exact dimensions have been tricky to calculate because the units of measure that we're being used at the time weren't exactly standardized, but the general consensus is that the biggest dragon ships were between three hundred and nine and four hundred and eight feet long and one d sixty two one hundred and sixty six ft wide, So that's roughly a hundred and twenty long and fifty wide. That is a lot of ships. That's multiple ships, like multiple of Christopher Columbus's ships could have fit into one of these, Like I think Christopher Columbus's entire all of them, all of them could have gone here. It's like a small cruise ship. It's a gigantic. These ships used ballast rudders, anchors, and holes that would partially fill up with water, daring rough seas to make them more stable. They also had nine staggered masts that bore twelve square sales that would catch the land. They were armed with cannons, although they weren't really meant as fighting ships. Their defense was really the work of warships that were also part of the armada. In addition to huge cargo areas for carrying treasure from and back to China, there were also luxurious accommodations on board meant to carry both Chinese envoys and envoys that went back to China from other nations. And you could say the ships themselves were luxurious as well. The sails were made from red silk, and the bodies were extensively carved and painted with things like dragons and phoenixes, really dramatic on the water. The treasure ship's cargo it basically included the best that China had to offer, including porcelains, silks, tapestries, cotton, lacquer ware, art, hemp, oils, and candles. They were hoping to trade for things like ivory, tortoiseshell, incense, pearls, precious stones, woods that were either rare or couldn't be obtained in China, and substances that were used as medicine like sulfur, rhinoceros horn, deer, antler, incense, and aromatic herbs and spices and it Asian to the treasure ships, these fleets also included warships and patrol boats, horseships that carried horses. Both were trading for the cavalry. Water tankers and completely separate supply ships. Communicating across this immense armada in a day when there was no radio, Just text them right. This required flags and lanterns to make visual signals from one ship to another, a loud drums to warn the fleet of instorming incoming storms really quickly, gongs and bells to sound signals aboard each ship, and then carry your pigeons for long distances across the fleet. Stars and instruments were used to measure latitude. Time was kept on board via graduated incense sticks, which I love that idea. That's how I'm going to keep time from now on. So if I run a little late, I'm adjusting instead of the hour glass on your on your desk, we will, we will burn graduated incense sticks. That speed was measured by throwing an object overboard and then following it as the ship passed it, using a chance to measure out the pace, sort of like a more poetic version of counting one Mississippi to Mississippi to account how many seconds have passed since that lightning happened. I'm still back on the drums, wondering if drum noise would ever get confused with thunder. That's a good question. I imagine they could recognize the difference. I would probably the drumbeats being used were distinctive enough, sound quite as muddled as thunder usually does. I would think, I'm just thinking about sound carrying across water. But yes, this might be a good experiment. Let's go on a boat trip. Okay uh. It took as many as twenty eight thousand people to crew a fleet of this size. So again, massive aboard where soldiers, sailors, astrologers and geomanswers, translators, medical officers, envoys, and a number of government ministers to oversee operations. Most of the rank and file soldiers and sailors were criminals who had been banished and sentenced to the work. The Emperor's UNUS commanded the entire operation. There were seven directors, ten assistant directors, and fifty two others whose ranks were not specified. And then, of course there was Junghu, the commander in chief. In addition to acting as ambassadors and imperial representatives, the UNIX basically supervised the military activity aboard Jungaha traveled with all but the second of these seven voyages. That one he skipped to see to see to other tasks in China. And we're going to talk about what happened during these voyages, but first we will pause once again for a brief word from a sponsor. To return to the expeditions. From fourteen oh five until fourteen thirty three, China sent massive fleets of treasure ships and all these other ships on seven different voyages. Strictly speaking, they were not voyages of exploration. The trade roots that they were following had already been established, many of them from the opposite direction, by traders and explorers who had been headed to China. This includes even Betuda of Morocco, who sailed to China along with many, many, many, many many other places about a hundred years before the first three fleets set sail in fourteen o five, fourteen o seven, and fourteen o nine, and if you can do the math, you would judge that they lasted about two years apiece. They traveled from Nanjing on the eastern coast of China to Kasha Code then known as Calicut, on the western coast of India, with stops along the way at various ports in Southeastern Asia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka then known of course as Ceylon, along with other ports in India. Each of these first three voyages had really similar goals. They re established trading and diplomatic relationships that the whom emperor had previously pretty much shut down. They reinforced these relationships with each subsequent visit, including setting the expectation that tributes paid to the emperor. The fleet would pick up ambassadors, or the ambassadors would travel to China separately bearing that tribute. Ambassadors then returned home, either on subsequent voyages of the Treasure Fleet or by other means. The voyages were also meant to help ensure peace in the region. The first and largest fleet, with its three D and seventeen ships, was particularly important in this regard. It defeated a pirate known as chen zu Ye, who had been plundering ships in the Strait of Malacca, which connects the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. The first our Mada captured seven of his ships, and they burned ten others. With chen Zui out of the way, subsequent expeditions sailed with far fewer ships. During the Third voyage, China recognized Malacca as a sovereign nation, putting it on equal diplomatic fitting with its neighbors and making it less likely that those neighbors would try to conquer it, since if they did, that would anger the Chinese and it's obviously vast navy. On this and other voyage is Jungha also erected stone tablets which documented the voyages and offered thanks to multiple deities and multiple languages, it's actually one of the ways that we know where he went and went. Not all of China's peacemaking efforts were as cut and dried as ousting a pirate or recognizing a nation's sovereignty, though. The third voyages stopped in Sri Lanka then known as Ceylon, as we mentioned earlier, met with some trouble, and the Chinese and local accounts of what happened very really drastically. According to local history, the Chinese stole a relic believed to be one of the Buddhist teeth and kidnapped local leaders. The Chinese perspective was that it stopped worrying among the nation's three factions and relieved it of someone who was trying to usurp the genuine rulers. Now. Regardless of how it actually played out, the Emperor wound up claiming sovereignty over Ceylon and demanding that its rulers pay tribute to him. It's consensus is that it was probably a little of both. As far as what actually happened. It sounds like one of those instances of cultural tone deafness where someone goes, I can solve this problem. I will just remove this obstacle, but that obstacle is a really important thing. Yeah, yeah, it's that this is one of the cases, like a lot of people who talk about these expeditions or like this is an entirely peaceful thing, not really Like you don't travel with a gigantic fleet of warships on an entirely where then you also have something like this play out that obviously was was somewhat violent and uh and not really appreciated by the local population. China's fourth expedition, ordered in fourteen twelve and launched in fourteen fourteen, went a lot farther than the first three, with the Emperor wanting to reach the port of Hormas in the mouth of the Persian Gulf, There they traded for precious gems, corals, pearls, and carpets, hormas, and the neighboring city states, also, like the ports that had been visited on the prior expeditions, sent emissaries and tributes back with the fleet. These tributes included animals as well, including lions, leopards, and horses. Other emissaries that made their way back to China by other means also brought giraffes, which has become one of the really famous things that came back its tribute. One eunuch that was leading another expedition actually mistook the giraffe for a mythical sacred Chinese animal known as the Chilen. The next two expeditions, led by Jungha, which departed in fourteen seventeen and fourteen one, stretched farther still, all the way to the western coast of Africa, once again to trade and return with emissaries to the Emperor. Each one also returned emissaries who had come to China on or after the one before, and these once again followed the same routes as earlier expeditions, visiting many of the same ports before continuing on to what is now Oman Yemen, Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania for reasons that aren't entire cleared. Jengha himself returned from the six voyage nearly a year before the rest of the fleet did. It was possibly to take part in the ceremony for the completion of the new Forbidden City. In the years between Jengha's return from the sixth Voyage and his departure on the last and seventh one in one, after a much longer gap than any of the previous expeditions, the emperor started to experience a number of problems. A scandal involving cortisans having intimate relations with the eunuch swept the court. His favorite concubine also died. The Emperor himself was hurt in a hunting accident, and on maynight, the brand new Forbidden City was struck by lightning and heavily damaged in the fire that followed that strength, the nation began to experience financial problems, brought about by everything from epidemics to military struggles with neighboring nations to the strain on the lumber industry for the wood needed to repair the Forbidden City. The young La Emperor Judy died on August twelfth, Jungha was away on a separate, smaller voyage unrelated to these huge treasure voyages. When the emperor died, he didn't actually return home until after the emperor's son, Ju Gaujer, the hong Shi Emperor, was on the throne. Ju Gauger's first edict was that all the treasure voyages were to be stopped. No new ships would be built, no existing ships would be repaired. He returned to Confucian ideals that put the focus on the world within China's borders, not outside of it. But after just nine months in power, Ju Gaujer died. Following him was his son Jiujanji, the Shwanda Emperor uh and when he became emper he rolled back a lot of his father's more conservative direct directives. Jujanji ordered another expedition, and it seems it was clear from the outset that it would be the last one. It was at least as large, and possibly larger than the first had been. Before leaving, Jungha documented the achievements of his previous voyages on a pair of stone tablets, purportedly as thanks to the patron Goddess of Sailors, but possibly also to make sure some evidence of the voyages survived that presented them in a positive light, since they were now well out of favorite Court. The seventh and last fleet collected cargo and crew along the Chinese coast until January twelve, four two. It arrived in Calicut on December tenth of that year. From there, the fleet actually separated into smaller groups that followed different routes on the Arabian Peninsula. A caravan from the fleet traveled to and from Mecca, although it appears that Jungha himself did not due to his poor health at the time. The fleet later reconvened at Calicut and returned to China. Somewhere along the way, Jungha, by then in his sixties, died and was buried at sea. After this last voyage, emissaries from other nations gradually slowed on and being sent to China. After a while, smugglers, instead of giant fleets of traders and ships, became the primary means for foreign goods to get into China. The size of the navy got smaller and smaller as China's military focus turned to land based defense and against increasingly aggressive neighbors. One reason why people have invented a much inflated account of Jungha's already extremely noteworthy voyages. Was that in fourteen seventy seven his logs and documents were lost, possibly deliberately destroyed, in ongoing struggles between Confusions and imperial unix, who, as we mentioned earlier, had vastly different worldviews vastly different opinions on how these voyages had gone. Until archaeological excavations of the shipyards began in far more recent history. Most of the documentation we had existed in the form of items that have been traded during the voyages, as well as histories of other nations that the Chinese had visited and the stone tablets that Jung himself had erected. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Europe took China's place as the world's greatest maritime power, albeit with much much smaller ships that traveled in much smaller fleets than what China was using. However, according to the lore, the nations where their their expeditions overlapped with where China had gone during Jung hust voyages weren't exactly impressed by the goods that the Europeans brought to trade. When Vasco da Gama landed in Eastern Africa in fourte the Africans who met him basically thought that Portugal's goods were trinkets compared to China's. That kind of the whole image of that cracks me up, Like it had been at this point six year eighty years between the last time that China was there and when folks from Portugal should showed up, And I'm sort of imagining people like, Okay, what is this? We had silk and beautiful lacquer before, and now we have this like basin that you wanted to trade. There is a replica of one of Jungha's ships that was built built for the Jungha Treasure Boat Factory Ruins Park in Nanjing. A second project was meant to build one that can actually sail and to recreate one of his voyages. That multimillion dollar project was expected to launch in two thousand and eight. It has clearly been a little while since then that project has been plagued by delays and is apparently now on hold. Yeah. I tried to find a definitive answer to what actually had happened, and I could not find anything particularly recent about it other than that you know, there was definitely a replica that was built for the museum that there are plenty of pictures of them people launched, but this one that was actually meant to undertake a replica voyage is apparently just sort of what's the status Gland, We don't know. If you want to learn more about this um, there's a book called wind China Rolled the Seese, The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Flow Dragon Flown Dragon Throne fourteen O five to four, Team thirty three, which is from Oxford University Press, which I really really liked. One of the things I've started doing when I am trying to make sure that I have good sources for things is that I will read the reviews in academic journals of books that have been published in academic presses. And all of the reviews of this are like for people who are new to this, it's a great introduction if you are already an expert. It contains nothing new, and I was like, that's perfect, Yes, that's exactly what I'm looking for. So uh that is again called win China Ruled Disease. It's really quite good and very accessible. Do you also have a listener mail Dear Tracy hid. My listener mail is from Manda h And I'm not going to read all of it because, um, it is a it is a more lengthy mail. Um. And this is actually actually about an episode that Holly did the research on, and Manda says, Holly and Tracy, I cannot even begin to tell you the absolute joy that filled me when I saw the podcast title today Knitting's early history. I've been an avid knitter for the last three and a half years, teaching myself entirely on YouTube. I'm not afraid to try any new technique, and I've never shied away from a pattern I have. I even had a local yard shop owner tell me the advanced project I had taken on within a year of learning to knit made me a masochist. I was completely enthralled through the entire podcast, but especially at the end when I learned I am a Yorkshire Dale. I have a knitting bag that I carry around with me at waste level. I knit while I walk, travel, play games with friends, attend trainings while I work. Basically wherever whenever, I will knit. This began because I have attention depths, a hyperactivity disorder that was diagnosed as an adult. I always doodled in classes while I was getting my associates degree, but it wasn't enough to keep me super focused on what I was supposed to be learning like I wanted. I decided that I needed to find something to do with my hands to keep me focused and tried crochet. That did not work for me, so then I thought maybe knitting would be better. Knitting was the perfect activity for me. And then she goes on to talk about attributing many, many off some awesome life successes to being able to focus through knitting, which I thought was extremely awesome. Um. And then she goes on with the side note that is actually the thing that made me want to be the one to read this. She says, Tracy, congratulations on your upcoming wedding. I hope it's everything you dreamed of and more. On the knitting podcast, I thought of emailing you to say, make a gauge, but then I thought, don't do that. Everyone will tell her to knit a gauge. Then you said, I know I could make a gauge, but I'm lazy. I literally laughed out loud because I used to be the exact same, exact same way until the sweater dune, dune done. I decided, as a gift to myself for my hard work getting into the one year master's program, I was going to knit myself as wetter. It was complicated, hundreds of cables. I had to learn a lot of new techniques to make it. It took me months because the pattern was so difficult, and then when it was done, it didn't fit. Now I knit a swatch, wash it, dry it, and block it every single time. It was definitely a face pal moment. And I didn't get to wear a graduation like I planned because I didn't knit a gauge. Uh. And then she goes on to say another couple of things and says, thanks again, Manda. You're looking at me like you have a thought. Well, because I realized while listening to you read that letter that she hit upon one of the other reasons I'm not a knitter. Oh, yeah, I can fix any size problem in a garment. Yeah, I can add or subtract. I've gotten pretty artful at putting in panels that blend, but knitting I would be so angry if that happened. Yeah. Well, so many, many, many people thank you for your advice. Have written in to say that I should have blocked my shawl. That was definitely not the problem. It was all yeah, like it was perfect and beautiful and so so tiny. I had definitely been knitting much too tightly for what the pattern called for, which would have been prevented if I had done a gauge watch first, which I did not do. So while I appreciate everyone and everyone's enthusiasm about blocking, uh that that was not the problem. Uh. And no one else needs to suggest that I block my shell because I also don't have it anymore. That was years ago and I have moved nine d miles since then. So thank you again, Amanda. Thank you to everyone who has written in about UM about blocking and other tips for that project's gone. It's it cannot be salvage now, it's super gone. Uh. We also had a couple of folks who wrote in to talk about how um they do various different crafts and sewing work and etcetera, and are also blind. After we had talked about how it's how I think it's easier to knit in the dark than to maybe do other things in the dark. So thank you to all the folks who have written in, Because I had not really thought about that. Um. Obviously if you do not have sight, you can still do the same things. Yeah, I think I think for um, for me and probably anyone that is cited, is so hard to make that leap of like how on earth would you figure it out? But you do? Yeah, Yeah, I think if you're a cited person, it is probably easier uh with like something that's big and tactile like than something that is like it would be harder for me personally as a cited person to like figure out where I had sown my seams uh in a in a delicately sowned garment than with my big junkie wooly knit uh knit stuff. So thank you. Um, we have heard from I think knitters and crochetars and sculptors and seamstresses. Yeah, which was awesome. So thank you so much everyone for writing in. If you would like to try to us about this or any other podcast, we are at History Podcast at tas stuffworks dot com. We're also on Facebook at facebook dot com slash miss in history and on Twitter at miss in history. Are Tombler is miss in history dot tumbler dot com. We're also on Pinterest at pinters dot com. Slash missed in History. I'm getting sing saggy with this today. Uh. If you would like to learn more about what we talked about today, you can become to our parent company's website, which is how stuff Works dot com. Put whatever you're looking for in the search bar. We've got all kinds of information. Then you didn't come to our website, which is missed in history dot com, where we will have show notes for today's episode that will include everything about that book that I mentioned at the end. We also have an archive of everything we have ever done lots of cool stuff, so you can do all that and a whole lot more and how stuff works dot com or missed them history dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com