The route of the 7th voyage of Zheng He's fleet.

Cities visited by Zheng He's fleet or its squadron on the 7th or any of the previous voyages are shown in red.

Zheng He's fleets visited Arabia, Brunei, the Horn of Africa, India, Southeast Asia and Thailand, dispensing and receiving goods along the way.

While Zheng He's fleet was unprecedented, the routes were not.

Zheng He's fleet was following long-established, well-mapped routes.

* According to the 1421 theory, Zheng He's fleets return to China.

While Chinese boats continued traveling to Japan, Ryukyu, and many location in South-East Asia both before and after the Yongle era, Zheng He's expeditions were China's only major sea-going explorations of the world ( although the Chinese may have been sailing to Arabia, East Africa, and Egypt since the Tang Dynasty, from AD 618 – 907 or earlier ).

Zheng He's translator Ma Huan wrote a detailed description about Majapahit and where the king of Java lived.

By 1430 Zheng He's expeditions has established Muslim Chinese and Arab communities in northern ports of Java such as in Semarang, Demak, Tuban, and Ampel, thus Islam began to gain foothold on Java's northern coast.

Early 17th century Chinese woodcut | woodblock print, thought to represent Zheng He's ships

The dimensions of Zheng He's ships according to ancient Chinese chronicles are disputed by modern scholars ( see below ):

A painting by the court artist depicting one of Zheng He's giraffes in 1414.

A smaller Mazu temple exists in the Treasure Boat Shipyard Park, located at the site of the Longjiang Shipyard where Zheng He's treasure ships were built.

The book is written informally, as a series of vignettes of Menzies ' travels around the globe examining what he claims is evidence for his " 1421 hypothesis ", interspersed with speculation and description of the achievements of Admiral Zheng He's fleet.

Menzies claims that knowledge of Zheng He's discoveries was subsequently lost because the Mandarin bureaucrats of the Imperial court feared that the costs of further voyages would ruin the Chinese economy.

Rivers writes that Menzies contradicts himself by saying elsewhere in his book that Taccola had started his work on his technical sketches in 1431, when Zheng He's fleet was still assembled in China, and that the Italian engineer finished his technical sketches in 1433 — one year before the purported arrival of the Chinese fleet.

Already in May 1421, during the reign of the Yongle Emperor, an order was issued for the suspension of Zheng He's maritime expeditions, apparently on account of their cost ( although the order apparently did not affect the 6th voyage of Zheng He, staged around that time ).

Zhu Gaochi, as soon as he became the Hongxi Emperor in September 1424, canceled Zheng He's maritime expeditions permanently and abolished frontier trade of tea for horses as well as missions for gold and pearls to Yunnan and Vietnam.

The author Gavin Menzies argues in 1421: The Year China Discovered America that the tower was built by a colony of Chinese sailors and concubines from the junks of Zheng He's voyages either as a lighthouse, or, based on Penhallow's findings, as an observatory to determine the longitude of the colony.

However, the accusation by certain parties that the historical details of Admiral Zheng He's Expeditionary Naval Force puts the Malay kingdom's sovereignty in a bad light, appeared to be questionable as it is well recorded that Zheng He, who voyaged to Malacca several times, did establish a regional headquarters in Malacca in the 15th century to conduct regional diplomatic and entrepot activities in Southeast Asia due to the close relation between the emperor of China and the kingdom of Malacca as well as the importance of Malacca as an entrepot in Southeast Asia.

* Fei Xin, Zheng He's translator

A replica of Long Ya Men at the Labrador Nature Reserve, put up in 2005 as part of the Singapore Zheng He's 600th Anniversary Celebrations

In 221 BC, Ying Zheng, who was king of Qin at the time, proclaimed himself shi huangdi ( 始皇帝 ), which translates as " first emperor ".

* 1405 – Ming admiral Zheng He sets sail to explore the world for the first time.

It will be the first time Chinese warships have deployed outside the Asia-Pacific region for a military operation since Zheng He in the 15th century.

It was during the Yongle era that Zheng He, with the rank of Chief Envoy ( 正使, zhèng shǐ ) carried out the first of his six overseas missions.

* July 11 – Ming Dynasty fleet commander Zheng He sets sail from Suzhou to explore the world for the first time.

The first writer to record the myth of Pangu was Xu Zheng during the Three Kingdoms period.

Zheng Xiaoxu served as Manchukuo's first prime minister until 1935, when Zhang Jinghui succeeded him.

Ying Zheng, the king of Qin unifies China and proclaims himself the First Emperor, as he is the first Chinese sovereign able to rule the whole country, thus ending the Warring States Period.

Taiwan was first brought under the control of Zheng Chenggong, a Ming-loyalist, in 1662, before being incorporated by the Qing Dynasty in 1683.

Zhao Zheng was born in the first month of the year Zhengyue ( 正月 ) thus he received the character Zheng ( 正 ) as given name.

According to the footnote of the " The lunar calender of Qin and Chu " (《 秦楚之际月表 》) from the Index of the Records of the Grand Historian (《 史记索隐 》), the first month Zhengyue, " due to the taboo of the First Emperor's given name Zheng, was reformed as Duanyue ( 端月 ).

At birth, he was given the clan name of Zhao ( the clan name of the royal house of Qin ) inherited from his father and personal name Zheng ( 正 ), because he was born in the first month ( Zhengyue 正月 in the Chinese calender ).

* Pangu, written about by Taoist author Xu Zheng c. 200 AD, was claimed to be the first sentient being and creator, “ making the heavens and the earth .”

After Koxinga's death, his son and successor, Zheng Jing, gradually became the ruler of an independent Kingdom of Tungning, the first Chinese state to rule the island.

-227 BC ) was a guest residing in the estates of Dan, crown prince of Yan and renowned for his failed assassination attempt of Ying Zheng, King of Qin state, who later became China's first emperor ( reign from 221 BC to 210 BC ).

The fleet of Chinese admiral Zheng He reached Ormus for the first time around 1414.

Zheng ranked Shaolin first of the top three Buddhist centers of martial arts.

Whereas orchestras organised by, run solely by and nearly always exclusive to the expatriate community in China are recorded from the early days of the International Settlement in Shanghai ( i. e. 1850s ) and a Russian orchestra was in operation in Harbin from the early 20th century, the beginnings of a unique classical music tradition in China lie with the first foreign trained Chinese conductor, Zheng Zhisheng.

Zheng was raised in China's Guangdong province and affected by Western Church Music from an early age, studying in Lyons and Paris before returning to China in the 1930s and being employed the first Chinese conductor of a Chinese orchestra-the Chongqing Symphonic Orchestra.

The revolutionary spirit of Zheng Zhisheng's style has been continued by the first generation of composers immediately following the accession of the Chinese Communist Party to power, namely Li Delun and Cao Peng.

In Nanjing, the Tian Fei Palace ( 南京天妃宫, Nanjing Tian Fei Gong ) was built by the Yongle Emperor during the Ming Dynasty at the instigation of Admiral Zheng He after his return from his first expedition.

He sent Jing Ke to assassinate King Zheng of Qin, who later assumed the title Qin Shi Huang and became the first Emperor of China, but Jing failed.

The first writer to record the myth of Pangu was Xu Zheng ( 徐整 ) during the Three Kingdoms ( 三國 ) period.