Admiral Zheng He and Southeast Asia

8. Did Admiral Cheng Ho Visit the Philippines?

Chapter฀8 DID฀ADMIRAL฀CHENG฀HO฀VISIT฀ THE฀PHILIPPINES? Hsu฀Yun-Ts’iao One day during the session of the Fourth International Conference on Asian History held at University of Malaya from 5th to 10th August, 1968, Dr Carlos Quirino, Director, Museum of Philippine History and Iconographic Archive, put me a question: “Did Admiral Cheng Ho visit the Philippines?” I replied in the negative. I told him that where Cheng Ho visited was limited to “Hsi Yang” (西洋 literally, “West Seas”) which was separated by the South China Sea and Straits of Sunda from “Tung Yang” (東洋 literally, “East Seas”). Java was the only island in “Tung Yang” visited by Cheng Ho’s Fleet. This was given in Cheng Ho’s chart, which appeared in Mao Yuan Yi’s Wu Pei Chih (茅元儀：武備志), Vol. 240, without the indication of any name of places on the island. Pilotage from Hsi Yang to the island was not recorded in the Chart, because it was a special case for him to visit. But Java was included in Hsi Yang in the later period of Ming Dynasty as it was recorded in Tung Hsi Yang K’ao (東西洋考) by Chang Hsieh (張燮) in 1617. Moreover, the name the Philippines or alternative had never appeared in any document connected with Cheng Ho. 136 Reprinted from Hsu Yun-Ts’iao, “Did Admiral Cheng Ho Visit the Philippines?”, Journal of Southeast Asian Research 4 (December 1968): 96–98, by permission of the publisher. Did฀Admiral฀Cheng฀Ho฀visit฀the฀Philippines?฀ 137 Dr Quirino seemed very much astonished at my explanation and said that he had read a book published by the American Geographical Society, giving inference of Cheng Ho’s visit to the Philippines, and the author of the article is a famous scholar in USA, whose theory derive from Chinese sources. Thereupon I asked Dr Quirino to obtain a copy of the thesis for me to read before I would expound further on the subject. Soon after his return to the Philippines, Dr Quirino sent me a copy of the article entitled “Geographical Exploration by the Chinese” written by Chiao-min Hsieh, professor of geography at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., and was published in “The Pacific Basin, a History of its Geographical Exploration” (pp. 87–97), edited by Herman R. Friis. In the first part of his paper, Prof. Hsieh mentions the early Chinese conception of geographical aspects and in the later part he talks about Cheng Ho’s voyages, illustrated with reproductions of a section of Cheng Ho’s Chart and two figures of astronomical pilotage (過洋牽星圖) from Wu Pei Chih. Prof. Hsieh mentioned that he based on three sources to summarize Cheng Ho’s seven explorations: (1) the official record and the annals of the reigns of the Ming Dynasty, (2) tablet inscriptions discovered on the coast of Fukien Province, and (3) three books written by the members of Cheng Ho’s expedition. With reference to the First Expedition, Prof. Hsieh’s article runs, “In the winter of the same year (1405) it set out for voyages in the Pacific, including in its itinerary the Philippines, Java, Sumatra, Malaya, Ceylon, and Calicut on the west coast of India.” As much as I know, the sources of materials on Cheng Ho’s expeditions make no mention of Cheng’s call at the Philippines. How could Prof. Hsieh have included the Philippines in the itinerary? When I referred to the above mentioned sources, I found that Prof. Hsieh mistook Chan Cheng (占城) for an old name of 138฀ Hsu฀Yun-Ts’iao the Philippines. Chan Cheng was a Chinese name for Champa then in Ming Dynasty. It was called Lin-i (林邑), Chan-p’o (占婆) or Huan-wang (環王) in earlier Chinese dynastic chronicles. It was a Malay state in Indo-China Peninsula, but it was controlled by Indian immigrants. George Maspero of France had compiled a History of Champa in 1909. Referring to the Seventh Expedition, Prof. Hsieh writes, “This time Cheng left many tablet inscriptions and written records and so we know more of this expedition than of the others. The complement of 26,755 persons included soldiers, sailors, cooks, medical doctors, and carpenters. He left Nanking in July 1431 for Foochow. He waited there until the next year, when he voyaged as far west as the Red Sea and the coast of Africa, returning to China in July 1433.” My knowledge shows that...