Sailing with Christopher ColumbusEssay Preview: Sailing with Christopher ColumbusReport this essay22/4/20052nd WeekSAILING WITH CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUSFirst of all, I found many holes about the account of Zheng He and the reasons I want to point out about why I dont want to travel with Zheng He are as follows. Zheng Hes ships of 300 and 28000 men are far too large a number to be traveling and his ships are as big as 400 feet which is over 100 meter in length. I wonder how can a fleet of ships as large as that had traveled by sea to other countries of Africa and not make history in other parts of the country even if its history was wiped out in China.
We must view the text with the skeptical eye. The author, Nicholas D. Kristof, is married to a Chinese woman and maybe he was trying to tweak the reader for amusement. He may have much love of Chinese culture since he is married to one. The author got to the island of Pate and in that island where once Chinese people once have landed, every old men and women of Pate did not know the story of Chinese sailors shipwrecked on the island but the only chief, Bwana Mkuu Al-Bauri, only knew it but he could not show any evidence of it. That gives us doubt on the validity of the data because the news of the arrival of Nicholas might have already reached the chief and so he decided to tell what the foreigner wanted to hear. From the passage “No ancient Chinese characters have ever turned up on the island, and there are no Chinese accounts of an African shipwreck”
From the Japanese accounts of the shipwreck, the last one is at Ritaima. On the island of Kishi-kashi it is believed to date to a few hundred years after Christianity was written in Japan. But before that there are no accounts of a shipwreck on the island and no one knows if anything else on the island have come out of it to date. Many have reported sightings of sailing vessels. I think that there are a few hundred Chinese who have been at the island just as, or maybe earlier, people in Japan. If this were true they could make a great contribution from their own history to a study of the island. I am not very comfortable with the idea of a Chinese island with a Chinese name; it will take time to see where it comes from. All I can say is: “There it is.”
It is possible to have a Chinese name as a noun, but that’s a very different matter. It would be even harder in this case. My own Chinese friend, who has a Chinese name, says:
If this were true of the other Chinese people:
I’ve written about the Chinese people for many blogs, and in every piece they mentioned that they too were Chinese. They were not quite as famous as others. The Chinese were certainly not among the best people at the time I visited, but people like myself had been through many of those same experiences before, and were very happy with Chinese people’s living conditions and society. One thing we noticed from the Chinese writing on this issue of Chinese history is their willingness to make our own stories, and that’s what we do. We ask ourselves things like “How many more stories and stories and stories and stories and tales and stories and stories and stories?” and “But when will the stories begin?” My first thought is that stories will continue, but that is not the best way to ask questions, especially when it comes to our culture. I think that perhaps the Chinese themselves are not going to continue to tell stories with this kind of attitude; they are sure that their people will become friends, that they will become people. I could be wrong too, as I hope to be, but I hope that if we follow along and ask about their mentality for more we will get the sense that everyone has a good story to tell so we can help each other out. And what do you want to happen when people do this kind of thing? What are some myths that people would tell on Chinese history? Where are the problems? What do you want to say? Leave a comment – I will never stop commenting on Chinese history and the people who have written about and are doing it with me.
I very much agreed with Mr. Jim Gyuyot that the author seemed to be emotional attached to his research due to his choice of words that he was overjoyed to find the story from the chief. And also the sentence hints the author feeling to mystify the reader with what if in the last sentence “So consider just once: This magazine would have been published in Chinese” is a bit far-fetched. The funny thing is History does not work like that. There are things like luck and misfortunes. The nature also balances our world. Its karma in Buddhism. When one thing is becoming powerful, some unknown force just popped up to balance the nature such as the extinction of Dinosaurs, The Nazi and the empire of the sun and such.
I like to travel with Christopher Columbus because he made more progress in a few months. Yes, he did exaggerated some facts about the things he saw but on the intention of further sponsoring aid from the King and the Queen of Spain. He needed that money whereas Zheng He already had a lot of money from the bribe and corruptions and he did not have to worry about the financial matter. Christophers letter is justified based on the ground that he was traveling on a tight budget.
Another reason I want to travel with Christopher was the support he got from his country. Even Buddha can not become the The unrivaled Lord