Were the Chinese the first to go around the world? Ever since we arrived in Shanghai, for 15 days, we began analyzing the theory that the Chinese were the first to go around the world. We visited museums dedicated to the great navigator Zheng He and interviewed three scholars:

- Shi Pin, from Shanghai Maritime University’s Institute of Marine Culture and Shanghai Zhen He Research director
- Zhou Ru Yan, teacher in the Zheng He Research Center
- Zhu Jian Qiu, teacher and vice-director of the Zheng He Research Center for over 20 years to study the voyages of this great navigator.

We also did an interesting interview with Liu Gang, attorney and owner of a board of over 250 lawyers in Beijing, that came specially for our interview. As a hobby, he seeks relics in bookstores and antique stores and considers himself a curiosity researcher and amateur astronomer. A few years back, he found a map dated from 1763 on an antique store that was based on another, made in 1418.

These interviews were very important for us since we’re studying the alledged trip around the world done by the Chinese in 1421.

The three scholars base themselves on maps and official records recovered and put on exhibition in the three museums we visited. They state that admiral Zheng He and his gigantic fleet sailed through Asia towards India, through the Persian Gulf and arriving on the coast of Africa, where you can find Mozambique.

They say there is no record of a transoceanic trip around the world. They’ve already been with Gavin Menzies and recognize the great work he did with the book 1421 – The Year China Discovered the World, but debate his theory.

I asked if there was any possibility of the emperor having a secret plan and sending fleets on a mission beyond the African continent. They replied that, if there were, we’d have evidence from Zheng He. On his way back to China, from the supposed trip around the world, he’d have documented and divulged the trip.

Admiral Zheng He always had express orders form the emperor to sail through the seas that were studied before leaving port. Also, if there were to have a trip around the world, Chinese sailors would tell something, as it happened on the time of the great Portuguese and Spanish navigations, and not only just through a scribe.

They explained that the emperor had to take good care of his country, that was always in constant wars and didn’t have any ambitions for such a trip nor such a great fleet. The trips that the Chinese did weren’t aimed at stablishing new colonies, they focused on creating new commerce routes, by selling silk and ceramics that were very valuable back then. Unlike the Portuguese and Spanish, that imposed their religion wherever they arrived.

Gavin Menzies’s theory dictates that the Chinese were skilled sailors and knew their way around the sea through the stars. With that many ships, why wouldn’t they go beyond Africa?

How can the map made in 1418 be explained, since it shows the globe with the poles and Australia and New Zealand. The scholars believe that map isn’t real.

That was the map Gavin Menzies presented as the most promising of his evidence, that the academic community didn’t accept, which was made in 1763, three centuries after the last Chinese expedition in the 15th century.

Liu Gang told us that he analyzed the paper in New Zealand and has a report that the paper is in fact from 1763, but insists that the inscriptions and the type of writing on the map point towards another one, older, supposedly from 1418. According to him, who defends Menzies’s theory, the Chinese could’ve been to even more places that the author suggests.

We will continue investigating and will be interviewing more people in Hong Kong, Singapore and also South Africa. On our way back to Brazil, we will be able to talk with more authority on the matter and give our version of Gavin Menzies’s theory.