NOTES ON ADMIRAL ZHENG HE

Zheng He

The Ming dynasty was the 3rd Chinese dynasty and the emperors wanted to be successful and knowledgeable, just like the first dynasty 200 years before Christ. They started the Great Wall and they wanted China stronger and better organized.

Zhu Di was the second emperor of the Ming dynasty. He repaired and extended the Great Wall. His father had kicked the Mongols out.

Zhu Di was very ambitious and proud of his heritage and the knowledge of sciences that the Chinese had collected for thousands of years about astronomy, metallurgy, medicine, and many other things, and he was curious to find out about the world and to do business with foreigners.

He spent a lot of money moving the capital city from Nanjing to Beijing, building a bigger army, the Grand Canal for irrigation of the rice fields and building the Great Wall as well as the Forbidden City.

He also built the biggest fleet of ships ever to explore the world and to do business with countries like Indonesia, India, Burma, Arabia and African countries as well.

The business was usually done peacefully and many ambassadors of different countries travelled to China to pay respect to the emperor.

In the end, Zhu Di got old and had spent too much money and after he died, China was closed to foreigners and business with them stopped completely.

All the voyages of Zheng He over more than 20 years were forgotten about because it was thought to be embarrassing, but actually Zheng He and his other admirals had travelled the whole world and discovered America long before Christopher Columbus.

Written by Ricky Albert (Einstein) April 2008 (as representative of lots of very good note-taking skills in Year 4)

This was part of our note taking work to help us prepare for the future when we will have to be good (even expert )at taking notes and reporting.