This is the second part of the story of ZhengHe. There's a park that has a huge statue of him on a boat with water spraying up on the boat to make it look like water.
Part 2
Thankfully, I made it through those two weeks of training. They were two of the hardest weeks of my life! However, those of us that made it through became great friends and worked together like a team on the ship. We started walking to the place where the ship was, in another city that was by the sea. It took us a good few weeks to get there.
Once we got there, many of us said “Wow” because this was the first time we had ever seen such a big ship! It was huge! It had four decks and could have up to three hundred people on the ship at any time, but usually it had two hundred to two hundred fifty people.
We sang songs and talked a lot while we did our chores and jobs on the ship. One thing we talked about was ourselves, our families, and our leader: Zhenghe. It was at this time that I heard more about his story. He was born as Ma He to a Muslim family who lived in Yunnan and had one older brother and four sisters! I remember thinking how fun his childhood must’ve been having such a big family! I myself only had one brother and one sister.
Later he moved to Nanjing where he worked for the Prince of Yan. It seems that he enjoyed his time working for the Prince. It was during this time that he was able to go to school and learn a lot about a lot of different things. They say that if he had stayed in Yunnan, he might not have ever had the chance to have a good education like he got in Nanjing. Nanjing was the capital of China at the time. He also was called Sanbao at the time, which had something to do with three jewels, a Buddhist name. When I heard this, I thought, “Wow, this guy has had three different names in his life? Mahe, Sanbao, and Zhenghe.” It made me glad that I only had one name!
When I first started working on the ship, it was the second time that Zhenghe went on a big trip. This time were were going South, maybe even to go around to where a place called India was. All of us were excited because this was the first time many of us had ever left Yunnan or our country before. It took us what seemed like a long time to get there, but we weren’t alone. There were about fifty other ships going with us. Ours was one of the biggest ships and Zhenghe himself was on our ship. When we finally got to the first place we were going to, I was surprised to walk around and see people that I couldn’t understand. Their language, clothes, and food were all so different! We ended up going to a lot of places that first trip I went on. Since then, I’ve been on at least two other trips.
The last trip we went on we saw a lot of people with dark skin color. Their clothes were beautiful and colorful and the animals we saw were crazy! We saw an animal that looked like a white horse with black stripes on it. They said this animal was called a Zebra. We also saw an animal with a really long neck and spots on it, which I’m told is a Giraffe. We brought back some of these with us to China and everyone thought that these animals were great. They, like me before this, had never see any animals like them before!
I’ve been told that we’re going on another big trip in a few months. Generally, each of these trips takes from a few months to over a year. They’re saying that this trip might even take up to two years and that there might be more than one hundred ships coming with us! I wonder if I’ll be on the same ship as Zhenghe again or a different one. Sometimes I’m on the same ship, the big ship, and sometimes I’m on a smaller one. I like to be on the big ship because it’s more exciting. The big ship is always the first ship to go and being on the same ship as Zhenghe is really cool.
Epilogue: Although the story about this sailor isn’t true, Zhenghe was a real person and one of the great explorers China has ever had. Zhenghe (1371-1433 or 1435) took seven trips to different countries to explore, trade, and let more of the world know about China. It’s said that when he took his first trip, there were thousands of sailors and up to three hundred ships! He was supposed to bring back treasures for the Emperor. These trips were such a big deal that they started a special school in Nanjing for people to learn other languages to go on the ships and work as translators once they got to the other countries on the ships. Zhenghe died on his seventh and last trip of unknown causes. He never made it back to China.
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