Show Notes
It’s just two guys talking China's naval history. In this episode, David and Jeremiah dig into the story of Zheng He, the 15th-century admiral who took China's treasure fleets halfway around the world as Western Europe was just starting to figure out ocean navigation.
Here's a Muslim eunuch who went from prisoner to running the emperor's treasure fleets. The man brought giraffes home as diplomatic gifts and offered up Sri Lankan kings as trophies to his boss. His fleets dwarfed anything Europe had, yet China wasn't really interested in claiming territory, just showing up, trading, and reminding everyone who ran the seas. Then Beijing killed the whole program. Just like that. Done.
Why'd they stop? That's the question. Because when China bailed on blue-water sailing, Portugal and Spain filled the gap. Different game plan entirely.
Flash forward to 2025, David is in Addis Ababa this month watching Chinese construction projects in Ethiopia and he's drawing lines between Zheng He's trade missions and today's Belt and Road. Same waters, same connections, five centuries apart.
What can a eunuch, a giraffe, and a fleet of enormous ships can teach us about the history of globalization?
More from Barbarians at the Gate
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David and Jeremiah are back together again in Beijing. Recording from Palace Moser, the two get weirdly nostalgic and compare notes on what has changed in the 20+ years (Jeremiah) and 40+ years (David) since they first moved to China’s capital. They ask whether students coming to China today are getting the same experience as previous generations of study-abroad students or if it’s the curse of the sinologist that every newcomer since Marco Polo has had to listen to some old-timer expat talk about how it was so much better before.
Two older gentlemen with expanding waistlines, staggering daddy issues, and a shared love of firing military brass meet in DC this week. And right on cue, the pundits leap forward to pontificate on the most important issues facing Sino-US relations today: What is Xi Jinping’s title in English? Many bytes and keystrokes are spent in social media wars between those who insist that Xi Jinping be called General Secretary and those who feel that such pedantry is ideologically loaded panda poop.
Mao Zedong died on September 9, 1976. Fifty years later, Jeremiah and David compare notes on a mostly quiet anniversary. Jeremiah reports that there were enough tributes to beat the over/under, but David argues that the Party would still prefer to keep things as ritualistic as possible. Mao is still dead. We will all bow. And moving on.
China’s last emperor (Puyi), his empress (Wanrong), and concubine (Wenxiu) spent two years sequestered in the Forbidden City before their expulsion in 1924. Around them were holdover dowagers, scheming eunuchs, corrupt officials, and two foreign teachers of English. Many people know Puyi’s tutor, Reginald Johnston, either from Johnston’s memoir, Twilight in the Forbidden City, or from Peter O’Toole’s portrayal in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Puyi biopic, The Last Emperor. But it is Wanrong’s tutor, the young American Isabel Ingram, and her letters that are at the heart of our guest’s new book about these pivotal two years in Chinese history.