Luo Maodeng · 1597 · sea

Luo Maodeng's 1597 novel, a sprawling fantastical retelling of Admiral Zheng He's Ming treasure-fleet voyages of the early 1400s. In the novel, the eunuch admiral Sanbao leads a vast armada into the Western Ocean accompanied by Daoist and Buddhist sorcerers who do battle with sea demons and foreign kings. Beneath the magic lies the real route of the largest wooden fleet the world had then seen, which carried tens of thousands of men from China across the Indian Ocean to the coast of Africa, decades before the Portuguese.

1. 1
   Nanjing

   The treasure fleet, hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of men, sets out down the Yangtze.

2. 2
   Champa

   South along the coast to Champa, in what is now Vietnam.

3. 3
   Java

   And the spice island of Java.

4. 4
   Malacca

   To Malacca on the strait, the fleet's great forward base.

5. 5
   Semudera

   And Semudera, on the northern tip of Sumatra.

6. 6
   Ceylon

   Across the bay to Ceylon.

7. 7
   Calicut

   And Calicut, the pepper port of the Malabar coast.

8. 8
   Hormuz

   West across the ocean to Hormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.

9. 9
   Aden

   Down to Aden, at the gate of the Red Sea.

10. 10
    Mogadishu

    And across to the Somali coast, Mogadishu and Brava.

11. 11
    Malindi

    As far as Malindi, on the coast of Africa, the fleet's farthest reach.