Chinese Discovery of America

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 09/22/2002 7:03:42 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
Bapopik at AOL.COM writes:

> About December 2001, someone lectured the Royal Geographic Society (a book
> will follow) about what he believed to be the pre-Columbian Chinese
disovery
> of America.  He thinks that it's clear that the Europeans borrowed from
> Chinese maps.
>     "Dalai"=ocean.  The Tibetans and the Chinese had many cultural
exchanges.
>  I somehow had the hope that some old book not burned, perhaps in Drepung (
> 1416), in Sera (1419), or here in Gyantse (1440), mentioned the Chinese
> voyages.
>     It would be important to Tibet, to China, to the United States, and to
> world history, but is probably beyond the scope of this tour.

a brief English-language bibliography, presented without comment, of the
voyage of the Buddhist missionary Hoei-Shin, who sailed from China in 499 AD
to a land called "Fusang" which may or may not have been Central America.

Charles Leland _Fusang_ New York, 1875
Edward P. Vining _An Inglorious Columbus_ New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts,
1885
Gordon Ekhold "Is American Indian Culture Asiatic?" Natural History Magazine,
October 1950.
Vilhjalmur Stefansson _Great Adventures and Explorations_ New York: Dial, 1952
Charles Michael Boland _They All Discovered America_ Garden City NY:
Doubleday and Company, 1962

>The Hard Yak Cafe is popular, but is not affiliated with the mentally
unstable
>yak restaurants (Mad Yak, Crazy Yak).

Not restaurants, but traditional means of transportation.  There are two such
Tibetan vehicles, the one that is drawn by yaks, and a different one in which
the passengers have to remain silent because it goes without saying.

                      - Jim Landau