The Yongle emperor, intent on reasserting Chinese supremacy, expands overland trade with Central Asia, and sponsors ambitious maritime expeditions to the West.

His fleet admiral Zheng He (Cheng Ho), a eunuch of Semu/Khwarezmian descent, embarks on a voyage to what the Chinese call "the Western Ocean" (Indian Ocean).

aimed at establishing tributary relations with Japan and several Southeast Asian kingdoms.

Over the next twenty-eight years, he will make the seven voyages collectively referred to as the travels of "Eunuch Sanbao to the Western Ocean" or "Zheng He to the Western Ocean.".

Zheng He's first voyage consists of a fleet of three hundred and seventeen ships holding almost twenty-eight thousand armed troops.

Many of these ships are mammoth nine-masted "treasure ships" which are by far the largest marine craft the world had yet seen.

His first voyage, from 1405 to 1407, will take his fleet to Champa, Java, Palembang, Malacca, Aru, Sumatra, Lambri, Ceylon, Kollam, Cochin, and Calicut.

(Gavin Menzies's book, 1421, asserts that Zheng He circumnavigated the globe and arrived in America in the fifteenth century before Ferdinand Magellan and Christopher Columbus.

His 1421 hypothesis is highly controversial and not accepted by mainstream scholars.)