

Recovering China's Past on Kenya's Coast - cwan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704679204575646752730959466.html

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jfb
The treasure fleets were going to be the subject of my thesis, had I stayed in
school. I find the idea of finding fourteenth century artifacts from China on
(say) Zanzibar one of the coolest things imaginable.

I also really like that the ships were abandoned. The cultural turn and
dynastic politics required are also really fascinating. The treasure fleets
play a role in Kim Stanley Robinson's _Years Of Rice And Salt_ , which is a
counterfactual history book that was right in my wheelhouse, much more
interesting than German Zombie Nazis take over Mars or what have you.

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bediger
Studying Zheng He and the reasons for China's deliberate withdrawal from
exploration and the outer world seem particularly relevent at this time,
especially in the USA.

The USA is apparently giving up on manned space flight, we haven't put a human
outside earth orbit since 1972, and we're trying to lock down the current
economic status quo with copyrights, patents, and "intellectual property". The
USA, or at least its current economic elite, has given up on the future.

