Journey Back to the Beginning: Imagining Zheng He’s Voyages in the Late Ming

• In Event: Imaginary Journeys: Travels through Time and Space in Late Imperial Fiction

Abstract

The Record of the Journeys of the Eunuch Sanbao in the Western Seas (Sanbao taijian xiyang ji) is a highly fictionalized account of the voyages of the eunuch Zheng He (1371–1433) that incorporates supernatural elements. Though the novel is frequently read as a fantastical adventure story in the vein of Journey to the West, I consider it as an imaginary journey not only through space but also through time: Written in the late Ming, the novel depicts the formative years of the dynasty nearly two hundred years earlier. It casts the journeys of Zheng He as an attempt by the emperor to recover the lost imperial seals, reflecting contemporary literati anxiety over this missing symbol of legitimacy. Yet constrained by the reality of the lack of the seal in the Ming, the fictional search can only end in failure. The novel cleverly works its way out of this restriction through the use of irony, drawing attention to its own fictionality at the same time it depicts historical figures and events.

Author

• Scott Gregory, National University of Singapore