"[6] Zheng He was a great-great-great-grandson of Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, who served in the administration of the Mongol Empire and was the governor of Yunnan during the early Yuan dynasty.

[13] In his capacity as Admiral, Zheng He had an epitaph engraved in honour of his father, composed by the Minister of Rites Li Zhigang on 1 June 1405, which was Duanwu Festival.

[12] Ma received a proper education at Beiping, which he would not have had if he had been placed in the imperial capital of Nanjing as the Hongwu Emperor, the father of Zhu Di, did not trust eunuchs and believed that it was better to keep them illiterate.

[24] The Hongwu Emperor purged and exterminated much of the original Ming leadership and gave his enfeoffed sons more military authority, especially those in the north, like the Prince of Yan.

In the midst of the rushing waters it happened that, when there was a hurricane, suddenly a divine lantern was seen shining at the masthead, and as soon as that miraculous light appeared the danger was appeased, so that even in the peril of capsizing one felt reassured and that there was no cause for fear.

[31] During the Chinese New Year on 11 February 1404, the Yongle Emperor conferred the surname "Zheng" to Ma He, because he had distinguished himself defending the city reservoir against imperial forces in 1399.

In 1424, Zheng He traveled to Palembang in Sumatra to confer an official seal[note 2] and letter of appointment upon Shi Jisun, who was placed in the office of Pacification Commissioner.

[53] Zheng He's fleets visited Brunei,[56] Java, Siam (Thailand), Southeast Asia, India, the Horn of Africa, and Arabia,[57] dispensing and receiving goods along the way.

[55] Zheng He presented gifts of gold, silver, porcelain, and silk, and in return, China received such novelties as ostriches, zebras, camels, and ivory from the Swahili Coast.

[61] The Daxuexi Alley Mosque in Xi'an has a stele dating to January 1523, inscribed with Zheng He's fourth maritime voyage to Tianfang, Arabian Peninsula.

That fact, along with the use of a more-than-abundant number of crew members who were regular military personnel, leads some to speculate that the expeditions may have been geared at least partially at spreading China's power through expansion.

[62] During the Three Kingdoms Period, the king of Wu sent a 20-year diplomatic mission led by Zhu Ying and Kang Tai along the coast of Asia, which reached as far as the Eastern Roman Empire.

[63] After centuries of disruption, the Song dynasty restored large-scale maritime trade from China in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans and reached as far as the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa.

The General Survey of the Ocean Shores (瀛涯勝覽, Yíngyá Shènglǎn), composed by the translator Ma Huan in 1416, gives very detailed accounts of his observations of people's customs and lives in the ports that they visited.

[68] He also waged a land war against the Kingdom of Kotte on Ceylon, and he made displays of military force when local officials threatened his fleet in Arabia and East Africa.

Xuande believed his father's decision to halt the voyages had been meritorious and thus "there would be no need to make a detailed description of his grandfather's sending Zheng He to the Western Ocean.

"[attribution needed][49] The voyages "were contrary to the rules stipulated in the Huang Ming Zuxun" (皇明祖訓), the dynastic foundation documents laid down by the Hongwu Emperor:[49] Some far-off countries pay their tribute to me at much expense and through great difficulties, all of which are by no means my own wish.

[47] Upon Zheng He's death and his faction's fall from power, his successors sought to minimize him in official accounts, along with continuing attempts to destroy all records related to the Jianwen Emperor or the manhunt to find him.

[79] Niccolò de' Conti, a contemporary of Zheng He, was also an eyewitness of ships in Southeast Asia, claiming to have seen five-masted junks weighing about 2,000 vegetes, that is Venetian butt.

The most grandiose claims for Zheng He's 1405 fleet are entirely based on a calculation derived from an account that was written three centuries later and was accepted as fact by one modern writer; rejected by numerous naval experts.

[89] The claims that the Chinese treasure ships reached such size is disputed because other 17th century Ming records stated that European East Indiamen and galleons were 30, 40, 50, and 60 zhang (90, 120, 150, and 180 m) in length.

The Treasure Shipyard, where Zheng He's fleet is believed to have been built in the Ming Dynasty, once consisted of thirteen basins (based on a 1944 map), most of which have now been covered by the construction of buildings in the 20th century.

[100] Although some have seen that as a conspiracy seeking to eliminate memories of the voyages,[102] it is likely that the records were dispersed throughout several departments and the expeditions, unauthorized by and in fact counter to the injunctions of the dynastic founder, presented a kind of embarrassment to the dynasty.

Further, in 1449, Mongolian cavalry ambushed a land expedition personally led by the Zhengtong Emperor at Tumu Fortress, less than a day's march from the walls of the capital.

[107] In the 1950s, historians such as John Fairbank and Joseph Needham popularized the idea that after Zheng He's voyages China turned away from the seas due to the Haijin edict and was isolated from European technological advancements.

[109][110] Richard von Glahn, a UCLA professor of Chinese history, commented that most treatments of Zheng He present him wrongly, "offer counterfactual arguments," and "emphasize China's missed opportunity" by focusing on failures, instead of accomplishments.

In Vernor Vinge's 1999 science fiction novel A Deepness in the Sky, an interstellar society of commercial traders in human space are named the Qeng Ho, after the admiral.

In the People's Republic of China, 11 July is Maritime Day (中国航海日, Zhōngguó Hánghǎi Rì) and is devoted to the memory of Zheng He's first voyage.

In 2015, Emotion Media Factory dedicated a special multimedia show "Zheng He is coming" for amusement park Romon U-Park (Ningbo, China).

Like her namesake, she serves as a goodwill ambassador for China, becoming the first Chinese Navy ship to visit the United States in 1989 and completing a circumnavigation of the globe in 2012.