Faculty Greetings

Greetings from Our Retired Faculty

 In another year we will turn the page in our history to a new millennium.  Before we get overwhelmed by jets, rockets, spaceships, flying saucers, GPS, WTO, etc., let us take another nostalgic look."Alarm spread quickly through the East African town of Malindi. Across the sea, beyond the coral reef, strange storm clouds appeared on the horizon.  Fishermen hastily dragged their outriggers to safety on dry land.As the clouds gathered, it suddenly became clear that they were not clouds at all but sails - sails piled upon sails, too numerous to count, on giant ships with large dragon’s eyes painted on the bows," described one historian,  "When they came near, the colored flags on the masts blocked the sun, and the loud pounding and beating of drums on board shook heaven and earth.Had so many men and so many ships come in peace, or had they come to make the citizens of Malindi subjects of the Son of Heaven?"The year was 1418."  

For a quarter of a century between 1405 and 1433, the eunuch admiral Zheng He’s fleets, the largest one numbered 317 ships and 28,000 men, continued to roam the waters of East Indies, Sri Lanka and East Africa.Then suddenly all overseas trade came to a mysterious halt.  For the remaining 200 years of Ming Dynasty, building and repair of oceangoing ships were forbidden and punishable by death.What had happened?  Did the conservatives take control and vote out their WTO?  Did the liberals manage to push through a disarmament agenda?Or did the porcelain lobby bribe through an ambitious domestic economic policy?  How would history look if this gigantic sea power had been allowed to develop?  

In 1498, Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and landed in East Africa.The natives told him tales of "white ghosts" who wore silk and had visited long ago in large ships that measured five times in length of his own ships and having as many as nine masts.These two navigators from East and West missed each other by just 65 years.How would our history look today if they had met in Africa?  Would there still have been a celebration of the return of Macao?(Paul Chow)