Zheng He: A Private Life

1433, Nanjing

The order was sound. It remains sound. That must be fixed first, before clerks, scholars, and physicians are allowed to arrange me among decline, caution, and closing ledgers. We went outward because the empire required distance to be made visible; distance was made visible by scale; scale required repetition; repetition required sequence; and sequence, once established, ought to have carried itself forward without needing to be argued anew before every desk in Nanjing. Yet here I sit within sight of the southern walls while the river moves with more freedom than I am now permitted, and men who have never heard a foreign harbour fall quiet at the sight of our banners speak of timber, grain, restraint, and balance as though the matter were merely one of subtraction properly applied. My body is less reliable than it was. That is secondary. What cannot be allowed is the rearrangement now underway, by which the voyages are first delayed in language, then reduced in procedure, and at last treated as if they belonged to a season rather than to policy. If I do not set the sequence down while I still command a brush, others will interrupt it at the wrong point and call the interruption wisdom.