The Year 1421 AD

公元1421年. Gōngyuán 1421 nián.

The explosive and bestselling true story of the extraordinary sea voyage that rewrote history…

On 8 March 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. The ships, some nearly five hundred feet long, were under the command of Emperor Zhu Di’s loyal eunuch admirals. Their mission was ‘to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas’ and unite the world in Confucian harmony.
Their journey would last for over two years and take them around the globe but by the time they returned home, China was beginning its long, self-imposed isolation from the world it had so recently embraced. And so the great ships were left to rot and the records of their journey were destroyed. And with them, the knowledge that the Chinese had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan, reached America seventy years before Columbus, and Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook…

改变历史的非凡海上航行的爆炸性和畅销真实故事……

1421 年 3 月 8 日，世界上最大的舰队从中国启航。这些船只有些近五百英尺长，由朱棣忠诚的宦官提督指挥。他们的使命是“一路行至天涯海角，收蛮夷之贡”，以儒家的和谐统一天下。

他们的旅程将持续两年多，并带他们环游世界，但当他们返回家园时，中国开始与它最近拥抱的世界长期、自我隔离。就这样，大船任其腐烂，他们的航行记录也被销毁了。和他们一起，中国人比麦哲伦早一个世纪环球航行的知识，比哥伦布早七十年到达美国，比库克早三百五十年到达澳大利亚……

Let us pause and think here.

So many countries visited by sea, and in two and a half years? Wait a minute there.

让我们在这里停下来想一想。
在两年半的时间里，海上访问了那么多国家？在这里,停下来想一想。

The result of fifteen years research, 1421 is Gavin Menzies’ enthralling account of the voyage of the Chinese fleet, the remarkable discoveries he made and the persuasive evidence to support them: ancient maps, precise navigational knowledge, astronomy and the surviving accounts of Chinese explorers and the later European navigators as well as the traces the fleet left behind - from sunken junks to the votive offerings left by the Chinese sailors wherever they landed, giving thanks to Shao Lin, goddess of the sea.
Already hailed as a classic, this is the story of an extraordinary journey of discovery that not only radically alters our understanding of world exploration but also rewrites history itself. [Source: https://www.penguin.co.nz/books/1421-9780553815221 https://www.penguin.co.nz/books/1421-9780553815221 ]

十五年研究的成果，1421 年是加文·孟席斯 (Gavin Menzies) 对中国舰队航行的引人入胜的描述，他所取得的非凡发现以及支持这些发现的有说服力的证据：古代地图、精确的航海知识、天文学和中国探险家的幸存记述以及后来的欧洲航海家和船队留下的痕迹——从沉没的帆船到中国水手登陆的地方留下的供品，感谢海神少林。
已经被誉为经典，这是一个非凡的发现之旅的故事，它不仅从根本上改变了我们对世界探索的理解，而且改写了历史本身。 [来源：https://www.penguin.co.nz/books/1421-9780553815221 ]

The Author: Gavin Menzies is a retired Royal Navy Submarine Commanding Officer, born in 1937 in China, where he spent the first two years of his life. He joined the Royal Navy in 1953 and served in submarines from 1959 to 1970. As a junior officer he sailed the world in the wake of Columbus, Dias, Cabral and Vasco da Gama. When in command of HMS Rorqual (1968-1970), he sailed the routes pioneered by Magellan and Captain Cook. Since leaving the Royal Navy, he has returned to China and the Far East many times, and in the course of researching the book “1421” he has visited 120 countries, over 900 museums and libraries and every major sea port of the late Middle Ages.

作者：Gavin Menzies 是一位退休的皇家海军潜艇指挥官，1937 年出生于中国，他在那里度过了他生命的前两年。他于 1953 年加入皇家海军，并于 1959 年至 1970 年在潜艇服役。作为一名初级军官，他跟随哥伦布、迪亚斯、卡布拉尔和瓦斯科达伽马环游世界。在指挥 HMS Rorqual（1968-1970）时，他航行了麦哲伦和库克船长开辟的航线。离开皇家海军后，他多次回到中国和远东，在研究《1421》这本书的过程中，他走访了 120 个国家、900 多个博物馆和图书馆以及中世纪晚期的每个主要海港.

Gavin Menzies died on the twelfth of April 2020, age: 72 years old. His second book, “1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy” extended his discovery hypothesis to the European continent. In his third book, “The Lost Empire of Atlantis ” Menzies claims that Atlantis did exist, in the form of the Minoan civilisation, and that it maintained a global seaborne empire extending to the shores of America and India, millennia before actual contact in the age of Discovery.

Gavin Menzies 于 2020 年 4 月 12 日去世，年龄：72 岁。他的第二本书《1434：壮丽的中国舰队驶往意大利的那一年》将他的发现假设扩展到了欧洲大陆。在他的第三本书《失落的亚特兰蒂斯帝国》中，孟席斯声称亚特兰蒂斯确实存在，以米诺斯文明的形式存在，并且它维持着一个延伸到美洲和印度海岸的全球海上帝国，比与美洲大陆实际接触早了几千年。