5 June 2024 Royal Geographical Society (Hong Kong)

We are pleased to announce that on 5 June 2024, Dr Sheng-Wei Wang will give a talk at the Royal Geographical Society (Hong Kong), about her new book, Chinese Global Exploration in the pre-Columbian era: Evidence from an Ancient World Map.

During this exciting event, Dr. Wang discusses how early the Chinese explored the world, outside of Asia. She also explores whether the Treasure Fleets, led by Admiral Zheng He, might have discovered many parts of the world before Christopher Columbus.

While Christopher Columbus discovered America for the western world, and Europe ushered in the Age of Discovery, there is an ongoing debate on the unknown areas depicted in Western maps from that period and earlier. There is agreement among scholars that certain areas seem to have been mapped out prior to the arrival of Western explorers, which has been attributed to various reasons.

Dr Wang presents her analysis and findings based on an ancient world map, known as Kunyu Wanguo Quantu in Chinese, translated as the “Complete Geographical Map of All Kingdoms of the World”. The map was first printed by Italian missionary, Matteo Ricci in 1602, and has been purported to be of entirely European origin, based on his former maps which he had brought to China in 1582.

Dr Wang presents new insights on Pre-Columbian world history and Chinese global exploration, moving away from the norm of the studies of geography and cartography. Through her methodologies, she believes that Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica, Africa, Europe and the Americas might have been explored by the Chinese before the Europeans.

Please see below links for further details on this exciting event:

https://us15.campaign-archive.com/?e=__test_email__&u=feb496c9a417113e6aff53e82&id=72a48c0fe1

https://rgshk.org.hk/rgs-events/all-events-past/item/2513-chinese-global-exploration-in-the-pre-columbian-era-evidence-from-an-ancient-world-map.html

For details on the purchase of Dr Wang’s new book, please click here.