This is a fabulously fun book.

I bought this book, just after reading 1491 – which I will write about tomorrow – which described what the Americas were like before Columbus encountered Hispaniola.

1421 describes what’s happening on the other end of the world: China.

When I was in school, we didn’t study China much. When I got to high school, China showed up in Non-Western history, a course in which we didn’t really study much of the “non-West” and certainly didn’t study history. The way this course told it, before China became communist, there was a big empty space filled with emperors building walls to keep out the barbarians… and then suddenly everyone in China was a communist and that was bad and they were trying to take over the world and we had to stand up for their democratic neighbors, and protect them. That was kind of the theme of the course: everyone outside the “West” (Europe and North America) was at risk of becoming a communist and that was bad and we had to stand up against that, even if it meant killing everyone.

Based on how things are going, I suspect this is how Chinese history is still taught, although now we also say that they are also invading our internet and TikTok and that’s not good either.

1421 provides a different perspective. Reading this book opens a window into Chinese history that many of us know nothing about: a period when Chinese ships explored the world, trading with India and the Middle East and Africa.

What stuck with me about this picture of history is how quickly it all ended: China had been a “closed” country before it opened up to exploration. The period described in the book lasted only a few years – and then it was quickly over. When the navy returned, according to Menzies, the ships were dismantled, the commander banished to obscurity, and China became “closed” again. That’s it: done with exploring the world outside China. It’s as if the Enterprise had completed their five-year voyage to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations – and then Star Fleet said, “Okay, thanks, that’s enough. Destroy all the starships and put up the photon barrier to keep everyone from those civilizations out. We’re staying home now.”

Menzies paints a clear picture of what Chinese culture was like: the bureaucracy, the politics, the customs. The characters he describes are vivid and the way he tells the story is compelling. This is a quick and easy read – and really fun to read, too.

However. The subtitle of this book is “The Year China Discovered America” and I don’t feel Menzies makes a strong case for that. Oh, it’s fun to read his theories and go along on his journey. But I didn’t find his premise to be any more credible than Graham Hancock’s theories about the Arc of the Covenant. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and I don’t see that evidence here.

In fact, my copy has a little starburst that says, “See it on PBS” – but I believe that PBS actually did a show debunking the author’s historical claims. And the book is certainly light on footnotes. But it is still incredibly fun to read and could serve as a springboard to reading actual Chinese history.

So read, enjoy, learn – and engage your healthy skeptic.