Review of Gavin Menzies. 1421, the Year China Discovered
America. New York: Morrow, 2003. xxiii + 552 pp., with
appendixes, select bibliography, and index. $27.95.  Can Early
Chinese Maritime Expedition Shed Light on Lehi's Voyage to the
New World?  Reviewed by John A. Tvedtness  Various ancient
Chinese texts suggest that small groups of explorers may have
reached the New World. The most well-known such voyage is that
of the Buddhist monk Hwui Shan, in the mid-fifth century A.D.
But it is a series of fifteenth-century voyages that has more
recently become an object of investigation.  From 1405 to 1433,
a Chinese admiral named Zheng He led seven expeditions of
maritime explorers to various parts of the world. Based on maps
and contemporary documents, it seems that Zheng's fleet of eight
hundred vessels may have circumnavigated the globe and even
discovered America seven decades before Christopher Columbus. In
his controversial book, 1421, the Year China Discovered America,
Gavin Menzies describes not only the