Nexus - 0207 - New Times Magazine-pages

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Another map, dating back 2,000 years and drawn on porcelain, exists in Taiwan. It shows the southern coastline of New Guinea, the east coast of Australia as far south as the Melboume area and the crude outline of Tasmania. Another porcelain map has since been found in China - dating to 1477, it not only describes much of the American west coast, but some Pacific Islands; including the North and South Islands of New Zealand, Australia and New Guinea and the islands of south-east Asia and the coast of China. Another map, uncovered in Peiping earlier this century, describes the great south land of "Chui Hiao”, drawn by a Chinese trepang captain in 1426. In 1584 the Jesuit missionary, Father Mateo Ricci, during a lengthy stay in China, was given a copy of a large world map, the original at least centuries older. The portion dealing with the islands of south-east Asia includes the unmistakable outlines of New Guinea and Australia. In the late 1940's, a discovery proving ancient Chinese voyages into the west Pacific region was made by a team of anthropologists while researching in the Yasawa Islands to the west of Fiji. The men found an ancient copper mine cut into a hillside. Lettering surrounding rocks they discovered numerous centuries-old Chinese letterings. Ffhis myslery aboriginal rock carving, found in 1970 near the watedrou at Berowra Natives on the island were later found to possess Asian racial near Sydney, has been called the "Dancing Chinaman”, from the figure's pose, and the| features. They say the island was visited by a race of "yellow garments depicted which are reminiscent of those of ancient Chinese seafarers. Did| men” long before the coming of the Europeans. aborigines depict a pre-Cook visit to the Sydney district by Chinese mariners centuries before European exploration of these shores? Huang-ti (who instigated construction of the Great Wall), obsessed with finding the "magic fungus of immortality", dispatched an enormous expedition of some thousands of men and women, including several thousand children, in an armada of huge junks, to the fabled lands of Peng Lai (Java), Fong Zhang (New Guinea) and Ying Zhou (another ancient Chinese name for Australia), the "great golden land”. This enormous expedition of mushroom-pickers was never heard of again and Qin Shih Huang-ti, unable to obtain the “magic fungus" of immortality died in 210BC, at the age of 49. The Chinese appear to have been wary when navigating Torres Strait. Many of their expeditions through the Strait came to grief due to the dreaded Torres Strait Islanders, who, until carly this century, were head-hunting cannibals. In fact, the islanders regarded Chinese as being just about Number One for flavour as they found them nowhere near as salty as white men! Ancient relics are further proof of Chinese visits to our shores. In 1948, fragments of Ming Period (14th Century) blue and white porcelain were dug up on Winchelsea Island, north-west of Groote Eylandt; and a large Chinese copper um of this age was wnnarfoet if) Ambon Leet! soene ee {istorian/archacologist Rex Gilroy, holding the carved stone head of the ancient In 1961 a 2,000 year old vase bearing a crude map of the _|chinese goddess fhe Lin, ie 1980 by a woman from ancient aahanicts aft Australian east coast was discovered in Hong Kong. beachfront hillside outside Milton, on the NSW south coust.. Thirty-five years ago, a jade Buddha was unearthed near Cooktown in far north Quecnsland, deep below ancient soil deposits. Continued on page 65 NEXUS¢19 APRIL-MAY 1992 The men found an ancient copper mine cut into a hillside.