I`ve been meticulously re-doing my Aztec Empire timeline, and I`ve had a few questions: How much did China know about Europe in the early 1400s? Did they know enough to want to establish a sea route to the continent? One of the ideas I had was that the Chinese create a huge fleet of ships for the purpose of sailing east toward Europe, bypassing Africa and the Indian subcontinent (This is pretty much what Columbus wanted), and eventually hitting the Aztecs in about 1407. Is the idea of Chinese sailing to Europe plausible?