alternatehistory.com

Well, this would seem to be my first post on this wonderful forum, so I shall start off with a simple 'Hello!'

Great, now that that's out of the way, to business:

I had heard about this recent discovery from a friend of mine about ancient Chinese anchor-stones were found off the coast of California. I was unable to find the article he was talking about, but stumbled just now on this CNN article, about a book.
http://articles.cnn.com/2003-01-13/entertainment/1421_1_gavin-menzies-zhu-di-forbidden-city?_s=PM:SHOWBIZ
The book is called 1421:The Year China Discovered America and focuses around this map the author found while researching the Great Wall (completed in 1421) of Carribean Islands. I have not read the book, but think that this would be a great TL to expand upon.

The story goes (from what it says in the article) like this: In the year of 1421, emperor Zhu Di dispatched a fleet of about 800 treasure ships and junks westward to return ambassadors who had witnessed the Forbidden City's inauguration to their home countries, and-- as a secondary goal-- to explore, map and bring back tribute from new lands. Marker stones (marked with a variety of Asian languages of the day) were found by the author all across the globe, in addition to sunken Chinese junks in the New World from pre-Columbus (proved by Carbon-14 Dating &c.) Also, according to the records of the first Europeans in America, they found Chinese chickens, rice, Chinese porcelain and jade and Chinese-speaking peoples everywhere from Mexico to Arkansas to California.

EDIT: This man's research is probably faulty and untrue, but it is still a reasonably plausible scenario, and so a good foundation to start an Alternate History.

So, it seems as though these Chinese explorers did little more than land, take a look around, map and sail home, but what if they had stayed, at least in Calfornia, and established settlements, like those made by the Norse in the Canadian Atlantic Provinces? Would these Chinese explorers been scared away by the native peoples, like the Norse? Or would they have created trade with them and developed large cities. Maybe the Chinese would eventually send news of this New World to Europe, and an immigration boom would begin in America.

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MY INITIAL IDEA FOR THE SHAPE OF THIS TL:
Alright, so assuming they DID in fact stay in America, they would have to send word home to China. The easiest way, geographically, would be to just go across the Pacific, but had these explorers circumnavigated the Earth? They'd certainly gone around it most of the way, going west from China to California, so maybe they just continued exploring to the west, and ended up back at the emperor's doorstep.

Pleased with his explorers' news, Zhu Di sends out another fleet eastward this time, to land in California, Mexico, Oregon, Guatemala, meeting with the Apache, Aztecs, Toltecs, etc. and trading fine porcelains and jewels with them. They form large settlements near big Native cities to help trade, and soon develop a network of towns all the way from OTL Sacramento to Quito.

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As stated above, I'm rather new to this, so please give advice, suggestions, nitpicks and blatant holes and reasons this is ASB. Thank you!:D
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