~

By Jim Boyce

A party to honor China’s most famous seafarer, Admiral Zheng He, is set for tomorrow night — Thursday — and will include an hour of free wine and two hours of deals by 1421, the company named for a highly disputed book that claims the man in question sailed from China that year and visited New Zealand, Australia, South America, North American, Antarctica, Greenland — pretty much everywhere.

The party is billed as a “welcome back” because maybe, just maybe, someone has another Zheng He book coming out that claims his subsequent mission was a nearly 600-year round-trip deal to Mars and he is slated to return to China any day now. (Just maybe.)

Whatever the case, the 1421 team will be wearing Ming Dynasty outfits and pouring free ‘Silver’ Chardonnay and ‘Silver’ Cabernet Sauvignon from 7 PM to 8 PM at Fubar, located in the eastern side of Workers Stadium in Beijing. Those same wines will then be available at rmb14 per glass from 8 PM to 9 PM, then rmb21 per glass from 9 PM to 10 PM. The ‘Silver’ series of wines from 1421 is found in more than a dozen hotels and restaurants in Beijing.

Dress code: Ming Dynasty / casual

Music: DJ BB Deng

Hot dogs out front at Stadium Dog: Yes. After all, if Zheng He discovered America, he probably found Coney Island and is thus somehow directly responsible for this.

If you want more info, check the Wikipedia pages on Zheng He and the treasure voyages, this National Geographic map of the fleet’s stops and this biography. If you read Chinese, here is a 20-page article from Journal of Chinese Studies (summary in English at end).

Grape Wall has no sponsors of advertisers: if you find the content and projects like World Marselan Day worthwhile, please help cover the costs via PayPal, WeChat or Alipay.

Sign up for the free Grape Wall newsletter here. Follow Grape Wall on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. And contact Grape Wall via grapewallofchina (at) gmail.com.