Zhou Man was a 15th century Chinese

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 admiral and explorer. He was born into a wealthy merchant family in the year 1378 AD; when he was six years old, his father died on an overseas voyage to Korea

Korea

Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...

. Mourning his father's death, he left his mother and his four younger siblings behind. He worked his way into the emperor's staff by the age of 22. At 32, he was assigned "Grand Leader of All Vessels Commanded by the Emperor's Swift Hand."

Zhou, with the help of three other commanders, explored wide reaches of the Indian Ocean

Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...

. A stone inscription, dated 1431, at the Palace of the Celestial Spouse in Liujiagang, Jiangsu

Jiangsu

' is a province of the People's Republic of China, located along the east coast of the country. The name comes from jiang, short for the city of Jiangning , and su, for the city of Suzhou. The abbreviation for this province is "苏" , the second character of its name...

 is translated as:

We, Zheng He

Zheng He

Zheng He , also known as Ma Sanbao and Hajji Mahmud Shamsuddin was a Hui-Chinese mariner, explorer, diplomat and fleet admiral, who commanded voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and East Africa, collectively referred to as the Voyages of Zheng He or Voyages of Cheng Ho from...

 and his companions [including Admirals Hong Bao

Hong Bao

Hong Bao was a Chinese eunuch sent on overseas diplomatic missions during the reign of Ming emperors Yongle and Xuande. He is best known as the commander of one of the detached squadrons of Zheng He's fleet during the Seventh Voyage of this fleet to the Indian Ocean .-Early career:According to the...

, Zhou Man, Zhou Wen, and Yang Qing], at the beginning of Zhu Di's reign received the Imperial Commission as envoys to the barbarians. Up until now seven voyages have taken place and, each time, we have commanded several tens of thousands of government soldiers and more than a hundred oceangoing vessels. We have...reached countries of the Eastern Regions, more than thirty countries in all. We have...beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising sky-high, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away, hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, whilst our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds, day and night continued their course, rapid like that of a star, traversing those savage waves.

In fiction

Thomas Seinbeck's " In the Shade of the Cypress" is a historic novel, the main historic Character is Zhou Man. Published 2010

In his book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, amateur historian Gavin Menzies

Gavin Menzies

Rowan Gavin Paton Menzies is a retired British submarine lieutenant-commander and author. He is best known for his controversial book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, in which he asserts that the fleets of Chinese Admiral Zheng He visited the Americas prior to European explorer...

 claimed that Zhou Man's fleet approached and mapped the Pacific coast of North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

. According to Menzies, his fleet might be wiped out by a Megatsunami

Megatsunami

Megatsunami is an informal term to describe a tsunami that has initial wave heights that are much larger than normal tsunamis...

 caused by a Meteorite

Meteorite

A meteorite is a natural object originating in outer space that survives impact with the Earth's surface. Meteorites can be big or small. Most meteorites derive from small astronomical objects called meteoroids, but they are also sometimes produced by impacts of asteroids...

 creating Mahuika crater

Mahuika crater

Mahuika crater is a proposed submarine bolide impact crater, 20 ± 2 km wide and over 153 m deep, on the New Zealand continental shelf named after the Māori god of fire. It was discovered by Dallas Abbott and her colleagues from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of the Columbia University.Around...

.