Zheng He's Legacy (#106, Topic H)

Monday, 3/13, I gave a Power Point presentation on "Zheng He: His Seven Voyages, 1405-1433, and His Legacy" at the Chevy Chase branch library in DC. On legacy, I presented a slide showing the following:
Promoting peaceful co-existence
>>harboring no territorial ambition
>>exhibiting no military aggression
>>rewarding cooperating governments
Sharing worldly goodies
>>give-more-take-less bartering
>>disseminating technical knowledge
Embracing religious integration
>>respecting Islam and Buddhism side-by-side
About 50 were in attendance. Judging from questions asked, the audience was both knowledgeable and anxious. Indeed, before I could finish my very first sentence, one asked: "I have read 1421. Does your presentation have anything new?" I thought the question was presumptous; but, before I could continue with my presentation, another one, at the back, came to my rescue by asking his fellow attendees to hold off questions until my presentation was over. Regardless, I was comfortable with what I was doing, since, for this talk, I had included 30 slides from my trip to China last September, mostly on brand-new monuments and museums built in 2005 to honor Zheng He. My presentation also had a slide on Gavin Menzies's (1421's author) presentation at the Library of Congress on 5/16/05, and another one on a 1418/1763 world map unveiled in Beijing on 1/16/06 (#29) -- all are sufficiently "new." All in all, the presentation seemed to be well received.
Posted (unsuccessfully due to software error on indentation) on 3/16; reposted (with make-shift indentation using >>) at 11:54 pm, Friday, March 17, 2006