PROF WEI CHU-HSIEN &
"CHINA AND AMERICA"

This section is to explore ancient China's contacts with the American Continent. In this section, I will transcribe Wei Chu-Hsien's studies. Prof Wei Chu-Hsien, a student of Wang Guo-wei, Liang Qi-chao, Chen Yin-ko and Li Chi in 1926's Tsing-Hwa University of Beijing, had published a book called China and America -Volume One in March of 1982 via Taiwan's shuo wen shu dian bookstore. As Wei Chu-Hsien noted, he had been tormented by the fact that it was difficult to find translators who knew and understood ancient classics good enough to translate his book into English.
 
In "China and America -Volume One", Prof Wei Chu-Hsien stated that he, first coming across in 1961 a Confucius' passage on 6 birds which flew backward as recorded in Spring and Autumn Annals, had linked the 'yi' bird to America's hummingbirds. For the next ten years, he began to compile 81 essays, totalling 1.4 million characters, on ancient China's contacts with America which was separated from each other by a 56 mile stripe of the Bering Straits but with two Diomede Islands in the middle. Wei Chu-Hsien met Prof Lau Tun-li of SUNY in 1970 and began to exchange opinions as to American Indian's heritage such as i) praying for rain, ii) ancestral stone worshipping, and iii) Chinese inscriptions found in America. In 1969, a HK publishing house first published a table of contents about the book which was entitled "The Chinese Discovered America !" Wei Chu-Hsien stated that he had to use the subscription fees from some donators for sustaining his impoverished 'filling lines with characters' career.
 
Wei Chu-Hsien, in his Backword, felt that his theory had been vindicated by the discovery of stone anchors near California coast in Nov 1982. Wei Chu-Hsien spent considerable time reading into ancient classics and excavated interesting points covering more than the American continents: Wei Chu-Hsien pointed to Chu Ci (i.e., Chu Principality poems) and Wai Guo Tu (i.e., foreign country maps) for records of a land similar to Australia where the weather was hot in winter and cold in summer and where the grass died away in summer and grew in winter; Wei Chu-Hsien further validated records of southern hemisphere by pointing out two incidents of sun eclipse as recorded in Spring and Autumn Annals; and Wei Chu-Hsien emphasized the cross emblem on the tombstones of nobles of Southern Dynasties in Nanking for the spread of Christianity in China 1500 years ago. Wei Chu-Hsien analyzed the character 'long' for dragon and derived a conclusion that it was originally in the form of 'king snake' which the ancient Indian circus people brought over to Shang China. Wei Chu-Hsien also analyzed the character for phoenix to derive a conclusion that ancient Indonesians had brought 'jile-niao' peacock kind of red bird to China. (Dragon totem could also be a lizard. Wei Chu-Hsien mentioned that 'Shang Ruins' had produced 4-leg and 1-tail lizard which Shang Chinese treated as dragon and that ancient emissary to Korea mentioned that ancient Ryukyu people treated lizard as dragon, too. On the oracle bones, dragon, in a third form, could be seen as similar to sea-horses.)

                                                            "Great Han" -------------- Fu-sang
                                                            / country
                                                           /
                                           /"tattoo body" 
                                          /   country
                                         /
                                        /
        China   ----  Korea  ---- Japan

http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Tower/1217/asia.html
http://ussers.wi.net/~maracon/index.html
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1028.htm

After the nomadic rampage of 4th century, Tuoba Wei Dynasty & Southern Chinese Dynasty, respectively, renewed historical contacts with the rest of the world, i.e., Japan to the east, ancient Burma/Indochina/India/Ceylon to the south, Central Asia to the west, and Arab/Persia/Roman further away. Nevertheless, Japan's history in Fourth Century became forever "mysterious" as a result of Northern China's disintegration. With Tuoba Wei China developing the northern Silk Road, Liang Dynasty of southern China underwent a prosperous sea route exchange with the rest of the world. Monk Fa-Shien's return trip from India had been widely analyzed to infer a possible blowaway to Mexico coastline before going the opposite direction to China. Often researched upon by scholars would be a drawing by Liang Dynasty's Emperor Yuandi, entitled "zhi [duty or post] gong [tribute] tu [picture]" [Liang chih-kung-t'u]. Liang chih-kung-t'u, whose original drawing possibly destroyed together with 140,000 volumes of books at the time of Emperor Yuandi's death, was supposed to be a recollection works of the emissaries who had visited Jingzhou the garrison city where Yuandi had stationed throughout dozens of years. The point to make here is that Liang Dynasty had apparently received delegations from 2-3 dozen statelets covering the countries mentioned earlier. The drawing's minute details about the ancient countries in today's Afghanistan and Iran and their emissaries absolutely corroborated the facts that China's linkage with Central Asia was live and frequent, yielding substantial validity to the person of Monk Hui-shen and his story of the trip to the American continent.

1) Nude goddess excavated by Corde de Gugui on Mt Truillo in northern Peru in 1865
 
Wei Chu-Hsien received pictures of findings with ancient Chinese characters from scholars from US, Peru, Mexico and Uruguay after getting in touch with Prof Lau Tun-li in 1970. Peru had been the place where most of the potteries, and jade / silver articles carrying Chinese characters had been located. Most notable would be a silver artifact of a nude goddess excavated by Corde de Gugui on Mt Truillo in northern Peru in 1865. Wei Chu-Hsien pointed that the sunflower goddess, sitting on a turtle with snake winding arount it, had two plates in her hands, with Chinese characters 'wu-dang shan' or Mt Wudang-shan inscribed and that in Wudang area of China's northern Hubei Prov, the snake-turtle coupling was treated as a divine spirit called 'xuan-wu' during China's south-north dynasty time period. Ancient classics Wu-zi (military strategist Wu Qi of Warring State time period) listed 'xuan-wu' together with three other divine spirits of 'qing long' (green dragon which was speculated to be sea-horse by Wei), 'bai hu' (white tiger which used to exist in China 2000 years ago but now available in India only), and 'zhu que' (red bird).
 
Artifacts of four divine spirits were also found on stone coffins excavated in Korea and Manchuria. Wei Chu-Hsien pointed out that the southside spirit of red-bird and northside spirit of snake-turtle coupling were both imports since snakes and turtles rarely existed in deep north of China. [Wei Chu-Hsien stated that Shang Chinese, on basis of oracle words feng (phoenix people) lu (surrender) bai (hundred), had at one time received hundreds of turtles from ancient Indonesians and Malasians as tributaries and later used the turtle shell for incribing oracle characters.] Wei Chu-Hsien cited numerous records stating that 'xuan-wu' was not a spirit born in China, but an import. Wei Chu-Hsien came to a natural conclusion that ancient Chinese, more than 2500-3700 years ago, had contacts with Central America's tropical tribesmen who adored snake-turtle as a spirit.
 
2) Chinese characters of a name inscribed on a high mountain in Peru
 
Wei Chu-Hsien received, via HK consul Marto F. Rbatde Azva, pictures taken by Prof Daniel Ruzo of inscriptions on Marcahuasi Plateau which was about 3800-4000 meters above sea level. Wei Chu-Hsien recognized 6 characters and a picture of a man with three eyes. The 6 characters would be 'Mu (wood, a surname) Wu-Ben (given name, meaning martial principle), Sui (hence) Wei (made into) Ji (a record)'. The picture of thee eye man was speculated by Wei Chu-Hsien to have relation to the legendary one-arm and three-eye Qigong-guo statelet as recorded in Shan Hai Jing. Wei Chu-Hsien cited the claim of Guo Pu of Jinn Dynasty that Qigong-guo people had visited first Shang Dynasty overlord in 18th century BC. Later legendary novel Feng Shen Bang wrote about three eye god. Wei Chu-Hsien, by examing the font of the characters, concluded that someone called Mu Wuben visited Peru in the 1st century AD in search of the legendary Qigong-guo and left his name on the high mountain.
 

 
3) 23 Chinese characters of 'ya' inscribed on a pottery excavated in Mexico
 
Wei Chu-Hsien explained that the Mexico pottery had 23 'ya' characters inscribed because the base of the pottery was too small to fill up another two characters to make a total of 25 which would be symbolic of twenty-five clans of Huangdi the Yellow Lord. Wei Chu-Hsien cited Jinn Yu section of ancient classics Guo Yu to translate the original meaning of 'ya' as lineage, something to mean that Huangdi's 25 sons had established their independent clans. As to the reason that the pottery was excavated in Mexico, Wei Chu-Hsien cited the ancient dynastic transition of Shang-Zhou as the possible cause.
 
Wei Chu-Hsien rephrased the Shang-Zhou story as follows: Last Shang Lord King Zhouwang campaigned against 'Ren-fang-guo' statelet on Shandong Peninsula. After defeating Ren-fang-guo, Zhouwang led a few soldiers back to the capital of Chaoge for lunar new year celebration. Upon hearing of Zhouwang's return with a light force, Zhou Lord Wuwang marched towards Shang capital within six days and nights and encountered Zhouwang at the outskirts of Muye where Zhou army defeated Shang's drunken soldiers. Shang King Zhouwang committed suicide. Zhou Lord Wuwang made Shang Prince Lufu inherit the Shang heritage and then went back to the west. After Wuwang died, Zhou Duke Zhougong assumed the post of a regent for Zhou King Chengwang. In old Shang capital area, Shang Prince Lufu died. Shang Prince Lufu's son, Prince Wugeng, conspired with the brothers of Zhou Wuwang in rebelling against Zhou Regent Zhougong. Zhougong defeated the rebellion and furthermore campaigned against Shang remnants who were left by Shang Lord Zhouwang on Shandong Peninsula's Ren-fang-guo statelet. Shang remnants hence fled towards two directions, one branch to Taiwan Island and the other branch to North America via the Bering Straits. Those Shang people who arrived in North America stationed two chieftans on the east and west sides of the Bering Straits and conferred onto the two chieftans the titles of east-sea and north-sea kings. The east-sea and north-sea kings would become the gods in revised book Shan Hai Jing.

http://members.tripod.com/%7Ekon_artz/cultures/olmshang.htm