QA问答：明朝灭亡后，中国庞大的宝船队去哪儿了？为什么后来它们没有被用于任何目的？

@Ashby Lisbon
Should have sailed to Europe and colonized it.

应该航行到欧洲并殖民它。

@Yap You Wai
the issue then was the Ming Emperor might be feeling his place was “the Garden”, and Europe was a barbaric jungle

当时的问题是明朝皇帝可能觉得他的地方是“花园”，而欧洲是一个野蛮的丛林

@Moy Kok Seong
The descxtions were actually true somewhat! Countries in the East Asia were more civilised than countries elsewhere !

这些描述实际上很真实！东亚国家比其他国家更文明！

@David Gu
for what though. Europe had no tech, spices, luxuries to offer and most of the scholarship coming out of there was poisonous christian propaganda.

到底是为了什么。欧洲没有技术、香料、奢侈品可供提供，而且大部分来自那里的知识都是有毒的基督教宣传。

@Wei Shi
That fleet & ships were not design for Trade, just plain too expensive. It in fact crushed Chinese colonization & trade in Southeast Asia.

那支舰队和船只不是为贸易而设计的，只是太贵了。它实际上粉碎了中国在东南亚的殖民和贸易。

@George Harrison
“If it were not for the rise of China in the past decade, the U.S. Navy would be in even worse shape than it is now.”
Makes you wonder how much of the anti-China rhetoric is instigated by the US Navy to justify its budget.

“如果过去十年没有中国的崛起，美国海军的状况可能会比现在更糟糕。”
让你想知道有多少反华言论是美国海军为了证明其预算的合理性而煽动的。

@Harshvardhan Gaur
Nice Do you think this fleet is technically capable of circumnavigating the world? What if we give them another 100 years?

很棒 您认为这支舰队在技术上具备环球航行的能力吗？如果再给他们100年呢？

@Aya Shawn
Let’s see what technology the Ming Empire had
1. A large sailing boat, with enough volume and sufficient self-sustainability, can sail on the ocean without any problems. Their ships were larger than those of Magellan and Columbus.
2. The compass determines the direction of navigation and prevents you from getting lost.
3. People in the Ming Dynasty liked to eat and drink tea and would not encounter the problem of scurvy.
4. It has a primitive astronomical positioning instrument, the "star board", which can determine the approximate position of the ship at night.
5. There are instruments for measuring depth and speed.
So technically there is no problem.
If a curious emperor ascends the throne. He suddenly said: I want to know what is at the end of the ocean.
Maybe they will discover new continents or complete a circumnavigation of the world

我们来看看明帝国有什么技术
1、大型帆船，足够大的体积，足够的自持力，远洋航行没有问题。他们的船比麦哲伦和哥伦布的更大。
2、指南针，确定航行的方向，不至于迷航。
3、明朝人喜欢食用茶叶和饮茶，不会遇到坏血病的问题。
4、拥有一种原始的天文定位仪器“牵星板”，可以在夜间确定船只的大致位置。
5、有测量深度、测量航速的仪器。
所以在技术上来说没有问题。
如果一位好奇心重的皇帝登基。他突然说：我希望知道海洋的尽头是什么。
也许他们就会发现新大陆或者完成环球航行

@Sng Kok Joon Leonard
The Ming Treasure voyages were less a trade mission and more a vehicle to trumpet the glory of the Ming Dynasty to the various petty kingdoms along the South East Asia and Indian costs, as well as to engage in a form of proto-colonialism via interference into local politics, all while committing to an occupation in Dai Viet.

明朝宝藏远航与其说是一次贸易使命，不如说是一种向东南亚和印度沿岸的各个小王国宣扬明朝荣耀的工具，也是通过干涉其他国家进行某种形式的原始殖民主义的工具。地方政治，同时致力于占领大越。

Although it did result in an overall increase of tribute and trade, the voyages did not on its own justify the sheer expense involved. Even by the end of the Yongle era, the voyages were temporarily halted as the treasury had been bled by Yongle’s foreign policy and associated expenses.
The succeeding Hongxi Emperor considered the treasure voyages to be a key contributor to the depletion of the treasury, and ordered a halt to the voyages and the scrapping of the treasure fleet, even though the Ming still continued to intervene, if not militarily, then diplomatically, in the little protectorates they have guaranteed via the voyages. (There is a record of Siam intercepting Malaccan tribute to the Ming, Malacca complained to the Ming and the Ming more or less wrote to Siam to tell them to keep their grubby hands to themselves, basically a 15th century “fuck off” letter.)

尽管它确实导致了贡品和贸易的整体增加，但这些航行本身并不能证明所涉及的巨额费用是合理的。即使到了永乐时代末期，由于永乐的外交政策和相关开支导致国库大量流失，航行也暂时停止。
继任的洪熙皇帝认为宝藏航行是导致国库耗尽的一个关键因素，并下令停止航行并报废宝船队，尽管明朝仍然继续对航行线路中的小国进行干预，如果不是军事上，那就是外交上的干预。（有记录称暹罗拦截马六甲向明朝进贡，马六甲向明朝抱怨，而明朝或多或少写信给暹罗，告诉他们不要把肮脏的手伸进来，基本上是一封15世纪的“滚蛋”信。）

The end of Hongxi’s short reign led to a revitalisation of interest in the voyages by Emperor Xuande, especially after he decided that the Ming occupation of Dai Viet wasn’t worth the money. Emperor Xuande will go on the fund the construction of the 7th, and last voyage between 1431 and 1433.
Following the death of Xuande in 1435, the crown passed over to Emperor Yingzong, who was 8 at the point of his ascension. The Ming dynasty had a political structure in which the Emperor has significant influence over the decisions of the state, but the structure failed to take into consideration the possibility of a child emperor. The resultant regency, although benign obxtively, was also inward looking due to two factors, 1) the regency was de-jure illegal. Only the Emperor had the right to rule and make decisions, not the Dowager or his ministers, as a result, Ming foreign policy was essentially in limbo, the regency was a form of treason, the regent and her advisors didn’t quite dare to rock the boat too much. 2), a 60-year old cold period that started in the 1430s will go on to create a drag on the Ming economy for some decades, forcing the Ming administration to focus on internal problems as Ming taxation was largely grain based. The cold period triggered significant hardship for the largely agricultural population, increasing welfare expenses at a time when taxation was correspondingly suffering.

洪熙短暂统治的结束，宣德皇帝重新燃起了对航海的兴趣，特别是在他认为明朝占领大越不值得花钱之后。宣德皇帝继续资助第七次航行，也是1431年至1433年间的最后一次航行。
1435年宣德去世后，皇位传给英宗，当时英宗即位时年仅8岁。明朝的政治结构中，皇帝对国家决策具有重大影响力，但这种结构没有考虑到儿童皇帝的可能性。由此产生的摄政虽然客观上是良性的，但由于两个因素也是内向的：1）摄政在法律上是非法的。只有皇帝有统治权和决策权，而皇太后和大臣们则没有权力，因此，明朝的外交政策基本上处于悬而未决的状态，摄政是一种叛国行为，摄政者和她的谋士们不太敢这样做。 2），从1430年代开始的长达60年的寒冷时期将继续拖累明朝经济数十年，迫使明朝政府专注于内部问题，因为明朝税收主要以粮食为基础。寒冷时期给以农业为主的人口带来了巨大的困难，在税收相应受到影响的同时增加了福利支出。

Although Emperor Yingzong ascended the throne at the age of 15 (whereby his mother and regent conveniently died), the breakdown of relations between the Ming and the Mongols led him on campaign in 1449 where he got summary beaten and captured, leading to the ascension of his brother Emperor Jingtai by court proclamation. Although (and because) Emperor Jingtai refused to ransom Yingzong, the Mongols found it a pain in the ass to host a Ming Emperor as an honoured hostage, and returned him unconditionally to the Ming in 1450.
Jingtai, being a little paranoid due to his unorthodox ascension, though not paranoid enough to assume the mantle of kinslayer, put Yingzong on house arrest, and set about dismantling anything that could possibly organise against him in favour of Yingzong. That included dismantling the foreign policy of their father, and conclusively putting an end to the treasure voyages, and the end of the Ming Dynasty’s outward-looking policies, which will carry on all the way to 1644 on the end of a bit of rope in Beijing, though one can argue, to the end of a British cannon in the mid 19th century,
TL;DR - The fleets were created for a singular purpose, which was to be an extension of Ming foreign policy, and when it was no longer economically or politically expedient to maintain them, ended up being scrapped. And finally, the Ming Emperor decided to put an end to an outward looking foreign policy for good.

尽管英宗皇帝在15岁时即位（他的母亲和摄政王也因此去世），但明朝与蒙古关系的破裂导致他于 1449 年出征，遭到殴打和俘虏。朝廷册封其兄景泰皇帝。尽管景泰皇帝拒绝赎回英宗，但蒙古人发现保留明朝皇帝作为光荣人质很痛苦，因此于1450年无条件将他归还给明朝。
景泰因非正统的即位而有些偏执，但还没有偏执到敢承担起弑亲的后果，他将英宗软禁起来，并着手瓦解任何可能组织起来反对他、支持英宗的人。这包括废除他们父亲的外交政策，最终结束宝藏航行，以及明朝的外向政策的结束，这种政策将一直延续到1644年。尽管有人可能会争辩说，在19世纪中叶的英国大炮外交时才结束，
这些舰队的创建只有一个目的，那就是明朝外交政策的延伸，当维持它们在经济或政治上不再有利时，最终被废弃。最后，明朝皇帝决定永远结束外向型外交政策。

@Timothy Habick
These are all helpful explanations. Thank you.
On a side note of interest mainly to linguists, at first I thought you made a mistake in this sentence: “At the same time, on the entire west coast of the Pacific, there was no force that could threaten the maritime security of the Ming Empire.” I thought you meant the east coast. Certainly it’s the east coast from China’s point of view. However, you specified “of the Pacific,” so that makes sense from the point of view of the Pacific Ocean itself.
This is an example of a sentence (or idea) that is grammatically and conceptually correct but still could incline some readers to misread or stumble. That’s fine for ordinary articles. For high-stakes documents these subtleties matter. The last thing we’d want to do is force readers to reimagine what the west coast can mean if they happen to define the coasts from the perspective of land.
In any case, it’s a good exercise in thinking outside one’s normal perspective.

这些都是有用的解释。谢谢。
顺便说一句主要是语言学家感兴趣的，起初我以为你在这句话中犯了一个错误：“同时，在整个太平洋西海岸，没有任何力量可以威胁明朝的海上安全。”我以为你说的是东海岸。从中国的角度来看，当然是东海岸。然而，您指定了“太平洋”，因此从太平洋本身的角度来看这是有道理的。
这是一个句子（或想法）的例子，它在语法和概念上都是正确的，但仍然可能导致一些读者误读或绊倒。对于普通文章来说，这样就可以了。对于高风险文件来说，这些微妙之处很重要。我们最不想做的就是强迫读者重新想象如果他们碰巧从陆地的角度来定义海岸的话，西海岸可能意味着什么。
无论如何，这是跳出正常视角思考的一个很好的练习。

@Wei Shi
That fleet & ships were not design for Trade, just plain too expensive.
The Grand Admiral of this formidable armada was one Zheng He (variously spelled), a eunuch who was the favorite of the emperor, Zhu De, and who, although having the support and admiration of the palace eunuchs, had only the enmity of the mandarins who feared losing their power and influence. Apparently, around 1430, the mandarins had succeeded in convincing the sitting emperor to cease the “treasure voyages.”

那支舰队和船只不是为贸易而设计的，只是太贵了。
这支强大舰队的元帅是郑和（不同的拼写），他是朱棣皇帝最宠爱的太监，虽然得到了宫廷太监的支持和钦佩，但还有官员们的敌意。他们害怕失去权力和影响力。显然，1430 年左右，官员们成功说服了当时的皇帝停止“宝船航行”。

@Pierre Oey
There is temple in central java that he established in early 1400’s. He is credited for helping the spread of Islam in Indonesia. There is also large settlement of Chinese, possibly folks from his fleet, and the largest Ming ceramic artifacts outside China in Borneo.

爪哇中部有一座寺庙，是他于1400年代初建立的。他因帮助伊斯兰教在印度尼西亚传播而受到赞誉。婆罗洲还有大量中国人定居点，可能是他的舰队的居民，还有中国以外最大的明朝陶瓷文物。