Author Description

Book Description: "This is another attempt to investigate early Chinese trans-Pacific contacts, written mid-20th century by a globe-trotting patent attorney, Henriette Mertz. Like Charles Leland's Fusang, written three-quarters of a century before, Mertz depends heavily on ancient Chinese geographical treatises to support her thesis that the Chinese explored the western United States hundreds, maybe thousands of years before Europeans. The strongest part of the book is her attempt to explain the available Chinese historical descriptions, even the most fanciful parts, in terms of specific locations, animals, and cultures, for the most part plausibly. On the downside, she misidentifies parts of the Hindu sacred texts as Buddhist, and indulges in the amateur etymology game, with predictable results. But these factual lapses seem to be peripheral to the book. [...] The Chinese discovery of America continues to be a perennial theory. Most recently we've seen 1421: The Year China Discovered America, by Gavin Menzies, and Voyages of the Pyramid Builders, by Jeremy P. Tarcher. Both of these books owe quite a lot to the work of Henriette Mertz." (Quote from sacred-texts.com) Table of Contents: Publisher's Preface; Preface; Geographical Myths; Fu-sang; Chinese Whimsy?; Kuen 327 And The Liang-sse-kong Ki; Mexican Legends; Yucatan; Related Items; The Buddhists; A Matter Of Words; Hwui Shan, Traveller Par Excellence; Early China; The Shan Hai King; Across The Sea; The Great American Desert; Conclusion; Author Biography About the Publisher: Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, Esoteric and Mythology. www.forgottenbooks.org Forgotten Books is about sharing information, not about making money. All books are priced at wholesale prices. We are also the only publisher we know of to print in large sans-serif font, which is proven to make the text easier to