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Scott and Mr. Dong at the incredible Great Wall.
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Scott poses for a photo with family who came to watch the California Walls shoot. (R to L) Scott's sister Danna Kiefer, brother-in-law, Kevin Kiefer, niece, Katie Kiefer, and childhood friend Ken Amundsen
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Rear Admiral Zheng Ming poses with Scott in front of a bronze statue of Admiral Zheng Hu.
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Our Chinese interpreter, Crystal, waits inside the stone and fired brick bastion along the "wild" portion of the Great Wall in China.
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Rear Admiral Zheng Ming holds court with interpreter Crystal and the Committee Films crew.
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The opportunity to travel to China was amazing and it was everything I hoped it would be and more. Aside from the long flights, the trip was worth it just see the Great Wall which included special access the "wild" portion overgrown with vegetation and not maintained. Walking along the wall in both areas we visited was one of those surreal moments trying to take it all in. The wall is so big and imposing it's hard to imagine how it was constructed to snake though the highest and most rugged parts of the mountain peaks. It is simply amazing.
Both of my guests in China were wonderful; especially Rear Admiral Zheng Ming. He is 82 years old and a hero to the Chinese who was so knowledgeable, kind, and humble. He was so happy to have us there to talk about Chinese exploration and was genuinely thrilled to have Americans' learn about their history. The morning we left to fly home, the admiral got up at 4:00 a.m. and was waiting to meet us in the hotel lobby to see us off. We were all genuinely touched by this man whom the Chinese have every right to be very proud of. The Chinese are also very proud of their historical hero, Admiral Zheng Hu. I am embarrassed to say I had not heard of him prior to filming this episode. His accomplishments on his seven voyages are staggering and the lack of knowledge in the United States about this amazing explorer says a lot about how Eurocentric our education system is. It's understandable to a point, but this is one man we should be learning about in history class.
I was also unaware of were the mysterious stone walls in California prior to filming that were brought to my attention through the tip line. Since there is no known historical record of the origin of the walls, and it appears the surviving local native tribes have no intact oral stories about who made them, they truly are a mystery. To me, the two most plausible explanations are local natives built them, but have lost the knowledge of the ancestors work. The could also have been built to mark territory by a visiting culture most likely from the Far East. Having been built primarily at the top of the mountains, it seems unlikely they were constructed to keep in livestock or to keep out advancing enemies. Because of their tradition of building walls just like these along with the more massive sections of the Great Wall, the Chinese are a legitimate possibility to have created them.
More important than the origin of the California stone walls was the incredible map evidence both Dr. Gunnar Thompson and Dr. Lee shared with me. The detail displayed in the geography of North, South, and Central America could only have been obtained through detailed mapping by cartographers from numerous pre-Columbian voyages to these continents. The skeptics are going to mash their teeth and their keyboards trying to explain away the Chinese component of the early history of the America's. I'll bet many Native American tribes have knowledge preserved somewhere about the highly advanced navigators from the Far East who almost certainly visited BOTH sides of our continent.
