was that a rice bowl columbus found in the new world?

I glanced at something on this - I think it was that the Chinese were here in 1451 or so, but on the West Coast.

Columbus could have had a great rice bowl, but Spain got it instead.

I would not be in the least surprised to find that the Chinese made it to the west coast of this continent before 1492. I know that a Chinese flotilla sailed as far as Madegascar long before that. I am also fairly certain that Norge and Goth explorers made it to this continent well before that. The problem the Chinese had, however, goes a long way to explaining why Europeans colonized the "new world," and not the Chinese. As an old dynasty would fail in China, a newer, more militarily vigorous group would take over, and one of the hallmarks of their administration would be to lessen tension and threats with "barbarians" (read, anyone not Chinese) through the use of trading fairs and agreements. But as each successive dynasty prolonged its rule, it became more "sinicized," i.e., more and more under the policy control of the mandarin bureaucratic class. Under such a regime, trade would once again wither, and imperial citizens would be prohibited from leaving the "middle kingdom" (middle meaning between heaven and earth--to the mandarins, everything outside the borders of their empire was howling wilderness and benighted savages). This happened to the vigorous Yuan dynasty establish by Qubilai, and it happended even more quickly to the Ming and Manchu dynasties which succeeded. China returned to the introspective "sleep" of her ancient custom, and the "upstarts" in Spain, Portugal, England, Holland and France took to the seas, and the colonizing habit with a vengeance.

I read an article about this theorist in Sunday's NY Times magazine. His evidence, such as it is, seems a bit thin.

As an aside, when I showed the article to a Chinese-American colleague, she asked me why, if this is true, her ancestors were stuck as slave labor building the trans-continental railroad? Good question.

This theory - Chinese on the American west coast - was and is published quite often. (e.g.: "According to Buddhist literature, the monk and missionary Hu-Shen journeyed in a Chinese trading junk to the coast of America. The date of this journey was 499 AD." http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Tower/1217/asia.html )

I remember that it was published in a serie of history books for youth 40 years ago here in Germany, too. (Remember explicit the long discussions with my father about that.)

"Stuck as slave labor building the trans-continental railroad" is a loaded description, and one for which it would be difficult to provide sound historical evidence. Special foods were brought to and later over the Sierra Madres for the Chinese workers. As they frequently volunteered for dangerous assignments, such as blasting through rock (hence, the expression, "a chinaman's chance"), their pay was usually higher than that of the Irish "navvies" who worked the route. The image of the Chinese who worked on the railroad as slaves is a bit of historically PC nonsense created out of whole cloth.

"Slave labor" may be putting it strongly (those were my friend's words, not mine), but I hardly think the experience of the Chinese at that time was benign! Not to say that others, the Irish, say, were treated well either.

"Gangs of New York", though not about the railroad, covers this issue quite well...

I would agree with you that neither the Irish nor the Chinese were well treated in the US at that time. The principle reason they ended up working for the railroad is because it was not work which appealed to settled Americans--although the pay was good by the standards of the day, it was full-time temporary work--there were no future prospects from the employment; it was, of course, unsettled work in that the crew worked at the railhead as it moved forward. An excellent source for the lives of Chinese outside of China is Sons of the Yellow Emperor: a History of the Chinese Diaspora, by Lynn Pan. Generally, the Chinese did not like to work outside of their own communities--additionally, of course, they were not likely to find employment elsewhere, owing to xenophobia in general, and prejudices against the Chinese in particular. The Irish faced this problem as well: once a significant number of Irish immigrants would arive in an area, signs would go up which read NINA, meaning "no Irish need apply." The railroads offered an opportunity to both groups to quickly make good money with which, if they were prudent, they might make a life for themselves in the new land.

There seems to be lots of evidence pointing to other cultures getting to the americas before columbus.

A couple of points...

-I agree with D'Artagnan: from what I've seen this gentleman's evidence is rather...scanty...though his PR machine is superb.

-There is hard evidence that Norse explorers touched down on N. America before Columbus; it's not unlikely others beat him here as well. But in the end merely being 'first' means little; first with an impact on history - well that's still Columbus.

Count,

Is your sig quote about Don Quixote? I ask becausae it's very similar to a poem (about the mad knight) that an aquaintance claimed to have written and now I think that person plagiarized some of it.

Nope, it's from the book 'Scaramouche' by Rafael Sabatini. The first line actually.