AS AMERICANS gather today to solemnly remember the daring seafarer who discovered this great land…

Okay, wait, screw that. Cris-tuh-fuh may have sailed across the Atlantic and landed in Cuba, thinking he’d arrived in Madras, and that was nifty and all, but his voyage was hardly the first in the Era of Exploration. That honor goes to a Chinese dude named Zheng He.

In 1405, at the behest of the Ming emperor Yongle, Admiral Zheng He—a Muslim who was Yongle’s No. 1 court eunuch—set off on the first of seven voyages of discovery and diplomacy that stretched from Korea to India to Egypt. With 25,000 men and over 200 ships under his command (never mind that he was no sailor, having grown up in landlocked Yunnan province), he brought treasures to the rulers of neighboring states and issued them invitations to visit Beijing when they, you know, got a spare moment: Yongle was always up for a cuppa with visiting royals.

Unlike Columbus, Zheng He’s expeditions were more about diplomacy than about trade—Emperor Yongle wanted his name to go down in history. At the same time, though, wherever Zheng He went, merchants and businessmen followed, setting up communities throughout Southeast Asia that survive to this day. In Cochin, India, Zheng He’s men introduced the Chinese-style fishing nets that are still used there today, and shards of Chinese pottery have been found in Kenya. (In Kenya, Chinese survivors of a shipwreck intermarried with locals on Lama Island; last year, one of their descendants, Mwamaka Sharifu, won a scholarship from the Chinese governement to study in Beijing.)

And according to amateur historian Gavin Menzies, a portion of the fleet sailed east across the Pacific to discover America in 1421, 70 years before Queen Isabella even sent Cristoforo Colombo on his quest. A seaman himself, Menzies cites everything from maps to maize to DNA to prove that the Chinese got there first. Maybe he’d be more convincing if he could, maybe, read Chinese.

But if you want to believe the Chinese would’ve made better first contact than Columbus did, remember that Zheng He’s missions were also about subjugation. The Chinese believed all non-Chinese were basically barbarians, and the tribute system—this long-distance exchange of gifts—was intended to assure other countries that China was their friend, and wouldn’t invade. Well, just as long as places like Vietnam and Korea behaved themselves.

Perhaps it’s just as well that after Zheng He died in Calicut, India, in 1433, the Ming Dynasty decided it no longer had the cash to fund such extravagant excursions. The fleet returned to the Middle Kingdom, never to sail again.

So today, if you don’t feel like honoring European imperialism, celebrate instead the Chinese version—maybe with a nice Malacca-style chicken curry, a relic of Zheng He’s stopover there in 1407. Save the spaghetti and meatballs for December 11.

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