The Eunuch Sanbao’s Voyage to the Western Ocean

For the first time in English, the complete The Eunuch Sanbao’s Voyage to the Western Ocean (三寶太監西洋記) - Luo Maodeng’s monumental Ming-dynasty novel of Admiral Zheng He’s legendary voyages, transformed into a vast oceanic epic of gods, demons, foreign kingdoms, Buddhist miracles, imperial destiny, and supernatural war.

Before the treasure fleet sailed into history, it sailed into legend. Written in 1597, this hundred-chapter novel takes the greatest maritime enterprise of the Ming world - Zheng He’s expeditions across the Indian Ocean with hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of men - and reimagines it as something stranger, grander, and more marvelous than any official chronicle.

At the heart of the tale stands the eunuch admiral Sanbao, sailing west under the command of the Yongle Emperor in search of a lost imperial seal. Guided by the Buddhist master Jin Bifeng - an incarnation of the Lamp-Lighting Buddha, armed with relics powerful enough to divide the heavens and calm the seas - the fleet encounters sea-monsters, sorcerer-kings, celestial generals, foreign rulers, magical weapons, and kingdoms where diplomacy and cosmic combat are inseparably joined.

Part maritime adventure, part shenmo fantasy, part imperial romance, The Eunuch Sanbao’s Voyage to the Western Ocean belongs beside Journey to the West, Investiture of the Gods, The Odyssey, The Voyages of Sindbad, and The Thousand and One Nights. Every harbor, from Champa to the coast of Africa, becomes a stage for wonder, tribute, conflict, and revelation.

For four centuries this extraordinary novel remained almost unknown to English readers. It has been studied in Europe and translated elsewhere, but never before presented complete in English. This edition offers all one hundred chapters in full, opening the earliest and greatest Zheng He narrative to a new readership.

This translation preserves the grandeur, strangeness, religious imagination, and narrative momentum of the original while making this rare Ming classic fully accessible to contemporary readers.

Rediscover the great epics, mysteries and chronicles of dynastic China: gods and generals, swindlers and scholars, courtesans, ghosts and emperors, in complete English translations.