In North America, if you asked someone who sailed the oceans blue in 1492, the quick answer is Christopher Columbus. The European world knew something existed between Europe and Asia but few had gone over to see and nobody had mapped it. The known world existed around the Mediterranean and through overland routes of Arabia goods came from South East Asia and India. Through the overland routes of Asia into the Black Sea goods came from China, but very few Europeans had gone to map out the world. As ships became bigger and money was to be made through bringing the goods back, European ships started to map out the world. What if the Europeans were actually using maps from another country? What if the Chinese had made the maps from 1421 to 1423?

In a wonderful book, Gavin Menzies wrote 1421 published by Bantam Books, London, 2002. Mr. Menzies was a navy man whose hobby is reading historical maps, As there is great joy in seeing how the maps change as nature moves the shoreline as well as people understand the landscape and fill in the details. To draw an accurate map one needs to understand latitude and longitude; and a host of other skills. If you believe anyone can do it, next year go on a boat and map the shoreline. It turns out the skills needed to map the world were known and used by the Chinese. The third Emperor in the Ming Dynasty was Zhu Di, the Son of Heaven. When he became Emperor he had plans and the ability to carry them out. Domestically the city of Beijing became capital city again and he had 200,000 people doing the labours. At the same time, the Great Wall was repaired and improved; the Grand Canal was enlarged; as well as the great amount of ship building was completed – these ships were the ones that went around the world in 1421 to 1423.The resources of China were mobilized for large amounts of commodities – grain and timber were required to do the projects for the Emperor.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in writing this book Mr. Menzies used his skills from the Navy as well as his interest in map making to fill in the many missing pieces of the puzzle. When Mr. Menzies was reading a map which outlined North America long before Columbus had sail the ocean blue, that sent him on his discovery mission which lead him to write the book. Each of us has interests and something to energize the curiosity in us. Often the trail will lead us to greater understanding and sometimes we will be able to profit from that understanding. As the New Year begins, follow your curiosity for you will be able to understand and profit. Along the way, understand for Mr. Menzies the journey took many years to complete or to get to the point of being able to write the book – you will need a cash flow of dividends and capital gains from dividend paying stocks which help you achieve your goals.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions