Wo Shi Laowai – Wo Pa Shui

I get quite a few emails from readers, and in general they fall into one of three categories:

1. Why do you live in China if you hate it so much?
2. I am Chinese and I am going to kill you and your entire family!
3. I wish you still did the Wet Pussy Awards – I loved that!

The first will be comprehensively answered in an upcoming post. The second provides me with an unending source of amusement and glee, and the third is being dealt with here and now.

That’s right, folks. The Wet Pussy Awards are back!

It wasn’t easy, y’know. To start with, the MyLaowai Central Committee had to purchase new pussy. And because we live in China, and because we have this thing about catching some horrific disease, we had to have it vaccinated (we despise diseased pussy). And because, whilst young pussy is great, it’s also a bit time consuming and of dubious legal status, and so we had to wait for a while until the pussy was old enough to be safely wetted.

But everybody loves new pussy, and now the pussy is ready.

There’s this chap who goes by the name of ‘Gavin’ Menzies, and who claims to have been born in China. If you are thinking that this is an odd name for a Chinaman, then you would be correct, for ‘Gavin’ was actually born in London (and his actual first name is Rowan). No one is quite sure why he claims to have been born in China, but then again this is by far the least lunatic of his many claims.

‘Gavin’ (or Rowan to the Courts) Menzies has a number of rather, er, fascinating theories on world history. Here’s a few of them:

* The Chinese discovered the whole world in 1421.
* The Chinese invented a method for measuring longitude without using clocks.
* The Chinese were the first to colonise the Americas.
* The Inca’s were Chinese.
* New Zealand, Australia and Hawaii belong to China.

There’s plenty more – this is just a sampling. For an evening full of joy and laughter, just buy one of his books. Then again, perhaps it would be best not to encourage him. His latest book is a doozy, folks. In it, he claims that the Renaissance was a Chinese invention, brought to Italy by a “magnificent Chinese Fleet”, and that Leonardo da Vinci stole his idea for a helicopter from Chinese sailors. Printing, too, was generously brought to poor Europe by Chinese sailors, as was the idea of medicine. The hits just keep on coming.

So, who the hell is this Menzies character? Here’s a quick list of things you should know about him:

1. Menzies joined the Royal Navy age 15 and went into submarines. He claims that the Navy taught him advanced cartography skills not available to ordinary historians, which is fine except that the Royal Navy doesn’t teach cartography to submariners. He also claims that, whilst in the Navy, he retraced the voyages of Magellan and Cook, which is fine except that the Royal Navy is unconvinced. A friend of mine who sailed with him, believes he suffered from oxygen deprivation. This may have some truth to it.

2. Mister Menzies was an officer with twelve years of seniority, who nevertheless managed to avoid promotion to Commander. This isn’t usual. Whilst in command of a Royal Navy submarine, he managed to ram an American minesweeper, which was moored at a pier. For this, he was asked to resign his commission, which is very usual for such a disgrace. He ‘retired’ age 32, his only naval qualification being that of Torpedoman (TRS).

3. Following some rather misguided investments, Mister Menzies was declared bankrupt and, subsequently, a vexatious litigant. For those unsure of the meaning of this term, it refers to someone who regularly and repeatedly sues people for trivial reasons, and has done so often enough that the courts have refused to deal with him any more. Or, in simpler language, a crank. Bring it on, ‘Gavin’.

4. Menzies, as an “astronomer and navigator”, declares that in the 1420’s the Chinese could sail to the North Pole, as it was 300 miles further south than now – this isn’t true. He also claims that the North Pole coincides with Polaris at 90° altitude – this is also not true. He goes on to claim that he analysed Chinese sailing directions and a star guide in the Wu Pei Chih of 1422 to calculate that the equator was at 03° 34′ North. There was (he proclaims) a corresponding shift northwards of ice limits in both the Arctic and Antarctic, caused (he says) by a shift in the earth’s axis that began a miniature Ice Age in 1450. We also happen to know that none of this is true, either.

5. According to Menzies, the Chinese calibrated logs and used sextants long before the British produced a mechanical log in the middle of the 16th century, or the first mariner’s sextant in 1757. He says that the Chinese could ‘eliminate magnetic variation’. This is impossible.

6. Menzies claims to have discovered the wrecks of nine Chinese ships in the Caribbean. He has yet to let anyone else know where, precisely. The same applies to the remains of a number of Chinese ships he has discovered 300 feet up a cliff in New Zealand (washed ashore there of all places when a comet landed in the Pacific Ocean), not to mention “large dockyards and buildings constructed from their stone ballast” – no one else has yet managed to discover these remains, though people have found some perfectly normal and natural rocks and trees and birds. In fact, not one single piece of evidence has ever been found to support any of his theories.

7. Menzies has often talked about the “riddle of a lost Chinese city on the [US] Atlantic coast” and made the claim that an unnamed Canadian architect “might reveal the location of the unidentified site where he discovered some buried ruins whose origin is unknown”, though Menzies says it was a Chinese naval depot established by Zheng He. This depot is, apparently, “two-thirds the size of the Forbidden City”. Menzies also claims to possess a ‘lost World Map’ of Kublai Khan (1260-1294), that includes the Americas.

8. Menzies claims that the Chinese sent a fleet to visit Italian mapmaker Albertin di Virga in 1408, on their way through the Mediterranean and on into the Atlantic. They entered the Mediterranean from the Red Sea through a non-existent Suez Canal. Not the present Suez Canal, of course, but via the Nile by an earlier ditch that a Caliph had filled with sand in 775. Menzies, of course, knows where this canal was.

Why does he do it? Honestly, no one really knows for sure. Some (like my friend) claim he has brain damage, caused by oxygen deprivation. Others claim he is merely a nutter.

But I find it interesting that Mister Menzies’ books have so neatly summarised the Chinese Communist Party’s claims that China was the first to discover large swathes of the world, including Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, and more. In fact, Mr Menzies has on several occasions amended his statements to reflect changes in official CCP policy regarding Chinese territorial claims. China’s Party Chairman, Hu Jintao, used Menzies’ books as the basis upon which he made direct references to Australia having been been first discovered by Chinese sailors when he addressed the Australian Parliament. And I also find it interesting that, despite being declared a bankrupt, Menzies found it so easy to raise large sums of money for his ‘research’.

But whichever way you view him, there can be no doubt that ‘Gavin’ Menzies is a Wet Pussy of the first water.

Menzies, this Wet Pussy Award is for you, you traitorous wretch. I hope you choke on it.

‘Gavin’ Menzies. Wet Pussy Award Winner.