Inspired by conversations with Rob Schmidt.
Forty years after leaving China, Hwui Shan returned with one of his comrades, two Buddhist monks of the five who had left to sail eastward to spread the wisdom of the Buddha. Buddhism had arrived in China from India centuries before, where it had sparred with Daoism on cosmology and concepts of immortality versus nirvana as well as Confucianism in personal conduct. Hwui Shan and his brethren had come from Kabul, arriving in China in 450. Eight years later, he led the Gandharan monks to sail eastward to continue to spread the word.
Following the ocean currents, the monks passed through cold lands where the people herded deer and made cheese from their milk. They crossed the bays of great rivers, which showed evidence of great deposits of copper and gold, though little iron. Some 20,000 li east of where they had set out, the monks caught word of a great city on the other side of the desert regions. After another long leg of their journey, they came to Teotihuacan. There the monks marveled at a city of some 125,000, rivaling even the great cities of China.
For years, the monks worked among the people. They conferred with priests, examined obsidian blades, and tasted delicacies such as chocolate and tobacco. When time came for the commemoration of a new temple in Teotihuacan, the priests prepared for the ritual human sacrifice that would bring attention and blessings from the gods, especially the Feathered Serpent, whose nature showed both heaven with its feathers and earth in its scales, and the Great Goddess, who ruled the darkness of night and beneath the earth, such as the springs from where life-giving water flowed.
Before the forced sacrifice of captives from battle, one of the Buddhist monks stepped forward to volunteer. The monk explained his abhorrence of pain as well as his own work to overcome attachment to the material realm. Now the priests marveled, reminded of the gods who sacrificed themselves to become the several Suns that had existed through the history of creation. Great honors were bestowed upon him, and soon the monks established a temple training their own sect. After teaching for decades, Hwui Shan decided to return to China to tell of this new world. Two monks stayed behind to manage the temple, and one monk and several acolytes went with him. They retraced their steps back across the northern Pacific.
China was in a time of struggle, divided between the Wei dynasty in the north and the Southern Qi. With turmoil at home, many Chinese were eager to hear of a new land with potential for valuable trade in Fusang spices and silver for Chinese iron. Numerous merchants established small joint-stock companies to send ships with manufactures, such as silk, and tools. Livestock was considered one of the best options since, upon arrival with a handful of horses and oxen, they could stay and raise up a whole herd to sell. A trade route developed across the north, which later became a circular route following ocean currents with a valuable port on mid-ocean volcanic islands. Hawaii, as the Polynesians called it upon their arrival, became an important gateway not just between the east and west but also to the South Pacific.
Through the 500s, China reunified under the Sui dynasty. Trading posts became colonies as mining operations grew to exploit the untapped mineral wealth of northern Fusang, and the Chinese merchant and military navies became unrivaled in the Pacific and Indian oceans. Chinese engineers introduced wheeled vehicles, metallurgy, and ship-building to Fusang, who returned with agricultural methods that boosted Chinese food production. If not for the exchanged, civilizations may have crumbled during the bitter volcanic winter of 536. Instead, both China and the Fusang kingdoms grew to great heights during the next 1,000 years.
In Fusang, Teotihuacan expanded into a powerful empire across the fertile range south of the Gulf of Mexico. Trade routes went by sea south to the Huari of Andes and northward to the Mississippians. Chinese technology flowed along with goods, introducing gunpowder, paper, and the chain pump, which allowed water to be drawn nearly continuously from wells. Fusang ships soon became common throughout the Pacific and across the western shores of the Atlantic. A trade link was set up to Europe through the north by Norse and Fusang sailors, but decreasing global temperatures dropped interest in traveling there.
China expanded its power greatly through the centuries. By the time the Sui Dynasty gave way to the Tang, China was seen as the “grandfather of the world.” Arid farming techniques were introduced to the herders of the steppes, pacifying the region while laying the groundwork that would later be the industrial base for the Mongol state. During the long wars between the Sasanian Empire and the Byzantines in the early seventh century, China stepped in to mediate. New boundaries were set, and China established ports in eastern Egypt and Sinai as fortifications to their influence. This Chinese influence in the Mediterranean expanded with the rebuilding of the historic Canal of the Pharaohs linking the Nile with the Red Sea. Centuries later, Europe was badly devastated in the Black Death, leading to colonization and resettlement by Africans and natives from Fusang.
China’s empire that stretched from eastern Africa to the Andes eventually broke into smaller kingdoms. Still, a permanent diplomatic conference of “united nations” maintains peace from Hawaii. Much of the international understanding is supported by the underlying force of Buddhism, the world religion by far. Many regions have local religious majorities such as Islam in Arabia, Christianity in pockets of Europe, Hinduism in India, and Zoroastrianism in Persia but do feel the Buddhist influence. Even Buddhism itself differs greatly from the compassion-oriented Ubuntu Buddhism of Africa to the cosmic Buddhism in Australia to the self-sacrificial Buddhism still practiced in some regions of Fusang.
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In reality, there is a great deal of controversy about the land described as Fusang. While some historians in centuries past took it to mean the Americas, others argue that it was likely Kamchatka or the Kuril Islands based on the descriptions of the native people herding deer. The estimate of 20,000 li straight east from China would put Fusang near today’s Mexico, but others, including eighteenth-century cartographer Philippe Cuache, took it to be curved distance traveled, placing Fusang somewhere near the Columbia River system. Wherever the monks did visit and return from, they did not greatly work to affect the locals outside of teaching religious ideals and brought primarily only stories back to China.
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