Why I relate the great Ming Dynasty sea general Cheng Wo to this Malaysian made chocolate. First Malaysian chocolate isn't that famous as compared to those European brands. However, in the same latitude area, Malaysia takes a good advantage of the massive sunshine, nourishing rainful. The natural resources are very rich. The fruits can be the symbolic representation and actually the cocoa beans are pretty good, but just the technology of making nice chocolate has been lacked, until lately some int'l brands like Van Houten decided to develop their locally made chocolate from Malaysia. This can tell Van Houten has a fore-sight to get the benefit.
Under a recent study, Malaysia being in the same climatic and geographical condition to Africa. However, Africa has been devastated with a lot of virus and gems which shorten the general life span of the local people. Then why Malaysia didn't suffer from the same. It's mostly attributed to the Chinese medicine taking place to help prevent all those diseases. When we further go back to a few hundred years ago, a great explorer Cheng Wo set sail to most of the Asian seas and even some research showed that he might have reached the American continent besides Africa and India...etc. However, the old Chinese culture wouldn't let some unchanged belief be attacked when in the ancient belief the Earth couldn't be round and that China was not the center part of the World. Most of the things General Cheng did might have been burnt without a trace. It's like the Evolution theory was also once denied by certain religion groups. It's very sad that we are restrained from not taking on a cosmic rationale.
Not only Cheng discovered more of the world outside of China, but also he did many good things for the navigation and ship cruising technology. His fleet has 100 ships in the sea. Besides having one ship as a clinic, Cheng made one ship growing some veggie and fruits in order to cope with the chronic vitamin-C deficiency due to no veggie and fruits provided on a long sea journey. The chronic vitamin-C deficiency has been the big headache for the old time sailors when they took on a long sea journey. This practice has paved an important path for all the sailing ships and also it is the blue print for the future Space development of having a self-producing veggie/fruit mini-farm in the long journey of starship. These are just a very few things about General Cheng. Salute to this great person!
1. this Tudor Gold choco. bar may not be the best but at least it's better than certain common brands. I am looking forward to some refined chocolate in the not-too-distant-future.
7 comments:
thanks for the brief chocolate lesson!
and so it explains why Malaysia is also a major exporter of chocolate besides E.U.
I think everyone know Cheng Wo in school history book that he went down to western sea. the chinese word went down means china is the center in long history. but his sea trip is not very detailed. You are right that the record of his trip was deleted because he can not work better than the king. I think many places have the step of Cheng Wo now discover by history people.
Thank you SEA for the thorough history class.
I think I saw this chocolate in Bristol Farm. Will check out over there later.
SS, please compare this one to Godiva but it's better than Cadbury's and it's just HK$6 for a medium size bar. :)
Just watched the TV and it's about the rain forest of Malaysia and it showed it has an age of 4.6 billion years. I watched an article some scientists even found some rare plants which were thought to be gone. So Malaysia does have a big hidden treasure yet to be exploited.
OK. If you can compare this Tudor Gold with Godiva, I have to buy one at Bristol Farm to try. Will tell you later.
Oops.. SS, my typo - it should be "please don't compare".... hehe..
OK. I will compare between the two later, for better or for worse.
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