One day during the session of the Fourth International Conference on Asian History held at University of Malaya from 5th to 10th August, 1968, Dr Carlos Quirino, Director, Museum of Philippine History and Iconographic Archive, put me a question: “Did Admiral Cheng Ho visit the Philippines?” I replied in the negative. I told him that where Cheng Ho visited was limited to “Hsi Yang” (literally, “West Seas”) which was separated by the South China Sea and Straits of Sunda from “Tung Yang” (東洋 literally, “East Seas”). Java was the only island in “Tung Yang” visited by Cheng Ho's Fleet. This was given in Cheng Ho's chart, which appeared in Mao Yuan Yi's Wu Pei Chih, Vol. 240, without the indication of any name of places on the island. Pilotage from Hsi Yang to the island was not recorded in the Chart, because it was a special case for him to visit. But Java was included in Hsi Yang in the later period of Ming Dynasty as it was recorded in Tung Hsi Yang K'ao by Chang Hsieh (張燮) in 1617. Moreover, the name the Philippines or alternative had never appeared in any document connected with Cheng Ho.

Dr Quirino seemed very much astonished at my explanation and said that he had read a book published by the American Geographical Society, giving inference of Cheng Ho's visit to the Philippines, and the author of the article is a famous scholar in USA, whose theory derive from Chinese sources. Thereupon I asked Dr Quirino to obtain a copy of the thesis for me to read before I would expound further on the subject.

Soon after his return to the Philippines, Dr Quirino sent me a copy of the article entitled “Geographical Exploration by the Chinese” written by Chiao-min Hsieh, professor of geography at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., and was published in “The Pacific Basin, a History of its Geographical Exploration” (pp. 87–97), edited by Herman R. Friis. In the first part of his paper, Prof.