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The Island of Seven Cities: Where the Chinese Settled When They Discovered America |  | Author: Paul Chiasson
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Category: Book
List Price: $15.99
Buy Used: $5.25
as of 9/3/2010 08:03 PDT details
You Save: $10.74 (67%)
Seller: latte_books
Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 547983
Media: Paperback
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0312362056
Dewey Decimal Number: 971.69
EAN: 9780312362058
ASIN: 0312362056
Publication Date: May 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
In 2003, Paul Chiasson climbed a mountain he never explored on the island where he grew up. Cape Breton, one of the oldest points of exploration in the Americas, is littered with remnants of old settlements. The road he found that day was unique. Consistently wide and formerly bordered with stone walls, the road had been a major undertaking. For the next two years, he surveyed the history of Europeans in North America, and came to a stunning conclusion: The ruins he came upon did not belong to the Portuguese, French, or English and pre-dated John Cabot's "discovery" of the island in 1497. With aerial and site photographs, maps, drawings and his expertise in the history of architecture, Chiasson pieces together clues to one of the world's great mysteries. The Island of Seven Cities reveals the existence of a large Chinese colony that thrived on Canadian shores well before the European Age of Discovery and unveils the first tangible proof that the Chinese were in the New World before Columbus.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 23
 The Chinese Island of Seven Cities January 10, 2010
Walter W. Ko (St Louis, MO United States)
As a Yale-educated with a specialty in the history and theory of religious architecture, Paul Chiason traced his family history through Cape Breton Island in this book.
He did an impressive research in the history of European discovery in the collections of Portuguese, French, English and Scottish in many pages and chapters. His interest in the nation people known as Mi'Kmaq Nation led him to explore further on this tribe as they were able read and write to learn from technically advance civilization in navigation, cartography, medicine and fish cultivation. With his study of the settlement, structure ruin, the pattern of stones, path and stone wall, he concluded that it was a settlement of non-European but Chinese.
He talked about Nestorian Christians in China as early as the 7th Century. By the 15th Century, China had Christian bishop, large church and an open chancel to Rome (P.201). Actually, it was a reality during Genghis Khan's Dynasty.
He used the world "colony" (P.268) and book jacket. Colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state. Settlement is a better term to describe as Chinese visitors did not populate, exploit, raid or kill like the European colonists. Paul oversimplified the Chinese Classics into the works of Confucius, Mencius and Lao Tzu, a legendary monk (?) (P.271). Lao Tzu was a keeper of royal library and left behind the philosophical text known as Tao Te Ching (not Chin, P.271) - The Classic of Power and Virtue as China enjoyed a blossom of "Contention of a Hundred of Thought in Warring States".
Paul concluded that in 15th Century, China was the only nation capable of a long ocean journey in large equipped ships (P.268). He accepted the Cape Dauphin ruins were China settlement (P.275). In subsequent pages, he compares and contrasts the dress, hats, headdress and knitting patterns between Mi'Kmaq and Chinese. The appeared remarkable similar. There are two terms of particular interest - Grand Chibou (P.128), in Chinese meaning Great Seven Treasures, a special title for Zhang He, and Membertou (P.148), Chinese meaning the chief of a hundred (centurion).
Paul presented his research in Library of Congress Conference, made a trip with Gavin Menzies to the site again. He shows us the ruins, the way and his finding linking to the Chinese before Columbus. It motivates readers to follow to find the truth.
1421: The Year China Discovered America (P.S.)The 1421 Heresy: An Investigation into The Ming Chinese Maritime Survey of the World1434: The Year a Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance;
 Fascinating August 27, 2009
M. Heiss (USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Plods along till page 180, then gets very exciting. The beginning chapters have WAY too much personal narrative and introspection. The book suffers from what I call, "The Blah-Blahs." Reading all that "what this quest means to me" stuff is plain old dull.
BUT.
The final 140 pages overcame the poor start and proved un-put-down-able. I enjoyed it very much and have recommended it several times. Chiasson makes a cohesive, coherent, and compelling case.
Remarkable Fun!!! November 18, 2008
Michael E. Fitzgerald (Kingwood, Texas USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Fabled in Spanish lore, antiquity's seven cities of gold are reputed to have launched the conquistadores on their successful invasions of Mexico and Peru and their materially less successful excursions into the Southwestern (Coronado) and Southeastern (de Soto) United States. In fact, both Coronado and de Soto were reputed to have been in the Arkansas River valley, one on the upper end, the other on the Mississippi end, during the same summer. In other words, the search for these cities was intense, cost a fortune to finance and resulted in the earliest known European exploration of today's lower United States.
Columbus was aware of the cities and depicted them on the legend of his first map, prior to his embarking on his initial voyage. They had been long reported by many, all too many voyagers, for them not to be real, thus Spain's remarkable efforts to find them. Were they a focus of Columbus' first and subsequent voyages? No one is talking. But in all of the subsequent exploration of the New World by Russia, Spain, France, England, Portugal, and Holland, these cities, so frequently reported by Norse, Basque and Italian mariners, were never located. Like Atlantis, no one has ever found them.
This book is a remarkable bit of history and archaeological sleuthing performed by the author, Paul Chiasson, a Montreal architect, who discovers a long lost ruin on Cape Breton Island, the land of his birth. It is the story of those ruins, how the author researched his findings and told his story in a manner that leaves the reader absolutely intrigued. Yes, the author concludes Cape Breton hosted the seven cities and that the ruins, in seven separate locations on the coast, are the real deal of antiquity. But there is more: The Cities were the result of a Chinese gold rush!
Amazingly well done, excellently written and remarkably far reaching in its early civilization revisionist impact, one is left with the feeling that man has inhabited this planet in a technologically advanced way for a very long, long time. Of course, if you think the conclusion is simply poppycock, to bizarre to be given serious consideration, then you will just have spent some fun time reading about a forgotten place that exists whose explanation is still a mystery. Cape Breton Island and Oak Island are awfully close together. Both represent technology unavailable at the time when they were supposed to have been constructed. Hmmmm.......
Talk about thinking outside the box! This is a terrific read that will make you think. Excellent, Mr. Chiasson, just excellent.
Convincing to me! August 19, 2008
John L. Whitlock (Jackson, MS United States)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
As far as I'm concerned I'm convinced that Paul has the right idea! While we westerners thought the world was flat the Chinese were exploring and expanding their world daily. Real archealogy and anthropological investigations will undoubtedly prove his ideas to be true. His historical research appears to be impecably done. I'm glad to see he's still around to see what his book has wrought! I'm definitely a fan.
History's Discoveries June 1, 2008
R. DelParto (Virginia Beach, VA USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
One of Architect Paul Chiasson's motivation to writing THE ISLAND OF SEVEN CITIES: WHERE THE CHINESE SETTLED WHEN THEY DISCOVERED AMERICA was his life changing experience of facing mortality. Chiasson discovered he was HIV-positive. Although the book is not an autobiography of his experience, there is semi-autobiographical information that he shares with his readers, which inspired him to write the book, revisiting his birthplace of Nova Scotia and rediscovering his ancestral history closely linked to French explorer Samuel de Champlain. But the compelling aspect of his discovery is that upon learning of his illness, he hiked to the mountaintop on Cape Breton Island where past generations of his family had lived, and by accident, he came across ruins that may have dated back to the Ming dynasty. And with this discovery he formulated a hypothesis claiming that the Chinese may have landed in North America before European explorers.
This books ties in with a previous book examining China's possible role and contribution to the exploration of the New World, 1421: THE YEAR CHINA DISCOVERED THE NEW WORLD by Gavin Menzies. Drawing from Menzies's discovery, Chiasson went on a two-year research expedition to finding more about the ruins and proving that they were settled by the Chinese. The Mi'kmaq, an indigenous people of the island, may have derived their culture from the Chinese, and in turn, helped French settlers to live and thrive on the island centuries later. But Chiasson's thought-provoking book is purely hypothesis, and extensive research by archaeologists and historians are still in order for his findings to be definite; if proven correct, this part of history adds another dimension to the understanding of world history.
ISLAND OF SEVEN CITIES is a fascinating read. Chiasson offers insight to the many facets of how the exploration and discovery of the North American continent and its various settlements included a global community of different countries from the West and possibly may have included the East. For several historians this is skeptical history, but for curious minds wanting to understand the discovery of the New World from different perspectives, this is an interesting book.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 23
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