Zheng He/Kloc-entered the palace at the age of 0/3 and became a eunuch. Why are there more than 1000 descendants now?

I remember that in the early years, people often made jokes about the descendants of Zheng He. Master Shao Ma? Ma Zhiming also joked about it in his cross talk. There is even a movie that uses this as a funny gimmick, saying that he is a descendant of Zheng He because? A love affair before Zheng He entered the palace? . Of course, these can only be seen as jokes, and it can't be true to be laughed at.

However, Zheng He did have a son in real history. But this son was not born by Zheng He himself. The son of his stepbrother Ma, that is, his nephew Man Lai, was renamed Zheng Enlai after adoption and inherited thousands of hereditary royal guards granted by the emperor to Zheng He's family. According to the patriarchal clan system in ancient China, the status of adopted son is equal to that of parents and children. So from this perspective, Zheng He did have a son, and now the so-called descendants of Zheng He are actually descendants of Zheng Enlai.

After adopting his son Ma, Zheng He moved to the mansion of Sanshan Street in Nanjing. In memory of his ancestors, this mansion was named? Ma fu? Now the name of Nanjing Mafu Street comes from this. It is said that there are 72 houses in Mafu, which is absolutely rich and friendly. Unfortunately, during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Mafu was razed to the ground. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, archaeologists also unearthed cultural relics related to Zheng He in the former site of Mafuyuan, which proved the above contents from another side.

Having said that, many people will definitely have questions again. Why is Zheng He's surname Zheng, but the mansion is called Zheng? Ma fu? And then what? The question of Zheng He's surname is coming. In fact, Zheng He was not a Han Chinese. After the Semu people in the Yuan Dynasty, his father Mohekai (according to his surname Ma and Islamic background, many people later speculated that Zheng He belonged to the Hui nationality. But whether there was a concept of Hui nationality in the modern sense at that time, I personally think that preferential treatment is debatable).

Only, huh In fact, people were honorifics for those who had been to pilgrimage to mecca, the holy place of Islam, not their real names. Perhaps because Zheng He ran away from home when he was a child, his father's real name may have been forgotten, or perhaps because of other reasons, the history books only recorded Zheng He's father without his real name. However, there should be no doubt about the surname Ma.