# A visitor from Zanzibar  
The foregoing description of the entrance of the Zanj upon Chinese consciousness might well lead one to think that all of the earliest residents of Africa to enter China did so as slaves and thus against their will. To be sure, the portrait of the enslaved African has predominated throughout traditional Chinese history and literature. Nevertheless, there are exceptions to the prevailing rule and the most salient among the early ones is assuredly provided by a more expansive historical narrative concerning a certain visitor to China from what is now Zanzibar.  
The Tang dynasty was succeeded by the Song dynasty (960-1279), and the sole official history of the latter recounts two intriguing visits to China in close succession made by a traveller who originated from Africa. The site of departure is indeed central to the account, serving as its starting point:  
Cengtan is on the Southern Sea, with its town about twenty li (about seven miles or eleven kilometres) inland from the seacoast. In 1071, Cengtan brought gifts to our court for the first time. Travelling by sea, with the favourable [monsoon] winds, the envoy took 160 days. Sailing by way of Wuxun [in the vicinity of today's Muscat,  
Oman], Kollam [in India], and Palembang [in Indonesia], he arrived at Guangzhou (Tuotuo et al., 1977, 490.14122). ${ }^{2}$  
What is above described as the country or perhaps city of Cengtan, which also appears in the literature as the more common variant Cengba, is a name that in Chinese parlance of the eleventh century denoted Zanzibar - meaning literally in Arabic the 'region of the blacks' - from south of the Juba River to Cape Delgado along the eastern coast of Africa (Wyatt, 2010, pp. 69-70; Filesi, 1972, pp. 2, 18, 20, 21).