Mayan reliefs dating to this period and later suddenly show Buddhist and Hindu elements, such as figures seated on Lotus thrones, and on one stone stelae from the Maya city of Copan (now in Honduras), the king is shown wearing a diamond patterned ceremonial robe similar to Buddhist robes. A stone statue at Xculoc, Mexico, also from this period, has a distinctive hand gesture – right hand lowered, palm out, left hand raised, palm out, which is nearly identical to a classical Buddhist stance, “shi yuan wu wei,” which means “the granting of a wish.”

Long before Hui Shen, other Asians reached American shores, including British Columbia. It is now clear that as the Ice Age left the coastline clear, peoples from the Yangtze River valley migrated overland and by watercraft to settle the Americas as early as 14,000 years ago. Other peoples took to large bamboo rafts and crossed the sea, reaching Formosa (Taiwan) 11,000 years ago, and from there to the Phillipines and beyond, populating many of the Pacific Islands before reaching the American mainland, perhaps as early as three thousand years ago. At this time, the earliest Chinese Dynasty, the Shang, had fallen to a new power, the Zhou, who forced many Shang from their homes. Around this time (1045 BC), Shang artistic elements begin to appear in Peru’s Chavin culture, as well as Mexico’s Olmec culture.

Many oral traditions of the First Nations, including those of British Columbia, speak of Asian visitors. Some of these were undoubtedly Japanese who crossed thanks to the prevailing drift of the North Pacific’s currents. Archaeologists have discovered iron in pre-European contact First Nation sites that they feel came from wrecked Japanese junks and other craft that drifted across. Anyone who has picked up a Japanese glass fishing float off a Vancouver Island beach has benefited from this same pattern of oceanic drift.

The phenomena of drifting Japanese ships is recorded historically. One stranded junk’s crew, stranded and enslaved by the Makah people at Cape Flattery in 1834, were ransomed by Capt. William H. McNeill of the Hudson’s Bay Company trading brig Llama. Japanese ships were, by government edict, built poorly and prone to break up to discourage contact with the world beyond that then closed island nation. If deliberately weak ships could drift across the ocean, then why not extremely well-built, seaworthy Chinese craft crewed by skilled navigators who had the benefit of the compass long before Christopher Columbus ever sailed?