For centuries the Chinese—in a wonderful irony—have regarded North America as the “Far East.”

And the Chinese “Far East” has been known to them for more than 3,000 years. Whether this knowledge is based on travel across the Pacific or is just a good guess remains speculation. But in the past two decades, Western historians have realized that early China was not the isolated country it became in the 19th century.

Government documents from China in the sixth century, in part rejected as fiction by many Western historians, record the journey of a Buddhist priest to the Far East. Hwui Shan returned from somewhere to tell a tale, and the bow and arrow may have appeared in North American just about the time of his journey.

Even more strange, the oldest geography of China, finished at least 2,000 years ago, includes land traverses in the Far East. One of the outlined journeys curiously matches West Texas. No hard evidence exists. Only written records were created. And few people really think a Chinese explorer walked across trans-Pecos Texas more than 20 centuries ago.

Or did he?