86 China in World History
Red Turban commanders. He then declared the founding of a new
dynasty, the Ming (meaning “bright” or “light”) and sent his largest
army in 1368 to invade and take over the former Yuan capital, which
he renamed Beiping, “The North Pacifi ed.” Zhu Yuanzhang’s rise from
destitute orphan-beggar-monk at age sixteen to Son of Heaven and
Emperor of China at forty is probably the most dramatic success story
in Chinese history. Yet his rise to power was only the beginning, because
Zhu had an additional thirty years to impose his iron will on the coun-
try and its government. If Shakespeare had been Chinese, his greatest
tragedy would have been the life of Zhu Yuanzhang.
In 1368, no one could have foreseen the troubles that lay ahead. To
have expelled the Mongols and reunify a strong empire under Chinese
control for the fi rst time in 250 years gave Zhu and his commanders
and offi cials great pride and cause for optimism. The new emperor took
the reign title Hongwu (Abundantly Martial), and he is also known
in history as Ming Taizu (the Grand Progenitor of the Ming). He was
energetic, smart, dedicated, and determined to ensure that the people
of China would never have to suffer as his family had suffered. No
emperor of China was ever more sympathetic to the plight of the poor.
He ordered an empire-wide land and population survey, kept central
government expenses low, and placed the dynasty on a fi rm fi nancial
footing. He built an imposing capital at Nanjing, surrounded by a twen-
ty-four-mile wall, forty feet high and twenty-fi ve feet wide at the top,
with thirteen magnifi cent gates. He refused to employ large numbers of
eunuchs and vowed to limit the number of concubines in his palaces.
(He succeeded on the eunuch front but still ended up with forty con-
cubines.) And he ordered villages to be self-regulating in units of 110
households, with the village leaders responsible for tax collection and
recordkeeping. He also ordered that his Confucian admonitions and
teachings be read aloud monthly at every village in the empire, so that
the entire population could be taught the virtues of Confucian fi lial
piety and loyalty to the emperor.
Despite all this, he became—whether from deep character fl aws, the
terrible insecurities of his youth, or the corruptions of power itself—a
paranoid emperor who ultimately tried to control his offi cials through
the blunt use of force and terror. He put out many pleas in 1368 and
later for men of talent and dedication to come forward and aid in the
great enterprise of government. Yet with the empire fully in his hands,
he found it increasingly diffi cult to trust his subordinates. In 1376, he
suddenly ordered the execution of up to a thousand offi cials for commit-
ting the crime of having some government tax documents “prestamped”