In the eleventh month of 1370, in Nanjing, the army that had driven the Mongols out of the north came home. Zhu Yuanzhang had already reported the completion of the campaign at the suburban altars. On this day he enfeoffed the Ming dynasty founding generals in a single ceremony. Li Shanchang became Duke of Han,…

In 1382 a man named Zheng Shili wrote a memorial to the throne. He held no office, and he had no part in the case he wanted to argue. His point was narrow. Every year, clerks from the provincial administrations traveled to the Ministry of Revenue to reconcile grain and military supply accounts. The road…

In March 1393 the Hongwu Emperor recalled four senior commanders from the northern frontier. The emperor behind this decision was ​​​Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the Ming Dynasty. Eight days later, on 22 March, Lan Yu, Duke of Liang, was executed for treason. The Lan Yu rebellion case also took the Marquis of Heqing, the Marquis…

The Zheng He voyage map starts at a shipyard. The Treasure Shipyard in Nanjing is where the Ming built their oceangoing ships, the Yangtze, reaching open sea only after Longjiang, the river gate. For what that yard actually built, see our guide to Ming treasure ships. A Ming hand began the chart at that shipyard,…

In the first month of 1380, Tu Jie, a vice censor-in-chief, sent up a memorial accusing the sitting left grand chancellor, Hu Weiyong, of plotting rebellion. The Hu Weiyong case, Ming dynasty officials would find, swallowed far more than the grand chancellor. The accusation went to a joint tribunal of court officials, and the verdict…

In Nanjing during the Hongwu era, a heartbreaking morning ritual was whispered among officials. According to Ming-era notes, ministers would bid farewell to their wives and children before heading to court each dawn; if they returned home safely at dusk, the entire family would raise a toast, celebrating that they had survived another day. This…

Zhu Yuanzhang rose to power by combining military leadership, political patience, and administrative skill. He began as a poor orphan and Buddhist novice, joined the Red Turban Rebellion in 1352, captured Jiqing—modern-day Nanjing—in 1356, and built a powerful base in the lower Yangtze. He then defeated Chen Youliang and Zhang Shicheng, launched a northern expedition…

Picture this. It’s 1363. You’re standing on the shores of Lake Poyang in central China. In front of you, stretching across the water, is something that shouldn’t exist in the 14th century. Chen Youliang’s fleet. Hundreds of tower ships, each three stories high, painted blood-red, so massive that horses can gallop across their decks. They’re…

In 1344, a young man without even a proper name—Zhu Chongba, meaning "Double Eight," a number—knelt before the bodies of his parents. He couldn’t afford coffins. Twenty-four years later, he was the Hongwu Emperor, ruler of a quarter of the world’s population. The improbable springboard for this staggering ascent was a peasant uprising steeped in…

Yes, Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, was indeed a Buddhist monk in his early years. In 1344, after a devastating famine and plague killed his parents and brothers, the desperate teenager entered Huangjue Temple not out of religious devotion, but purely to survive. He spent several years there as a menial…

In 1344, a seventeen-year-old boy stood alone on the flood-ravaged plains of central China. His entire family had just starved to death. He had no land, no food, and not even a patch of earth to bury his parents. His name was Zhu Chongba—a name that was really just a number, the kind given to…