Hongwu Research Articles

Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation: The Reordering of Chinese Society Following the Era of Mongol Rule (review)

386 China Review International: Vol. 4, No. 2, Fall 1997 Edward L. Farmer. Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation: The Reordering ofChinese Society Following the Era ofMongol Rule. Sinica Leidensia , vol. 34. Leiden, New York, and Köln: E. J. Brill, 1995. x, 259 pp. Hardcover $79.50, isbn 90-04-10391-0. The roU call ofvisionary founding fathers of new regimes in China's long history, of superhuman figures whose grand designs for state and society became orthodox inspirational models for later generations, can probably be reduced to a short list of three: the Duke ofZhou (fl. twelfth century b.c.); Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398); and Mao Zedong (1893-1976). But Mao's case as institutional creator and moral guide has come under severe criticism since his death; and fhe Duke of Zhou was technically a regent and advisor, not a king or ruler, and his reputation is mainly posthumous. So that leaves Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming dynasty, as arguably the sole member ofhis class, overpowering as emperor and lawgiver in his own day, whose reputation, though faded (Sun Yat-sen's tomb is much bigger), has never seriously been challenged or criticized, at least not in China. As Farmer's subtitle states, Zhu aimed to effect nothing less than a "reordering of Chinese society." Because he left behind a large and miscellaneous file ofwriting that appears to have been done by his own hand, some aspects of the great man's mind and personality are accessible to the modern researcher. These do not make an attractive picture. There is little to be found of the self-reflection, the observant curiosity , or the humanness of, say, the Kangxi emperor (1654-1722). What his own testimony reveals is a one-dimensional, fire-breathing prophet—a man of obscure social origin, who embraced with an air of absolute and uncompromising certitude the "teachings of the Sages and Worthies," which he had picked up only as an adult; whose sole mission as emperor was to "restore antiquity," that is, to reinculcate in the minds of everyone, through propaganda and violence, the altruism and stern formality enjoined by the Confucian classics; and who found himself, despite all his titanic efforts, frustrated at every turn by the greed, mindless villainy, and incorrigible moral worthlessness of the great majority of the people he had to rule. Zhu Yuanzhang took upon himself the Classics-inspired dual role ofnational ruler and national teacher (junshi), ofpunisher and educator. As teacher and educator, he either wrote or sponsored a long list of publications for the ediy niversi y fication and enlightenment ofhis wayward people. He believed it was not enough for him just to follow custom and sit on his throne and issue commands and rescripts day after day. His desire was to bring about the ethical-behavioral transformation of China, and in order to do that, he had to inform the people of ofHawai'i Press Reviews 387 China in detail just what he expected ofthem, and to show them in detail just what terrible punishments befell fhose who faded to take his lessons and urgings to heart. Much ofZhu's personal writing was forgotten and became rare after he died, but some ofthat which was codified under his direction lived on through one or more Ming and Qing revisions to the present century. Zhu Yuanzhang needs a skUled biographer, but perhaps his getting one should wait until we understand more about him. Edward L. Farmer, Hok-lam Chan, Edward L. Dreyer, Charles O. Hucker, Jack Langlois, Thomas P. Massey, and Romeyn Taylor are some ofthe leading names ofthose in the West who have done the most to throw light on Zhu Yuanzhang's life, thought, and policies as emperor. Farmer's long-standing interest has been in Zhu's role as lawgiver and provider ofplans for the restoration of an orthodox social and moral order in China. The present book, ofwhich portions have been made available earlier in article form, gives us the best introduction so far to the "far-reaching plans" of the Ming founder, the operational guides to social rectitude that he and his government compiled over the course ofhis thirty-year...

THE FOUR ZHU YUANZHANGS: A SUCCESSION OF BIOGRAPHIES OF THE MING FOUNDER

According to his colleague Teng Ssu-yu, what the modem biographer of Zhu Yuanzhang, Wu Han, knew about the Ming founder before he began his historical research in Beijing in 1931 was probably absorbed from his youth in Zhejiang in Yiwu County, Jinhua Prefecture. For six crucial months during Zhu's campaign against the Mongol rulers at the end of the Yuan dynasty he had occupied the area of Jinhua in central Zhejiang, the place where Wu Han lived as a boy. The local people, strongly conscious of their history, had never forgotten it.

REPORT ON THE SIXTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MING HISTORY (FENG-YANG, AUGUST 1995)

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS The Sixth International Conference on Ming History (Diliujie Zhongguo Mingshi guoji xueshu taolunhui) was convened at Fengyang, Anhui Province August 11–16, 1995. The location of the conference in Fengyang has special significance in Ming history as the birthplace of Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor. The conference was jointly sponsored by the Society for the Study of Zhu Yuanzhang (Zhu Yuanzhang yanjiuhui), Anhui Normal University (Anhui shifan daxue), Anhui History Society (Anhui lishi xuehui), and the Chinese Society for Ming Dynasty History (CSMDH, Zhongguo Mingshi xuehui). According to the conference program, 23 specially invited representatives and 140 formal representatives attended the conference. The former consisted mostly of government leaders and heads of local enterprises. The latter included 16 scholars from Japan; five from Korea; one each from the United States, Germany, Singapore and Hong Kong; nine from Taiwan; and 106 from mainland China. Among the Chinese participants were Zhu Yuanzhang's offspring of the 37th generation Zhu Houjin and Mao Zedong's paternal grandson Mao Xinyu

THE LOCAL COMMUNITY IN EARLY MING SOCIAL LEGISLATION: MING TAIZU'S APPROACH TO TRANSFORMATION AND CONTROL IN THE “GREAT WARNING”

The village community figured prominently in the social legislation of the early Ming Dynasty. The founding emperor's humble origins linked his destiny to the commoners of the realm, when he regarded them as the vanguard of his grand design for the control and moral transformation of society. Ming Taizu (r. 1368–98) issued numerous imperial edicts, instructions, and laws to communicate to his subjects his own perspective of the ideal social order, one which justified autocratic rule and the state's conscious manipulation of social practice. An indication of the extent to which the early Ming state was prepared to go to implement Taizu's objectives is best seen in the “Great Warning” [DA GAO], a collection of imperial pronouncements issued between 1385 and 1387. Taizu's effort to legislate his social blueprint for Ming society was a watershed in Chinese government. The text of the “Great Warning” candidly illustrates Ming Taizu's desire to make the village community the focal point of his ideal social order. These pronouncements represent the best indication of imperial intent to remold society according to Taizu's dictates and reveal a unique approach to the implementation of Ming social legislation combining mass indoctrination, ritual observances, and coercion.

ZHU YOUDUN'S DRAMATIC PREFACES AND TRADITIONAL FICTION

AbstractZhu Youdun (1379–1439) was a very prolific playwright, he wrote no less than thirty-one zaju. As a grandson of the founder of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang. and the eldest son of Zhu Yuanzhang's fifth son, the Prince of Zhou, Zhu Su (1361–1425), whose title he later inherited, Zhu Youdun was in a position to have all these thirty-one plays printed during his lifetime (Fu Xihua, MINGDAI ZAJU QUANMU, Beijing, 1958, pp. 55–78). Many plays are introduced by a preface written by himself. These prefaces have often been omitted in later editions of the play concerned. By now I have seen on microfilms, provided by Beijing Library and the Fu Ssu-nien Library, copies of the original edition of thirty zaju by Zhu Youdun. Only in the case of his DE ZOUYU have I not yet had such a privilege. Of these thirty zaju no less than twenty-two carry a preface, the length of which may vary from a few columns to a few pages. These prefaces are an important source for our study of fifteenth-century drama—a topic I inte...

A REAPPRAISAL OF COMRADE WU HAN'S BIOGRAPHY OF ZHU YUANZHANG

AbstractThe BIOGRAPHY OF ZHU YUANZHANG is an important work of Comrade Wu Han. Being concerned about the writing of this book, Comrade Mao Zedong not only took time from his busy schedule to read the manuscript but also spent an evening discussing it with Comrade Wu Han. He offered many solid comments and valuable suggestions with regard to such problems as the final days of Peng Yingyu, the organizer of the western division of the Red Turban Army and the like. When published in 1965, the revised edition of this work immediately received the welcome and serious attention of historical circles, but the traitor Jiang Qing was extremely hostile toward it. When the revised work was presented to Chairman Mao for his review, the traitor Jiang Qing made a daring attempt to withhold it from the Chairman, slanderously accusing Comrade Wu Han of “being covetous of fame and author's fees.” She openly declared that after its publication she would make public her criticism of the BIOGRAPHY, a work that Chairman Mao ha...

THE SYSTEM OF DIRECT PETITION TO THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF MING TAIZU

In the early months of 1385 (Hongwu eighth year, during the reign of Ming Taizu, the dynastic founder), the embezzlement of an incredibly massive quantity of government grain by the vice minister of revenue, Guo Huan, in connivance with both government personnel and commoners was unearthed. The persecution that followed lasted for several months. It took a heavy toll in lives and destroyed numerous households financially, and in many instances physically as well. Many of those who had suffered in the affair were actually innocent; the implication of the innocent persons generated popular resentment against the court. The resentment was so persistent and virulent that Taizu was compelled to issue an edict on August 2, 1385, to explain what he had done to deal with the affair, and “to placate the popular sentiment that has swept across the empire.” Although persecution of the innocent was terminated by the edict, the persecution of real culprits continued for a considerable length of time. The multitude of people implicated in the affair and the magnitude of bloodletting incurred by it ranked the Guo Huan affair with the Hu Weiyang affair of 1380, the Kongyin affair of 1382 and the Lan Yu affair of 1393 as one of the four large bloody persecutions of the Hongwu reign.

MING T'AI-TSU AND THE GODS OF THE WALLS AND MOATS

Abstract In an earlier article, I cited Chu Yuan-chang's relations with his nobility of merit as evidence that contrary tendencies in political organization, feudalistic and despotic respectively, may have predominated in the earlier and later stages of the bottom-to-top process of the formation of the Ming imperial state. The Ming founder's parallel management of his relations with the popular gods of the walls and moats offers a context within which to consider the process of dynastic founding under the aspect of religious belief and practice.

MING T'AI-TSU AND THE NOBILITY OF MERIT

AbstractChu Yuan-chang's seventeen-year transit from the lower depths of Chinese society to the imperial throne provides a context for an examination of the principles of the political integration of Chinese society. The Ming Dynasty originated in a local military office of the Maitreya-worshipping White Lotus Society. In 1352, the Ming founder, Chu Yuan-chang, then a destitute ex-peasant and Buddhist monk, entered the service of a prosperous fortune-teller Kuo Tzu-hsing, who had occupied the city of Hao at the head of an armed band of White Lotus initiates. In 1355, leaders of the Society proclaimed the establishment of the Ta (Great) Sung Empire. The vicissitudes Of the ill-fated empire were reflected in the frequent movement of its capital (Po-chou 1355–1358; K'ai-feng 1358–1359; An-feng 1359–1363; Ch'u-chou 1363–1367). The emperor, Han Lin-erh, died either by accident or by design while being moved down the Yangtze from Ch'u-chou to Nanking in 1367. Chu Yuan-chang rose in the ranks of the Ta Sung Empi...

MING PERIODIZATION: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL

AbstractLet me not argue whether conventions for the periodization of the Ming dynasty are necessary, desirable or possible. Let me simply note that most of us do speak of “Early Ming” or “Late Ming” as if we expect our audience to know what we mean. I submit that in many contexts such terms are ambiguous, and sometimes confusing. One solution would be to avoid confusion by referring to reign periods, decades, or centuries. Another solution is to agree to common definitions. I trust we can all agree (a) that as designations of a period of time, without further qualification, the terms “Ming dynasty” and “Ming” mean “1368 to 1644,” and (b) that Chu Yuan-chang's pre-imperial phase and the Southern Ming reigns are not part of “Ming.” As a way of inducing discussion from which a useful consensus if not clarification might evolve, I offer here some proposals, with minimum justification, for the names and terminal points of Ming periods.

The Transformations of Messianic Revolt and the Founding of the Ming Dynasty

AbstractsThe late Yuan popular rebellions began in 1351 when two independent White Lotus Societies, in north and south China, both purveying a chiliastic Buddo-Manichean ideology, recruited to their cause a following of socially miscellaneous elements who called themselves Red Turbans, and provoked an empire-wide attack upon the landlords and the local officials. One key to the failure of the rebels to rise above the rioting phase lay in their inability to gain massive and sustained peasant support. The result was that the landlord gentry, leading peasant militia (i-ping), were able to contain and suppress these riots by 1353–54 in cooperation with the Yuan bureaucracy. However, when the Yuan Chancellor Toghto was for political reasons cashiered in January 1355, the dynasty lost control of the pacification process. In these circumstances, new leadership emerged from both of the original rebel organizations, and stepping into the control vacuum left by the Yuan, pressed an entirely new policy of cooperation with the landlord gentry and their i-ping. The main leaders in this were Ch'en Yu-liang and the future Ming founder, Chu Yuan-chang. Chu's victory over Ch'en, his chief rival, is due largely to the tighter centralization of his embryonic imperial regime.