The Ming Dynasty in the 16th Century: Early Modern Transformations

lot to do today. I want to get through as much of it as possible. Here's the game plan. So, today we'll do the um we'll do the Ming. We'll do we'll I'll take you through the 1400s, the 1500s. We'll see how far we get. On Wednesday, we do the 1600s. As you can imagine, the end of the Ming dynasty, which is a really epic story in and of itself. And I will record it. And you have to understand something. I would say one of the highlights of the semester, you know, when I think about the whole semester and I think about, you know, highlights like writing systems and everything like that, the death of the last Ming emperor, right?

The his totally dramatic suicide is on Wednesday, right? So, you'll watch a video of me talking about that, right? Unfortunately, it won't be in person, but that's I think one of the highlights of the semester and then next week we come back and it's theQing dynasty pretty much until the end of the class, right? So, all right. So, let's get started. So, the establishment of the Ming dynasty. This is where we kind of picked off. I just want to say this is not super great resolution there, but I'm I'm going to show you this photo, this painting again. That's a painting of Juian Jang, right? The first Ming Emperor. And there's something, you know, when we always talk about what's

the Mongol legacy of the early Ming. I think that was a question for you this week in your discussion post, right? And you go, okay, there he is. He's wearing his yellow, you know, big imperial costume. You know, he's the emperor and everything like that, right? But like, look at this carpet. You know what I'm saying? You ever look at that car? That's obviously like a Persian Central Asian carpet, right? So it think about it like that. I'll show you that image later today where you can take a good look at it. And just remember the Mongols really changed China, right? And so things that you know and he's coming back. He's established the Ming dynasty and he's going to of course say I'm

going to get rid of all these foreign influences. Of course he's going to say that. Of course the founder of the Ming dynasty would say that. Right? Ming is in a sense reacting to Mongol rule. But they've already adopted so much from Mongol rule that it goes without saying, right? Just think about what a even 80 years does, right? Think about what the United States was 80 years ago, right? Visav today, you know, that would put us in like, you know, what the 1940s, right? And the culture of the 1940s versus the culture today, right? So this is like that's a serious amount of time that the Mongols were in, you know, China, right? And as you know, parts of China, they were in there for a

longer period of time. All right. So just say something really quickly about the fall of the Yuan dynasty. Basically, there's I already covered this last week, but just to kind of give you some highlights here, there's a kind of series of civil wars that sort of break out in the south. You can see Chun Chunang was a big sort of contender, you know, against uh Juan Jang, right? But Juan Jang basically he takes over. He's ultimately successful. This is his territory uh that he that you know he consolidated early on. So basically the Mongols are going to basically be driven out back beyond what is now the Great Wall into Mongolia. But then it's this question of the power play in South

China that actually is going to render Juan Jang successful. I'm going to talk a little bit about the technologies that might have aided in his success in doing that in consolidating his rule. He I think ultimately defeats Chunyo Chong Yoyang at this Pouyang Lake. And so that's where he basically becomes like the he unrivaled in South China, right? This is an interesting story of we don't usually have the south unified first and then conquering the country. It's usually the north goes south, right? This is a case where the south did it first. That's why his capital's at Nanjing, right? Um okay. Now, the one thing I'll just kind of say here, the fall of the UN dynasty, it doesn't totally go away. There's this thing we

come sometimes called the northern UN which is kind of like sometimes called a rump state. Basically the Mongol line of the of the UN goes back into the step. Um and you know there's sort of at various points in the aftermath of the Mongol Empire unified sometimes they're less unified. But one of the things that I will say here is that if you look at by the time you get to the 1500s, the Mongols are becoming a serious geopolitical player again. And in particular, what one of and this is a story I'm just telling you right now because we're not really going to focus on it today. But starting in the 1500s, even the late 1400s, but 1500s for sure,

uh the alliance between the Mongols and the Tibetans, right? So, and especially with patronage for Tibetan Buddhism, right? So it's in you know this period that you're going to have Alton Khan who is going to be you know the most powerful Mongol of his day okay uh basically create the institution of the Daly Lamas that happens during the Ming period right and that happens with the Mongol Tibetan connection okay uh ultimately when you say 13635 right there what happens to the Mongols up there what happens to this northern UN What happens to all this? Basically, they're going to get incorporated, most of them, into the Manchu project, right? Which will be theQing project. So, next week when I talk to you about theQing,

where it comes from and everything like that, I can catch you all up on the details of the Tibetans and the Mongols and that alliance and everything like that. But just realize when the Ming is doing this thing, this kind of, you know, the Tibetans and the Mongols stuff, that's a really important story. All right. When we talk about Juian Jang and his victory and his establishment of the Ming, right? Ming and right bright right bright brightness uh you know Ming you know clear something like this that's what the ra this title means right uh he kind of followed in the Mongol tradition of where do you get your reign name from where do you get your dynastic sorry dynastic name from and the Mongols had

picked from the classic of changes right they had picked a nice name Yen right this you know this nice character out of that classical text, right? So, he picks Ming also nice, auspicious, prosperous, everything like that. Um, do I'll show you in just a second, but one of the things that he is going to sort of possibly ascribes his victory to is like basically weaponry, in particular, gunpowder based weaponry. This is a fascinating text that is written during his reign, okay, as the first emperor of China. And it's basically the fire dragon classic. And by the way, of course, like that's classic here is a nice way uh polite way, very nice way to call an important

book, but it is not a classic. It is a 14th century text. Uh it claims to have commentaries and such from like or knowledge from Jugalang. Of course, remember this is all strategic. Anytime you write something new, you have to you have to pretend it's old, right? And Jugalang, hey, Jugalang knew all about these strategies, blah. He knew all about No, he didn't. There was no gunpowder during the three kingdoms period. Jugang did not write a preface for this book. This is a late 14th century book, but it's really interesting because you get to kind of take a look at this is a what do you think this is?

It's a bomb. Okay. So, so this is a bomb that was used uh during the Ming wars of their establishment. And like look at this, right? This is this heavenly fire, you know, arrow, right? you know, this kind of thing, lighting them all at once. You know, this kind of art the this weaponry and artillery. There's all different images of the weapons that were used in the 14th century. This was composed by two members uh sort of two officials who had supported Juan Jang in his conquest of China and the establishment of the W Ming. One of them later got executed. You will see Juan Jang executes a lot of people. Okay. Uh but you know this is this book two famous people wrote it and you could just kind of see here this is from Ming

uh Ming Taiu's you know Jan Jang's reign that's a Ming bronze firearm you can kind of see like what the primitive firearms looked like okay at this time but they were used uh and we will see of course references we later in the Ming dynasty we'll actually see the appearance of like overseas cannon especially with m when Macau opens okay in like 1557 you'll see overseas cannon but there was from right from the very start of the dynasty firearm artillery etc. What we can say is that from the creation of this book uh by some prominent officials in the early Ming probably these weapons were ascribed by Ming Tidzu as you know having helped them consolidate their rule uh you know

when they were fighting you know before 1368. All right. So, here he is. That's a better image. Okay. Better, more clear image. Look, that's him. He was not known as an attractive man, I have to tell you. He had very bad skin. They think he had some sort of um uh like uh I don't know what that is, but like you know, like a pockmark face, right? Like he was not a particularly attractive person according to the annals. Um he was super intense. You got to understand this is a guy with like a huge chip on his shoulder, right? He was tr truly one of the people who founded a dynasty in Chinese history from absolute poverty.

Okay, from like really absolute poverty, right? So you've seen that kind of like we say Leo Bang, right? From the founder of the Han dynasty. That's another time we sort of saw something like that. But with Ming Taiu, we know more about him, right? That ju just take another closer look right here. Like look at this beautiful Persian, you know, Central Asian carpet right there. Just like totally there. totally under, you know, not even a comment, right? I'm the emperor of the Ming. This is my new dynasty. And look at that carpet, right? So again, it just gives you a sense of that cultural moment in that late 14th century. That's his prime. That's his name, Juian Jang. He picks his era name. What's his era name going to be? He picks this name

Hungu. So what does Hungu mean? Kind of gives you a sense of what he's all about. Marshall. Yeah. overflowing marshall valor, right? So, he sees himself when you pick a name like that for being your reign title. And by the way, just realize reign titles in the Ming and theQing become more important because they don't change during a dynasty anymore. Let me just explain what I mean by that. During the Tong, like Watian, she comes to the throne and she'll basically say, "Okay, here's the name of the era." And they'll use it for like a few years. And then Wizatan will say, "Here's the name of the new era." So during her reign, there will be multiple era names, right? She can change them.

They all could change them. But in the Ming and theQing, you pick one era name and that's the era name that you have as long as you're emperor. So Homu is homeu the whole way through, right? And you'll see that from throughout the Ming and theQing. So picking a name like that, okay, is kind of saying like I'm full of martial valor, right? Which of course was true. That's how he came to power, right? Uh but it's also going to give you a sense of his attitude, right? Because remember what is the complement to the woo when, right? So you know, so he does not pick a name with when in it, right? That's always uh that's that's something to just be aware of, right? You know it always you remember like you know all of these words of what the

leaders pick will always tell you something about them right you know when Xiinping picks I don't know Jongu right or something like that Chinese dream or something like that in hindsight you'll go oh I see why that made sense right you know they what they pick matters right uh there he is the 13 provinces of the Ming is never going to reach the territorial heights of the Tong it's not going to reach the territorial heights of the Yen It's kind of like boxed in into especially towards that northern region, but it's serious. It's powerful. It's got it and it's so important in ways that I'm going to try to explain to you today, right?

It's so important not just for Chinese cultural history, intellectual history, economic history. During the Ming dynasty, this is really where you're we really going to start talking about the global economy, right? The Ming is presiding over a truly before this, you know, Tong dynasty goes, "Oh, Silk Road, blah." Yeah. Okay. overland camels takes forever to get stuff anywhere. But we get maritime trade here and it's going to be it. We also get the during the Ming you really get Chinese living overseas in Southeast Asia, right? There's all of these big things that happen during the Ming. And the Ming is also it lasts for a long time, right? Like 277 years, something like

that. Any dynasty that lasts that long, you got to tip your hat to that, right? Like you know they did something right. So let's take a look. Well, they did a lot of things wrong, but they let's take a look at what they did, right? All right. So, one of the things he does when he comes to power, he outlaws foreign elements, right? He comes to power and he says you can no longer use foreign names, Mongol names. You got to use Chinese names. Okay? He says if you're a Mongol or you're a Simu, you got to I think he basically says you have to marry a Hanchinese, right? Kind of like tries to

get involved with like who you marry, right? Now, of course, what is it all about? It's all about this assimilation process, right? In other words, of course that's what he was going to do, right? After you're living under Mongol rule for, you know, over 70 years, parts of China longer than that, you're going to want to have a reaction like this, right? Reestablishing who we all about, what do, you know, this is the standard. You got to wear tong, remember he says, wear Tong Dynasty dress. Don't wear Mongol dress. Well, what was Tong Dynasty dress? Did people know what that was? Okay, whatever. The point is he's got this kind of aspect to him. But

what's also really interesting about Ming Titzu is he's also like very tolerant in some surprising ways. Remember I told you all those slam they came into the country and they were like establishing themselves many of them were Muslim. So he Ming Tatsu famously says like I'm okay with Islam you know they can have the mosques you know the Jews can stay in Kiang I'm okay with all of that right just like you know dress in the Tong Dynasty style right? You know what I mean? So it's like what's the line? What's the line for him? So it's not I don't want you to think that it's like this um you know kind of like uh reactionary xenophobia. It's it's more complicated than that. He wants to

reestablish like Chinese identity. No doubt, right? He has an idea of what that is. But he's also dealing with a very changed social landscape from the from the fall of the Mongol era. And he's got you got to deal with all these people. There's millions of Muslims now living in your country, right? What are you going to do? You're going to kick everybody out? So, no, he's got he keeps them in and he says, "Okay, I'll do edict to toleration. You get out mosques. You do all this stuff." But, you know, you know, there's some things they police and some things they don't police. I told you his capital is Nanjing. Please visit Nanjing. It's a beautiful city. Remember the salted

duck? Yeah. Good. Salted duck. Yeah. Um, this was his capital. It's the capital very shortly, just basically during his reign. It's also going to be the capital of China in the early 20th century. Nanjing has this fate of never being a very long capital, right? But it is a capital city twice in the last what 700 years, right, for short periods of time. All right. Uh Ming Taiu is buried in Nanjing, right? So he's actually he is the only Ming emperor as far as we know. I don't think we know where the body of uh his grants. I'll tell you about that in a second. I'm getting ahead of myself. Uh he's the only Ming emperor that we know was buried in Nanjing. Everybody else is buil is

buried in the Ming Shan Ling, the 13 Ming tombs outside of Beijing. Right? That's after the capital is moved to Beijing. It's beautiful city. The other thing he does is he builds this wall. He builds the city wall of Nanjing, fortifies it. That makes Nanjing really interesting because it's one of the few Chinese cities, especially provincial capitals. Xian is one of them. Nanjing is one of them that still has their old city wall. You got to realize Beijing used to have its city wall. It was torn down in the 1950s. Communists torn it down. Kind of a tragedy to be honest with you. I realize there are some people, you know, it's like, are you a developmentalist? We got to change

things that the wall made Beijing seem so small and so quaint and I get it. But it was the whole sort of atmosphere of the city. Nanjing still has its wall. This wall is really interesting, too. If you're interested in the history of World War II, how the wall served in fortifications against the incoming Japanese army, the gates that the Japanese army walked, you know, marched through when they were taking the city, and of course, all the scenes associated with what was later called the rape of Nanjang, right? So, the wall is really, really interesting to see, to experience. Okay. Now, uh you could kind of guess Mingu hated the scholar establishment, right? He does use this

kind of like I mean it's kind of fitting for our most recent presidential election if I may say Ming Titzu hated the establishment. Who was the establishment? The Confucian scholars who thought they were better than everybody, right? And he was not formally educated. So he was kind of like had a little bit of a chip on his shoulder. So one of the things he does which is kind of like what take it as you will he orders uh every county in the empire to open a school. Now, how wellunded these schools were or how long did they last, you can have a school on paper, but after 20 years, you know, it becomes a tavern for drinking or something like that. It doesn't necessarily always work out. But he did

want everybody to have access to some education. So, he's kind of got this like bent to him. Uh, he halts the civil service examinations in 1373 after complaining that the 120 scholar officials who obtained a ginger degree were incompetent ministers. So he basically had a graduating class. They came. He goes, "You guys are just awful. I'm just going to stop these exams." So it's like, it's fascinating how you say to yourself, "Wait, I thought the exams were so important. The exams, aren't the exams so important? Who would dare end them?" Right? And it tells you a lot about Ming Tidu that he would just be like, "Yeah, just forget about it. Just we're not going to do it." And then he brings it back. And then when he

brings it back in 1384, he executes the chief examiner who when it was discovered that he had only allowed candidates from the south to be granted degrees. That's I thought always a funny and remember we were talking about this I think after class last week. Very funny episode. I mean it's kind of tragic. Don't get me wrong. This is an execution but you know when you look at the list and he goes they're all Southerners. What are you doing? Executes the chief examiner, right? He executes supposedly about a 100,000 people who were affiliated with the government and their families. This guy executed probably more people than most emperors in Chinese history, right? Uh

he was like paranoid. He was always thinking that people were going to overthrow him. All of that, right? Um and then he resettles uh over 14,000 wealthy families from Joj Jang and Jang Su to Nanjing. One of the things that he does is like because you had like you know these wealthy families especially in South China they had big landed estates he tries to like kind of weaken their power base a little bit. One way to do that is to send them to the countryside make them move somewhere else right or send them to a military colony far away or send them to his new capital in Nanjing right where they're he's close to them right taking them away from their inherited estates. So he

kind of does. Take that as you will. This is how he rins. Now I want you to understand something about the Ming. The Ming we separate into the beginning of the Ming dynasty, the middle of the Ming dynasty, and the end of the Ming Dynasty. Now that might sound like the most boring movie you've ever seen. Of course, it has a beginning and a middle and an end. But no, in this case, you got to really pay attention to it. Ming Tideu is really unique. There's only one Ming Tidzu. all the stuff that he does, it doesn't follow through in the later reigns. Some stuff remains consistent, but it's it's kind of a rain unto its own. Yonla is kind of sometimes seen as the reestablishment of the Ming. He does

his own thing. It's kind of a reign into its own. Then you get into a bunch of emperors that nobody remembers. Okay? And that's the middle of the Ming. And then when things really start to get bad at the end of the dynasty, that's the end of the Ming, right? So beginning, middle, and end. beginning is basically Ming Tidu and his uh son the Yola emperor. Okay. And I'll get we're going to get to the Yola Emperor in a second. Uh so then you know oh so he you know he for instance he has huge turnover uh in his cabinet right as you could imagine right it kind of reminds you of the first Trump presidency if I may say. Uh it was kind of like you know he had this guy Huong who was the

prime minister uh and then he was and Huong helped him sort of purge a bunch of other people but then Huong was implicated in some plot against him and then he as and then he executed Huiong and a bunch of other people in 1380. Uh and then he just abolished the post of prime minister. He said I don't even need a prime minister. I'm not going to fill it. So he just didn't fill it. That was this is like the last prime minister in Chinese history. Okay. So remember all those people in the Song dynasty we talked about Wongan Shu simagwan debates right what is Wong Shu doing he's like a prime minister right he's like going to be the chief official guiding the emperor in policy mingu just says forget about it

so this is a move in a way you could say to like autocracy in Chinese history that's sometimes what it's seen the song dynasty kind of gives us this moment remember when Oango says hey why don't we have political parties remember like you know they try su because poetry, right? The Song Dynasty is this remarkable time and place where you really have officials who are openly debating stuff and talking about all the stuff like that. This is like a slow turn towards something that's much more centralized. Okay? Uh in terms of that regulation, that being said, the Ming is kind of remarkable in to the degree to which officials challenge the emperor and I'll show you that. But not Ming Tidu, okay? Don't challenge Ming

Tidu, right? the other ones you can um okay basically here's the six maxims this is totally what you'd expect right but what I just want to point out here is again this is something that goes well back in Chinese history where you'll say like you know during the one child policy have one child is great two is too many don't even think about three right you know there'll be these like phrases right and so like this goes well back you know Ming tau he's got like these phrases like beautifful to your parents right and you might say isn't that obvious but yeah But his object is he's talking around the literati scholars. Remember he doesn't like the scholarly establishment. He doesn't like those gentry. He doesn't

trust them. Okay? So he wants to talk directly to the laing. He wants to talk directly to the common people. So he comes up with here's my six maxims. You know live in harmony with your neighbors. Blah. Okay. So here's what happens. He dies in 1398. And the way that Ming's succession rules worked was that it would go to the eldest uh it would go to the son of the primary empress. Okay. Now that guy who was designated for the for to inherit the throne passed away meaning that in the succession line it would go to his son which was the grandson of Ming Titzu which is going to be the who's going to be the genuine emperor. Okay. Now the genuine emperor you go I've never heard

of him. Yeah, he's erased from Chinese history. Okay, because Ming Titsu's son, his uncle, is going to overthrow him almost immediately. Okay, so the Genuine Emperor comes to the throne. The grandson of Ming Tidu, he's kind of like, "Okay, what are we going to do?" You know, I got to consolidate. I got to like be a new emperor. How are you going to follow up Ming Tidzu? All of that stuff like that. And this guy, okay, Judy, the Yola, who's going to be the Yongla emperor, he's not having it. Now, this guy, this is Judy. This is the guy who's going to take over. He's the son of Ming Tadzu, but he wasn't in line for the throne technically, right? So, his brother was

in line for the throne. So, this guy, his power base is in Beijing. Okay. Now, let me just stop right here for a minute and explain what this means. In the Ming dynasty, one thing that makes the Ming unique is that the sons of Ming Tadzu were in thief as princes and they were given sort of territories all around the empire. Okay. So there was a prince of Shu Sichuan. There was a prince of you know Nan Chang or in Djang there were princes that belonged to the royal family all across the empire. TheQing, the Manchu Ching will not do this. But the Ma but the Ming did do this. Okay? And there are reasons they did this for succession etc. So the line that he comes from was he was given estate

by his father in the Bay Being area. That's the old territory seat of Yan. That's basically greater Beijing. This was very close to the Mongol frontier. So this is a very important region in terms of geopolitics considering that the Mongols had just retreated. Right? So this is where he was in thief as the prince of Yen. Okay. Now, Genwin comes to the throne and Genwin is kind of like saying, "I want to one of the things they were going to try to do is lessen the sort of military independence of the princes, including the prince of Yen." Well, basically, you can imagine this guy wasn't having it. And he and when they come to basically confiscate his army, he just says, "I'm I'm going to try to overthrow this,

right?" And he does. This is the first of many if not the only princely rebellion during the Ming, but it is the most successful one. What he does is he basically marches down the Grand Canal with his armies, causing tons of destruction along the way until he takes Nanjen. He takes Nanjing, the Genuine Emperor. I don't know what happened to his body. Okay, that's what I was saying. Where's his grave? Nobody knows. Okay, he's probably burned in the palace. Whatever. All the evidence was destroyed. His name was removed completely from like all the history books. It didn't exist. Didn't happen. So the second emperor of the Ming dynasty is Yong. So how do we know that?

Because like of course like there the records like say it euphemistically and there and it was widely reported, let's say, right? Like you couldn't miss this. You couldn't miss this. But it's a short-lived reign. But he tries to sort of eliminate them. Remember, you know, it's like it reminds me of like Henry VIII when he like executed his wife, he would try to purge her, right? Like he tried to perch her like and I remember one of the most fascinating things I've ever saw in Cambridge in King's College Cambridge, right? There's this like big alter screen and it's like all across England, Henry VII ordered every

reference to Anne Bolin to be destroyed, right, after he, you know, had her beheaded, okay, at the Tower of London. But one sort of emblem and it was HA after they got married it was HA Henry and Anne, right? And all of those emblems were all over the country like propaganda and there was this one kind of church altar that was a little bit too high in King's College Chapel and it just st and nobody bothered to take it down and then nobody it kind of hard to see but remember you go there and you go oh my god that's Ann Bolin right? It's just like nobody took it down, right? And it's like thank god nobody took that down. It's kind of like what we're dealing with here. It was

like delete the genuine emperor. Never happened. Right. But you couldn't delete and Bolin. Okay. Right. Especially right Elizabeth was an Lynn's daughter. Right. Am I right on that? Elizabeth was able. So you can't delete Joan. Okay. So but he tried. All right. So then Yonla comes to the throne. Yonga is going to totally take the country in a different direction. What is one of the things he's going to do? He moves the capital back up to Beijing.

Yeah, that was his power base, right? So, it makes sense to move it back up to Beijing, especially if you want to like have a muscular foreign policy. He does the Jung-ho voyages to Southeast Asia in the Middle East, right? He rebuilds the Grand Canal after having destroyed it during his military campaign. He spends tons of money, but he's much more outwardly focused. Now, for those of you who are in my modern China class, you will remember this next slide that I'll give you, but now you'll see it from a whole new perspective. Right? So, I was thinking about the resonance of Chinese history in China today. All right? That's Ming Tidu. Who was he? Who's a southerner from a peasant background who

over who it came to power by overthrowing foreign rule in China. He then established a sort of let's say kind of populist if we use that word agrarian pro you know first anti-forign merchant very inward-looking right uh rule over China you then have the genuine emperor who comes in very briefly before being overthrown by the yola emperor who takes the country in a completely different direction outwardlooking right to basically totally pursuing a different policy direction than his father. Okay, you know where this is going, right? Right, there you go. So, who is Mao Zadong, right? Ma Zadong is a southerner from let's say whatever it was. He was from a pretty decent family actually but like you know reasonably like medium

medium I don't know if he was like fongong right wealthy peasant family let's say uh who estab who kicks you know out foreign influence from China establishes this kind of like let's say inwardlooking you know kind of populist like you know say get you know against the gentry against the scholarly establishment pro- farmers all of that he dies you get a very short interlude, you know, like with Huag Wuaong who comes in as the paramount leader before he gets deposed by Dong Xiaoing who then does reform and opening up. Okay, so you say, "Wow, like you know the PRC is kind of like Ming China and it and I think it kind of is. Out of all the dynasties of Chinese history, the one that the PRC reminds me most about is Ming

actually. So that's another reason to care about the Ming dynasty." Okay. All right. So there you go. That's that's your story. Mao Hagawa in Dang Xiaoping. All right. Let's go on. All right. The Tibetan Kam. Well, this Why did I put this here? So, basically, like look, what I'm just trying to show you is that like there's stuff that like there's moments like of Ming history that are so intriguing that you wouldn't even believe them. Uh and like so for instance, after Yolo comes to the throne and he's like, "Hey, hey, I want to have like I want to be outlured looking. I want to, you know, I want to be powerful in that way of being

outward-looking. Uh he actually like hosts the Tibetan Karmapa uh who is the head of one of the Tibetan like religious lineages. It's like you know the Sakya order had the you know that we talked about during the Mongol period. The Karmapa was one of the heads of I think Kaguyu order and then the Daly Lama is becomes the head of the Galuk right order right so he hosts like in Nanjing so it's just incredible to think about in Nanjing in like southern China like the Ming emperor hosting like you know the Tibetan the head of the Tibetan religious establishment but this is kind of some of the thing that Yona was trying to do you know that it of course the big thing of what he was trying to do another thing more

prominent architecturally prominent right there, right? The forbidden city. He constructs it. Basically takes every remaining big, what is it? Rosewood log, the hungu, the redwood, the redwood tree logs from Eunan and Sichuan provinces and then basically ships them down the Yangzi River and then up the Grand Canal after he's repaired the Grand Canal. Right? So he basically gets all those logs up from South China to build this. Right? You can see like think about this in Chinese architecture like in theory that's a log right that's a log right all the timbers all the all the stuff used to construct this right so that's what he constructs okay uh and you can kind of see this is the this

is the forbidden city inner city right the noun and then the wa chong where a lot of let's say the common people might live right by the way take a look what's Oh, take a look. This is I was just gonna say that to me. I was just going to say where's Temple of Heaven? I think North Temple of Heaven is south. Temple of Heaven is south of the palace. It's like to the southeast of the palace. I have it later. I was just going to say I think that like it's southeast of the palace. Well, this is the palace, right? So, this is south, right? There should be a line, right? Th It's kind of a line. Yeah. No, Beijing is totally a line. I think this is Tantan. I think that looks like it. That looks like Tanton to me.

Also looks like kind of the right shape. Kind of looks like the right shape. Yeah, I agree with you. It kind of looks like the right shape, right? You know, the bell tower, the drum tower, all that stuff. You can still visit this stuff. I'm going to skip over the next slide in the interest of time. What was the government like? Trust me, it was interesting. Uh, you know what I mean? Like there was 13 provinces, local county officials, heads of the provinces, and the central government. But what I really want to just say to you is think about, you can think about it like this. There's this like we had in Dynasty's past, right? There's the

central government and then there's like, you know, local officials. And it's basically about the center and the local, right? That is the constant theme in Chinese history. Okay. Uh I'm going to get back. Don't worry. I know many of you are thinking about where's Jungho. We're going to get to Jung-ho in just a few moments. Uh but before I do that, let me just say something broadly about the nature of the Ming government as it was created. let's say by this time. Okay, when you look at Beijing as we were just talking about, this is why I sort of uh premised it here. Um Beijing is laid out in as a very religious cosmological city. You never would guess that, especially if you see

its layout today. Not only do you have okay, the palace there, the inner city there, that's the temple of heaven to the south. Up to the north, north of the city, do you know what you have? What altar do you have right there? Take a guess. No, no, no, no. So, heaven, temple of the earth, the deton is north, right? And then over here to the east, over here to the west, I think it's sun. It's the ratan. And then the moon. Yeah. Sun, Moon, Earth, I think. Or this could be I think this is Moon. Yeah, you can go and you can go visit. They're all now parks. You can go basically visit them as parks, right?

All laid out there. It's like really cool to think about this. Again, you think about Beijing, it's like a capital city, everything like that. It had a logic. It had a real spatial cosmology to it. Um, every sort of county in China from the Ming dynasty into theQing dynasty is going to basically have these three things. They're going to have a confusion temple, which is a really a kind of bad translation for a wen meow, which is basically the meow dedicated to when, right? Culture, civilization, all of that. That will be associated with the local scholars, the examination system as it is practiced in the county, right? In the most local of the administrative districts, there's also a woo. Every county will have a woo meow.

And the woo is kind of like, you know, where the military candidates go. Remember, there's also military exams in China. So, it's not just the civil exams. There's also military exams if you want promotion in the military. So, you have the Wen Meow, Wu Meow. You will see these if you go to China today, you can see like, you know, they'll have a really wellpreserved Wen Meow or Wu Meow and everything like that. And then you'll have the Chong Hong Mao, city god temple. Just a question. Chong Hong Yao. The city god temple. Literally the temple of walls and moes. But who is the city god? Who is his counterpart?

It is local. The lo Yeah. The local official. Right. So basically this is what I want you to think about. You go, was China a secular state or was China a religious state? Well, again, these are words that don't make sense in the Chinese context because China was both at the same time. Okay, you could totally say, "Oh, I don't believe in the deities. I don't think any of this works. I think this is all superstition." That's fine to say. On the other hand, the state maintained a very elaborate system of rituals and sacrifices and temples that were state temples. Okay? So the state temple dewen, the state temple de Wu, the state temple of the tomya. So this is a really important like uh scenes because

for instance if the local people are really upset at the performance of a local official well you can't go over and protest at the local official but what you can do is you can protest at the city god right? So we have examples of people like taking the city god out of his temple and like whipping him and it's like why are you whipping the city god? And people say, "Well, because I think the city god's doing a really bad job at the administration of our county right now, right?" And so you see, religion is really an important like realm of speech, right, in voice, right? Uh villages in local places tend to have a tutong, an earth god shrine. So like literally again this goes into what you've seen from the very

beginning of the Dowist movement in China of the gods and the celestial bureaucracy mimicking the human bureaucracy and this has now basically become to a certain extent the state the way that the state orthodoxy is um is organized and of course you even have of course houses can have like a kitchen god which is really the god of the house okay something like that okay so as I was telling you last time I think sometime before as we get into this topic Chinese religion is not identitarian it's all about doing it's all about action right that's the real question rather than saying what are you I'm a Buddhist I'm a dowist people didn't really usually talk like that here's my outline of it for you confucian orthodoxy in the imperial

state cult at the top so confusion orthodoxy by the Ming period basically means the fi the five classics and the four books with jui's commentaries That's Confucian Orthodoxy. Okay. Plus the imperial state cult which is over the calendar year there are some deities and some festivals that just have to be celebrated and the government basically says we recognize these. Okay. So that could be like at this point Guanu from the three kingdoms. Okay. He's in the state cult. Okay. Many other deities are in the state cult. Right? Then that's like temple of heaven. Okay. Blah. Like go down. Okay.

Buddhism, religious dowoism. Okay. So I want you to kind of think about it like this, right? You might say like, "Hey, wow, Buddhism was really important in Chinese society. Daoism was really important in Chinese society." Yes, those are true. I won't disagree with those statements, but just realize how are most people in China experiencing this religious landscape. It's not really like Buddhist dowist, right? The Buddhists are there, right? There are monks. They read sutras. You can go and hang out with them. You can even become a lay Buddhist, right? Uh and be a vegetarian, right? stuff like that.

There are real religious dowists, right, who are priests who know the who have mastered the Dowist cannon, right? And in various texts associated with Dowoism going all the way back. But for most people, it's like a combination, right? For most people, it's a combination. And this is sometimes, for lack of a better word, we call like popular religion in China. Basically, just meaning religion that everybody kind of does, right? or like you know everybody you know like what if paper money you know what I'm talking about when I talk about paper money what's what do you do with paper money you burn it and you basically send money to either ancestors in the afterlife who need a little bit of cash right or you bribe gods to treat them well right so

this is the whole thing of like paper money right and even I have over here I think somebody in Taiwan was burning like a car oh I was going they were sending They were sending a car to their ancestor paper car and paper bike and the paper TV and paper phone. Yeah. Just making sure they're doing well, right? And I also think it's it's so fascinating that Chinese religion and the religious practices tell you so much about Chinese history, right? It's like when you see like paper money was a super widespread practice for bribing gods and you say why would you bribe gods? And it's because the people bribed officials all the time, right? So they were saying like, "Of course the gods accept bribes, right?

What god wouldn't take a bribe, right? I got to send him the money and make sure my, you know, my grandfather's okay, right?" Um, so there you go. Right? So there you go. And then on the other end of it, you got to understand, you go, "But what does the Chinese state say about this?" Like, isn't the Chinese state kind of like cracking down on religion, blah. Look, it's complicated. But here's the point. Illegal secret societies and cults. Of course, the government always rails against illegal worship of, you know, such and such deity, illegal cult, you know, a secret society, blah. They always talk about it, right? But the thing is that you say, when

do people actually get caught? Like when do they actually get brought in? Like when there's a rebellion or something, right? So ultimately this is you see how this is a spectrum, right? It's not like you know this is the correct one, this is the incorrect one. No, it's fluid and it's like all open to interpretation. Okay. One thing that I've often noticed, okay, that as a scholar of Chinese religion is that towards the end of dynasties, lots of gods get promoted by the state because they're just running out of fumes. And it's like, hey, we can't we our famine relief protocols have totally failed, so we just got to like pray for rain right now. So you will see if you I would love somebody to actually do like a

digital uh analysis of when do gods get promoted in Chinese history. And if you look the end of dynasties are like a really ripe time where like the dynasty on its last leg says promote guanu you know we need them right at the founding of dynasties right you they go oh no we're we're strong and powerful we don't you know we're good just temple of heaven we'll cover it right so it's it's really again a sight to watch okay and then this will be more forqin but like Tibetan Buddhism like kind of it's its own thing the state always does have a space for Tibetan Buddhism. You know, you can just I was talking about how the Ming Yongla ex you know takes the Karmapa in, right? Uh also Islam tolerated with exceptions, right? So

that's another kind of it's there. It's on the landscape. It's not really what it's it's not widely practiced among people, right? Like in terms of the general public mainly by Muslims, but it is there as well. Okay. Yeah. Go ahead. So if Islam lands like over there, does the principle that like Chinese religion is still largely not identicarian apply or were people like Muslims, Jews, Muslims, Jews were exceptions to this? They were exceptions to this. That's why they stood out in Chinese society to a certain extent because it was an identity, right? Meaning like it was it wasn't like, oh, I'm going to the mosque today. Maybe I'll go to that

temple tomorrow. It was like they always went to that mosque, right? Like you know what I mean? and they had certain culinary dietary restrictions that would like set them apart, right? Especially like not eating pork for Muslims and things like that, right? Um, so this is what I was actually just talking about right here. Ultimately, the Ming is the era where you see the emergence of the H Muslims in China. These are the people today who are going to be called, okay? They're basically Chinese-speaking Chinese. They're, you know, frankly, culturally Chinese, but traditionally they practice Islam. Okay. Increasingly, you know, you'll see like a lot of Hi

are secular today, especially if they live in Beijing or Shanghai or whatever. But you will still see a lot of religious way. Okay? And like those are I think this is no, if I'm not mistaken, that's a big mosque in Beijing, right? So again, Islam was tolerated. It was okay to do it. it was okay to build mosques and stuff like that, but there were restrictions of course on um on like you know the what the buildings could look like and everything like that. It's an interesting topic. Now you might say why am I bringing this up? Why is this so important? Because probably one of the most famous Muslims of Chinese history is this guy Jung-ho, right? I don't know if you recognize or

even knew that he was Muslim, but he was. And that's part of what makes his story so interesting because he is captured as a child I think in Y from Yunan province, right? As the Ming is basically coming in and like conquering the rest of southeast China, he's taken his child captive and he's of course castrated. So he becomes a unic. Um, and then when Yonga gets to the throne and he's saying, "Okay, I want to do this big overseas expedition, which is going to be the first of the seven voyages of Jung-Ho." He's like, "Who am I going to pick to like lead this up?" And he picks Jung-Ho. Now, why would you pick Jung-H?

Part of the reason I suspect they he picked Jung-ha is because having a Muslim do this job especially in the early Ming was definitely an advantage for the state. Right? So Jung-H probably was familiar with a lot of the places in Southeast Asia. He knew Islam. He might have known Arabic a little bit. He might have known Persian a little bit. This was definitely like these were knowledges and uh you know part of the scene that the Ming government recognized was important for foreign diplomacy. So it's like let's send Jung-ho Jungho on one of his voyages ends up we think going to Mecca actually. But you could basically see what he does. He goes down uh he goes basically into Southeast Asia. He goes down to Java and a few of the voyages.

He goes through the straight of Mala. He ultimately gets to Kolkata. Well, he, you know, gets to southern India, gets into the straight of Hormuz, right? Uh, you know, those are the seven voyages. They were super expensive. They were, they involved ships that were again huge as so we think. So, they required tons of timber to build like the palace that Yonglo was building at the same time he was doing this. Um, and so, you know, that's the kind of that's the kind of story of Jung-ho. Right now, one of the things that I'll just say, this is kind of a fun thing. Anybody know uh I was going to say there's a really fun story with Jung-H when Jung-ho brings back an animal, right, from one of his voyages

and they all the animals he brought back, all the stuff he brought back would have to be classified by the Imperial government. like what is it? What did you bring back? And so they classified one animal he brought back as a chilein, right? So now chileins are mythical animals. They look kind of like that or one example of chilein. Um and what animal do you think he brought back that they classified as such? No, you would think lion, but it was actually the giraffe, right? So like you know it was like he brought back a giraffe and then they were like what is this animal and then they were like oh that's the chilein right you

know what I mean it lives in Africa right so there you go u so you know Junga delivered on his promise and yunga probably thought it was totally worth it right um so now this is the question and I was going to ask you this right we were talking about this at the end of class last week why do expensive voyages just happen and why do they stop? And when I always think about Jill, I do think about the NASA space program, right? And sending people to the moon and all the money that took and all the technology that took and of course the risk that was involved with doing that and like the very high publicity with it. And it's kind of one of those things that we did from the late 1960s through the 1980s, but then

just kind of stopped doing it, right? And it's kind of like I don't know. So, what do you think like I mean is how do you read the whole Jung-H episode in history? I mean, do you see it? Do you see other historical parallels? Yeah, I guess if we're comparing it to like the US moon launch, right? Like to establish superiority over Soviet Union. Yeah. Right. I guess you can compare this like establishing superiority the rest of the world. Yeah. But no, no, but it definitely was.

This is a great point. I'm glad you brought this out. So, what are they trying to do with the Jung-ho voyages, you think, in terms of the geopolitical situation? Any idea? What do you think? So, you're right on the track, right? So, the US was competing against the Soviets. Ming is competing against Mongols, right? The thing about Mongols is they just had a world empire, right? They had influence all across Eurasia, right? And then that you can't go up to the north, right? that you if you're the Ming and go on your geopolitical, you know, uh, campaigns that way, the north is really dangerous. You have to go south. So, the

south into Southeast Asia, that was their opening to basically say, "Hey, let's do trade. Let's let's get some relations going. Let's get some recognition going." Yongla also, I think we have to consider this as well, he's a guy who usurp the throne. This is like always kind of tricky. If you inherit the throne the fair and square way, nobody ever questions you. But if you kill your nephew, okay, and steal the throne and everybody knows it. And by the way, some officials were pretty disgusted with Yongalo for doing that. Like, you know what I mean? They refused like to serve him like that did happen early in his reign. So, he's constantly trying to show, no, I'm serious emperor

stuff. I'm serious emperor material. Look at the Grand Canal. Look at the palace in Beijing. Look at my fabulous voyages, right? I think there is a little bit of that going on, too. So, I mean, it's it's one of those things of like we don't do it all the time, like this kind of thing. The other thing that Jung-Ho is constantly compared to, of course, is like the European, Portuguese, Spanish exploration stuff, right? Which happened later in the same century that Jung-ho did his thing. But like what kind what do you see as the difference, right? What's the difference between Vasco Dama or whoever right in the Jung-ho stuff?

I think like for a lot of the like what they do is they eventually want to set down like roots and establish trade routes and all of this stuff and it becomes a whole economic thing where it's the beginning of this establishment of form relationships and like colonialism but not there's no like real major colonization that seems to happen occurs and also no real kind of economic or trade thing that results from this which is what I think all the Portuguese and all of them intended to do was to go to India and and East Asia and just like trade and get uh various forms of goods. I know what you mean. Yeah. There's there's such an emphasis with the Jung Voyages on like relations between the countries, right? Like you know it's like we want the Ming to be recognized,

right? So I agree with that. What else? Yeah. Uh I believe it was the sorry the European voyages were mostly for commercial reasons to circumvent the Ottoman blockade of these spice tra. Yeah. And uh that's only mainly for like I want my like paprika or saffron or whatever. Jungu is just about like was like I don't know man I need to build my prestige. Get me a giraffe. Right. Well, you know, this is a very good point and I think you're definitely on the right track here, which is to say the a lot of the quote unquote European voyages are basically private people who get charters, right, from a royal family to

say, "Okay, go abroad and do this, right? And if you find something, you know, in the name of the crown, claim it, right?" Or something like that. In the case of Jungha, it's a state mission, right? It's a real like statirected mission. So the state is involved with paying for everything. This isn't about sharing the booty, sharing the money, sharing the spoils. It's not about that. This is a state mission. State ships, state directed voyages, right? So it's kind of like has that aspect of it, which basically meant it was very expensive for the state in a way that like Columbus, you know, how much how expensive was that voyage? I mean, I'm not saying it was cheap, but I'm just saying you kind of get what I'm

saying. So, it basically makes it I think that the private enterprise element of it may have and the profits focused of it may have made some of the European voyages even though they had high risk more sustainable, right? Whereas in the case of Jungho, the problem is there was no constituency within China who was going to def defend these voyages after Yongo left the throne, right? What constituency would want these to continue? Right? The Confucian literati, you can imagine they were like, "This is a waste of money. Don't do it." Right? You know, the military officers were like, "Ah, I don't see a huge military use for this." Right? So, it's kind of like it just didn't happen. It's like

why did the space why did the moon stuff end? Basically, I know it's not technically ended, but it's like it's it's a pale shadow of what it was like decades ago, right? Why did it end? Right. Well, you know, the geopolitical threat from the Soviets kind of disappeared and there's the b the federal budgets got it's really big and it's very expensive to do these thing, you know, to do these big government funded projects. Maybe we could do other projects, right? You know, it's like it's it's an interesting question of like if we're talking about like interplanetary space travel, like how much would that what how much state support will that require to sustain over the long term? Because it's not one thing that you could do like, oh, I'm

coming in as president. Let's do this for four years and then we'll do something else after he or she leaves office, right? You got to do this for like decades, right? In order to actually see results from it, right? So this is it might be that like basically you have to just like make travel to Mars tourism like private tourism that like it will actually happen. You know what I mean? Like you know what I mean? And then like you know I'm I don't know. That's just Anybody else have any thoughts on this? Just something to think about. Yeah. It's a fascinating moment. But let me just say and I want to make this like kind of really I don't want you to overstate I don't want to overstate the connection between these things but since we're on

this topic of Jung-ho I do want to say like in the centuries after Jung-Ho specifically the 1500s this is really where you start to see the overseas Chinese communities. And when I say overseas Chinese communities at this point I'm not talking about Canada, North America or Australia. I'm talking really about the first places people in China went which were Taiwan and then Southeast Asia okay big the with big Chinese populations. So the thing is for these communities a lot of them if like when I was in Malaa in Malaysia a few years ago just after co the commu the Chinese community there makes a big deal about Jungho you know Jung-ho is a big deal for them right because Jungho is like kind of a symbolic beginning

right of their community and why they're there and like their presence right in like this Malaysian society right but they don't come with Jung-H per se. What happens is in the decades and centuries after Jung-Ho, private Chinese merchants do go out to Southeast Asia and they do establish roots in Southeast Asia. It's just that they don't have state support, right? They do so kind of illegally or like under, you know, quasi, you know, you know, you know, legal gray areas, right? They go abroad and do that. So, one place that they go and I'll just kind of tell you this. We'll get into this in the next few weeks more because Taiwan really comes on the map here, right? So, the Taiw the Chinese of Fujian province

and this in the coastal areas in particular, they want to go abroad. They go to basically right, you know, right across the streets of Taiwan and Taiwan starts to see a Chinese community. Like I know like in Chinese history books they'll say like in the Song Dynasty there was already an expedition, whatever, guys. Like look, the bottom line is it was in the 1500s really that you have a community there that you can really say that was a community. Same thing with Southeast Asia, right? Like Indonesia is going to have a big Chinese community. Malaysia is going to have a big Chinese community, right? I mean, Malaysia in the early 20th century, like 1900, it was like a third Chinese or

something. It was absolute absolutely massive Chinese community in Malaysia. That number goes down because Singapore became independent, right? and most of the ch many of the Chinese were in Singapore but still Malaysia still has a very large Chinese community right this is a really fascinating history just you could do Chinese communities you could do timeline projects for any of those countries if you're interested um so I will say let me just put that there for right now and let me just go to early Ming key takeaways early Ming under Ming titsu and yon reacted against the years of Mongol rule but also adapted critical elements from it the Ming dynasty sees the birth of a group of people who consider themselves

Hanchchinese, different from Mongols, Tibetans, etc. This is what I was saying of like Han kind of comes out at this time for reasons that you can clearly kind of think about. Same thing of like comes out at this time. So, a lot of those identities that you're going to see tossed around in 20th century China come out of this Ming moment, right? This post Mongol moment. But the Ming can't be simplified as a reactionary Han dynasty. Ming Taiu and Yonga supported and recognized the rights. Rights is kind of an overladen legal word there. But it's still they recognized, you know, Muslims to live in China and employed them in their governments.

Jung-ho is actually an example of that, right? The Junga expeditions were hugely important. Jung-ho made contacts with countries in the Middle East and Africa decades before Columbus or Mellin set sail. After the Jungho voyages, no subsequent government will express great interest in overseas expeditions or learning until the 19th century. The Chinese themselves in the following century started to move abroad to Taiwan to Southeast Asia and beyond. So it's not that I want to make it just reemphasize. It's not that Jung-ho goes on his voyages and he brings all these Chinese with him. No, it's a Jung-ho goes on the voyages, then they stop and nothing happens and then private Chinese from Fujian and Guangdong, they start

going to South, they start going to Southeast Asia. Okay, but they go do so without state support, which is why there are no Chinese colonies in Southeast Asia. You kind of get what I'm saying? with the very interesting possible exception of Singapore, right, which is a Chinese state in I in the middle of Southeast Asia, right? Of course, that's not I understand that's not the Singaporean story. Singapore has its own unique identity. It was carefully crafted over the 20th century, but you get what I mean, right? If you wanted to push it, that's what you could push. Okay, questions?

[snorts] Good. All right, 17 minutes left. Let's use it. All right. So, let's talk about this really incredible crisis. All right. So, so, so in the post Yongla era, the voyages stop, the government's in Beijing, and we kind of settle into a more status quo Ming. And I kind of promise you the Ming is going to have basically some of the worst emperors of Chinese history, right? Just like just to really incompetent people one after another. Some of them are just absolutely off their rockers. Okay. So, this individual involved with this crisis becomes emperor twice. Um, for in a story that you just have to hear to believe, right? So, he comes to the throne as the

Jung Emperor. He serves and then the Mongols under his reign uh basically kind of cross over into Ming territory. And not only does he want to meet them and sort of kick them out, he wants to personally go into battle against them. So he goes, he leaves Beijing with his army and then at the fort of Tumu right here, he is surrounded and captured by the Mongols. So you have right here a Chinese emperor who on the throne who is now captured by the Mongols and like taken back to Mongolia. All right, that's embarrassing, right? That's really bad, right? That would be as if the Canadians took Biden, right? You know what I mean? Like, you know, it's like what are you going to do? Right? So, then what happens is

is that there was this big official. I want to say he's from Jo Jang, but you could kind of guess if you have to ever guess like, hey, where's the official from? Just pick a Jang Nan province, right? And then you say, okay, I think he was from Joj Jang because his death uh his tomb is on Westlake. Yuchen. Okay. So Yuchan is this official and he basically this is an unprecedented situation. He basically kind of takes control of the government. He says because the Mongols want a ransom. They want territory. They want all this stuff and then say we'll give you your emperor back. So then Yuchen is basically facing down a Mongol invasion of Beijing, which is really tough,

really brutal. And he basically says, "Look, no, we're we're not going to negotiate, okay? Let them keep the emperor. Just put a new emperor in." and we're gonna keep going. So, Yuchan kind of saves the Ming and he basically also fortifies Beijing and the Ma and the Mongols who thought they were going to negotiate realize they're not going to negotiate with us and so Beijing is saved. UN maybe he's kind of a hero except eventually the Mongols get sick of holding this emperor under house arrest and then just let him go. So he comes back to Beijing and he's like, "What were you guys doing?" Well, you just let me You just let me stay there. Right. So then he So then he goes under house

arrest because there's a new emperor on the throne that was put on there basically under the reign of under the watch of Yuchen. So this the so the Gentong Emperor is under house arrest. Then oh classic Ming. there's a unic coup and they take out that emperor and then this guy comes back to the throne as Tian and then I think probably has him immediately executed. Okay. So then Yuchan has a very fascinating sort of legacy in Chinese history of being a sort of you know he sold out the emperor but he saved the country. So in later centuries he kind of became celebrated and today you can visit his kind of mausoleum on Westlake. It's kind of a sight to visit.

Yeah. Why wouldn't they just kill him instead of putting him on pass and be like oh no he had an accident. What are the chances? So it's kind of I mean you know this is you know that's a great question. Why not just kill him right? I mean it might have just been bad press right? You know, I mean, it was kind of obvious that like, you know, the Mongols brought the emperor back. And I mean, it was so awkward because this is not something that ever should happen because technically he's still the emperor, right? He was crowned the emperor. He didn't die, so what is he? So, nobody knew what he was. So, it was like, okay, just put him under house arrest. But then he was back with a vengeance. Okay? And so, it was just brutal. Okay? I

mean, just brutal. Okay? So, this is what I'm saying about, you know, all the Ming stuff. realize the Ming of all the eras of Chinese history, this is the heyday of the Unix. The Unix are like super powerful during the Ming. And there's and there again, it's not fair to say this, but as the historyals go, they're seemed seemingly always up to some mischief. I'll show you some more examples of that not too long from now. Um, the Great Wall. Why does the Great Wall come to exist? It comes to exist right around this time. And the way that you know it today, basically right during these reigns, right, the Janong Tanun reigns, this kind of era in the middle of the 15th century, the

1400s. And why? Because basically this is like the reaction to like the emperor was taken. We need to fortify the front, the northern defense. So it's right around this time that basically you could say there's there's all this money thrown to this defensive uh you know uh version of the Great Wall. Okay, you got it? You good? All right. And it was useless. Useless. Yeah. So, it was pretty useless. Um I mean, think about this. Like, just remember this. The wall does not work like a wall to keep people out. You can't ride a horse up this mountain. Look at that mountain, right?

Like, it's not like the horse isn't going to come up and then say, "Oh, wow. The wall's there. I can't go in." No, the wall exists to basically unify the watchtowwers. Do you understand what the I'm saying here? The wall is actually quote unquote the wall is a misnomer in the of the Ming. The it's the watchtowers, right, that give you the signaling and the communication system. The wall itself is really there for the walkway between them so that you can walk between the mountains, right? It's not actually like I'm riding my horse up this Mount Everest, right? That's not gonna work, right? Like no one's no

horse is gonna get over that anyway, right? So you can think about it like that. So it's not really fair to say it was useless in the sense of it did work as guard towers and it did work as communication relay, right? It did work as those things, but in terms of did it work to keep invaders out? No. Okay, it didn't. Okay. All right. Now, let's get on to the judging emperor. This guy, I got to say, probably one of the cra probably the craziest. Probably the craziest. Okay, I'm going to give I'll tell you some good stories about him. Um, and then I'll I'll I'll get through jajing today and we'll I'll tell you some fun stuff about him and then we'll we'll call it a we'll call it

a break. Okay? I'll I'll give you a recording for Wednesday. Okay? So, um first thing first, Jaing, you will be confused. I guarantee you because there is aqing emperor called Jaing. So just realize there's Jaing in the Ming. Jaing in the in theQing. Okay. So just like just be just think Jaingqing. That's theQing. Okay. Jaing that's the Ming. Okay. Um so he comes to the throne and already there's a problem and it's actually kind of an interesting problem to have. This is called the great rights controversy. So in the Ming basically uh you come to the you the emperor right comes to the throne and the emperor does the ancestral sacrifices to his father who is the previous emperor right that's how it's supposed to be the problem was Ja Jing

was not the son of the previous emperor did not have a male heir so he was like you know the kind of cousin right oh no sorry nephew so you have a problem which is to say okay no problem this is we can handle this the men can handle this so according to the rules what you have to do judging is you have to adopt the previous emperor like posthumously adopts you as his son so you do the ancestral sacrifices to that emperor who's like your uncle but then Jaing is like no I want to sacrifice to my dad right that's my biological dad that's so you can see you have here a confusion problem, right? What should what, right?

Is it the family or the states? Right? So, Jaing makes the argument that like, no, I want to give the sacrifices to my dad. And then there's all of these officials who are up in arms over this. There's a public protest among officials who are scandalized at the idea that he won't be adopted and do the proper sacrifices. Right? You could kind of think about I know you say this but like you know today when presidents they visit the cemetery at Normandy or they do some other ritual right people get up in arms about how they act what they say was Biden asleep was whatever you know people talk about these things they matter right the public performance of

being a leader like this right so it mattered right from the very beginning of judging's reign so what he basically does uh is that he sort of makes this ancestral rights adjustment he holds his ground on And then something really remarkable happens in Chinese society uh during this time which is that basically Jaing sort of encourages people across China to build ancestral halls and worship their ancestors. So this is a really fascinating story because let me basically po pose it to you this way. This is an accidental sort of uh this is an accident of Chinese history that it happened this way. Right? So the rights controversy dur let me put it this way in the Song dynasty people worship their ancestors of course but

everybody can worship like their mother their father their grandparents but in terms of like deep ancestors like longstanding ancestral lines in the Song dynasty building an ancestral hall that was reserved for people who had passed the exams and became officials you had the right to like build a temple to your own family like that's really nice right like here's like the Tristan's family temple Right, there you go. In the song, if I was a gin, you know, degree holder and official, I could do that. I had the right to do that. And by the time you get to the Ming, as a result of this rights controversy, Jaing basically says everybody can do it. So that's where you're going to start to see the Lo

family ancestral hall, the Wong family ancestral hall, every family can build an ancestral hall now, right? Because he basically takes off the guardrails. So in other words, this extends the right of ancestor worship. Really true ancestor worship. I'm not just saying father, mother, grandfather, grandpa, that always existed. But I'm talking about building a freestanding temple that the lineage under the name of a common ancestor held the land and pay taxes. This is again when we talk about the kind of gender relations, we were talking about that last year. uh sorry last week I was telling you about how property inheritance rules everything like that in the Ming the big family

lineage becomes more and more important right that patrol line becomes more and more important and with this change and this incentive to worship ancestors and build ancestral halls basically all the land is held in the name of the ancestor who then becomes the taxpayer when he's dead right so who owns the land well our great-grandfather right so then the structure of the lineage age becomes really important. The Chinese family became a sort of lineage corporation and the pattern of late imperial society from the Ming and theQing dynasties became strong central government, a small government bureaucracy, a large body of exam taking gentry, a strong family units that essentially govern themselves. So this is what I want you

to think about this paradox. You go, was the state strong or was the state weak? Well, the central government was strong. the emperor could be strong, but in terms of the penetration into local society, it was pretty much the families govern themselves. Okay? Like they f they established their own temples and everything like that, right? So that's what you can kind of think about it. So this is I'll just kind of say and I was just going to kind of give you the Chinese the family names. You can think of all the famous Hong Kong uh family corporations and things like that. This is really this looks old.

This looks ancient, right? The all these Chinese family lineages. Oh god. While this is traditional China, this is not traditional China. This is midming dynasty China and after. Okay, it's only in the mid midming dynasty that these kind of family units emerged, right? In the way that we kind of came to know them in the 20th century. So just so that you kind of know that. Okay. Now I'll just kind of get back I was okay. So really quickly I was I promised you some stories about judging. I will give I will deliver on them. Uh the I'll talk really briefly about the palace plot of the reninian year. This is something that

comes up every now and then and it's an example of just how sort of out there judging was just really quickly um how do I even say this? So basically um Jajang was interested in all types of self-ultivation. Of course he was right and he was trying to get elixirs to live forever. And this involved uh basically um I he did some really strange stuff. Okay, just check take my word for it if you want to. I don't know how much detail about this I should go into, but I'll just say that he collected young women from around the empire, right, to basically help in help him make these elixirs. And we know he did this because in 1542 there was literally a rebellion and these women who were in

the palace tried to strangle him. And you say, well, how do you know this happened? This is actually recorded like it is recorded like this woman was strangled, this woman was strangled, this woman was strang or beheaded because they tried to strangle him this night. Okay. Uh that's how kind of out there he was. Now again, you can look it up. Go for the details. I'll just kind of say but like he this is a moment that sort of reflects let's just say the kind of unique governing realities of the jawing reign. Okay, he's not partic he's I won't say he's asleep at the wheel. He's not at the wheel. Okay, he's doing his own thing. He's involved in his own stuff. Um and I think it's really fascinating to look at this moment in history of um he nearly was

assassinated. Okay. So he was he ultimately was not killed. He the empress Fong I think saved him in the middle of the assassination attempt and then all of the women who were basically trying to kill him were then executed. Uh but basically this is the kind of moment. Now, this gives me an opportunity in the last two minutes here to say something about um the subject of actually women coming into the palace. Okay? And remember, as I've said to you time and time again, that the forbidden city was basically a palace of Unix and women, particularly the rear of the Forbidden City, right, where the imperial family lived. Um, and so this is that sort of when you look at the map of the Forbidden City, this is the hogong, the inner court of it, right? So

there's a very there's a great um sort of interactive article from like a few years ago of the South China Morning Post where they talk about during the Ming dynasty the selection process of becoming an imperial concubine in the imperial city. And when it comes to the ren the plot of the Renan year, I thought it was like good background information to kind of give it to you. So basically what you'd have, this is an example, the outstanding 50. In 1621, Ming Emperor Tanchi sent Unix across the country to handpick 5,000 young women aged 13 to 16 for whom he would select a wife. Okay, this was the this was true of the wife selection process. This was also true of the concubine selection

process. Okay, so basically you'd have I think this is 5,000. So 5,000 women would come into the palace and then they would be selected and there would be examinations like it and it gets narrowed down like as the days go on and they ultimately narrow it down to like 50 and then it they in turn narrow it down further than that and then he selects from that from there. Okay. So I just you know this is a kind of like in the background to this whole palace plot right the thing is this palace plot against Jaing is possible because there's so women there's so many women who are in the palace you have to understand right like this was like they constituted a majority of the palace population. Okay

so I'm out of time great to see you I'll record for Wednesday and uh have a great break.