biography
| name: |
Hongwu
|
| |
also spelled Hung-wu, originally Zhu Yuanzhang
|
pronunciation:
[hongwoo]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1328–98)
|
| biography:
| First emperor of the Chinese Ming dynasty (1368–1644), known posthumously as Taizu. His rise has few world history parallels. Born into a poor Nanjing family and orphaned at 16, he was in turn Buddhist novice, beggar, White Lotus secret society member, and Red Turban rebel. Setting up his own organization, he seized Nanjing (1356), overran the Yangtze basin, took Beijing, overthrew the Yuan dynasty (1368), established a Ming (‘brilliant’) dynasty at Nanjing, and took the reign name Hongwu (‘vast military power’). He then drove the Mongols out of China, Korea, Manchuria, and beyond the Tien Shan. He bloodily suppressed secret societies and subversives, set up a special police with torture prisons, and concentrated all power in his own hands. Grotesque in appearance with a snout-like face, he was known as ‘pig emperor’: puns about it were risky. |
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