17. The Rebuilding of Beijing and
Zheng He's Voyages
Towards the end of the Yuan dyansty, racial oppression, corrupt
government, and natural disasters made life difficult for the people.
Again, peasant uprisings broke out. One peasant army was led by a
man called Liu Futong. To distinguish themselves from other people,
the soldiers of this army tied red scarves around their heads, and grad-
ually they were called the "Red Scarf Army." They fought mainly in
the Huai River valley, capturing one town after another, and more and
more men joined them. For some time they occupied Kaifeng,
Henan, and the surrounding areas. But then they made military and
political mistakes, and Liu was forced to'withdraw to northern An-
hui, where he died in action.
Another branch of the Red Scarf Army, led by Guo Zixing, was
active in the area around Fengyang, Anhui, Under Guo was a man
called Zhu Yuanzhang, who was to found the Ming dynasty.
Born into a poor peasant's-family in Fengyang, Zhu worked as a
herdsman for a landlord when he was a boy. His parents and brothers
all died in a plague. As there was no one to look after him, he had to
enter a Buddhist temple to be a monk. Later, when the temple could
not feed him, he left it and became a roaming monk, and managed to
live by begging. After Guo Zixing started a revolt against the Yuan,
Zhu joined him, and quickly distinguished himself as a brave and ca-
pable fighter. Before long he was made a general, and became the
commander of the army after Guo died. He had been fighting Yuan
troops north of the Changjiang River before he crossed it in 1355 and
occupied Nanjing. Then he entered Zhejiang and expanded his base
areas.
While Zhu was growing powerful, many scholars from the land-
lord class came to help him, and he listened to their advice. He began
to aspire to found a dynasty, forgetting about the interests of the
peasants from whom he had emerged.
After defeating rival rebel leaders, he brought South China under
his control. In 1367 he began the northern expedition. His forces first
took Shandong, then Henan and Shaanxi. When the greater part of
North China was cleared of Yuan troops, his army marched north-
ward and was soon close to Dadu, now Beijing, the capital of the
Yuan. The last Yuan emperor fled into the homeland of the Mongols
further north, and the Yuan dynasty came to an end in 1368.
Zhu declared himself the emp~eror of the new dynasty--the
Ming--in the same year, and made Nanjing his capital. The whole
country was unified in 1387 with the recovery of Liaodong.
In 1398, after being the emperor for 30 years, Zhu Yuanzhang
died at the age of 71. His eldest son had died at that time, so the
throne was given to his grandson, Zhu Yunwen. But one of the young
emperor's uncles, Zhu Df, Zhu Yuanzhang's fourth son, wanted to
seize power. Zhu Di had been stationed in Beijing with a huge army.
His army fought all the way south and took Nanjing in 1402. Zhu Di
ascended the throne and moved the capital to Beijing, which remained
the capital of the Ming until the end of the dynasty.
Zhu Di decided to rebuild Beijing. About 250,000 artisans and
nearly one million peasants were mobilized for the project. In the
center of the city a huge palace was built. Generally called the For-
bidden City, the palace covers an area of 720,000 square meters and
contains over 9,000 rooms, surrounded by city walls and moats. The
three great halls in the front part are magnificent and imposing;there
is an air of solemnity and stability about them, symbolizing the power
of the emperor. In the back are many courtyards with rooms for the
emperor's family and their servants. Repaired or partly rebuilt from
time to time, the palace is still complete and in good condition.
This imperial palace is perhaps the largest and grandest of its
kind in the world that can be seen today. It embodies the fine tradi-
tion of ancient Chinese architecture, and the great wisdom and cre-
ativeness of the working people. Now a museum open to the public, it
attracts tens of thousands of visitors from different parts of China and
abroad every day.
While Beijing was being rebuilt, the Grand Canal, which links
the capital to the lower reaches of the Changjiang River, :was
dredged. Food grain, silk and cotton cloth produced in the south were
shipped along this river to the north.
Zhu Di and his successor sent Zheng He, who was working in
their palace, as an envoy to many countries in Southeast Asia and
around the Indian Ocean. Zheng, a Muslim from Yunnan Province,
had learned something about foreign countries, especially the Arab
world, from his grandfather and father, who had been to Mecca as pil-
grims. In 1405 he led a large fleet with 62 ships and 27,800 men,
carrying gold, silk, porcelain, and other goods with them, and sailed to
Java and other islands in Southeast Asia. Then they turned west and
went to India. They returned to China in 1407. After that Zheng
and his fleet sailed again to these areas. Altogether they made seven
voyages within 28 years(1405- 1433). They went as far as the east
coast of Africa, the Red Sea and Mecca. As a result, relations between
China and these areas became closer and economic and cultural ex-
changes between them were promoted.
Zheng's voyages were nearly 100 years earlier than Vasco da
Gama's voyage around the Cape of Good Hope and Christopher
Columbus's to America, and his fleet was larger than theirs by far.
This fact showed that China's science of navigation was quite ad-
vanced at that time.
During the Ming period, along with the development of handi-
craft production, appeared employers who owned some equipment and
craftsmen who owned nothing but labor power. The latter had to
work for the former for wages. This may be regarded as the begin-
ning of capitalism in China.
In the textile industry such relations between employers and
workers were very clear. In big cities like Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nan-
jing, and Songjiang ( in Jiangsu), some small producers became rich
enough to buy more looms and began to hire workers. At first these
employers continued to work on their looms, but later they did no
work except direct their employees. At the same time, workers who
had no looms had to find jobs. If they did not have regular employ-
ers, they had to gather at a place early in the morning every day to
wait for someone to hire them. In other words, there was a market
for free labor power.
This capitalist mode of production also appeared in salt-making,
iron-smelting, porcelain-making, ship-building, sugar-refining, and
paper-making industries, and in copper and coal mines.
These seeds of capitalism failed to grow and blossom for many
reasons. The most important factor that prevented their growth was
the natural economy that prevailed in the whole country. Most fami-
lies, especially those in the countryside, tried to be self-sufficient.
They grew grain and cotton, raised pigs and chickens, wove cloth, and
made most of the things they needed themselves. The old Chinese
~saying "Men plow and Women weave" describes this simple, self-
reliant life. The peasants, who made up the great majority of the pop-
ulation, seldom went to the market to buy things. And they were so
poor that they could not afford to buy things when they wanted to.
The limited market, of course, could not stimulate production.
Besides, rich landlords were not interested in industry--they
usually wanted to buy land with their money. This meant that indus-
try was short of investment. The feudal government, which repre-
sented the interests of the landlord class, did not try to encourage the
development of industry or commerce; on the contrary, it often hin-
dered their growth by imposing on them heavy taxes and various limi-
tations. In short, capitalism could not grow in China in the Ming dy-
nasty because the feudal economic system and political power were too
strong.
However, this new mode of production, as a new element in so-
cial life, had some influence on people's thinking, and gave people,
mainly ui'ban people, new ideas, which were reflected in certain liter-
ary works.