Perpetual Happiness

by Shih-shan Henry Tsai

  All records of imperial clansmen—containing information on births, deaths, marriages, genealogy, and posthumous titles—were maintained by the Imperial Clan Court (Zhongrenfu). When an imperial clan member violated an ancestral rule of the Ming or committed a crime, the Clan Court almost 41

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  always referred him to the emperor, who, in turn, delegated his trusted eunuchs and judiciary ministers to ferret out the truth of the matter. In practice, however, it was extremely di‹cult to bring a prince to justice. One reason was that if the investigation proved that the charges against the prince were false, the accuser, whether he was the censor or commoner, was executed and his family exiled to the frontier. Such punishment darkly warned that anyone who dared to report a prince’s misconduct indeed risked his own life. Even if the investigation resulted in indictments against the prince, it was the Ming custom that the prince’s tutor or counselor was punished. The reasoning was that the prince’s behavior depended largely upon the advice of his teacher and chief of sta¤. Occasionally charges were brought by two princes against each other; in such cases, the emperor usually chose to personally reprimand the princes but always also had many of their advisors and companions whipped one hundred times with a bamboo stick. Only very rarely, in cases such as murder of relatives, was a prince stripped of his noble title, disallowed from wearing a hat or belt, and confined in a special penitentiary in Fengyang.10

  Previously the prince’s military command was vested in the hands of his rank-2a senior counselor, and his conduct was closely monitored by his civilian tutor, but now he enjoyed more freedom and had more leeway in running his own princedom. Of all of his sta¤, only the two princely administrators, plus the provincial grand defender and the escort guard commander, were appointed by the court. The prince therefore could appoint the rest of his military and civilian employees, including battalion commanders and company commanders, whose positions often became hereditary. The princely administrators were designed as imperial agents to keep a prying eye on the behavior of the prince, but because of their low rank, they became passive imperial agents in the government of the princedom and often were resigned to shu›ing documents and managing such routine a¤airs as food, entertainment, medicine, and birthdays.11 They were certainly not power players but only policy wonks.

  Within the guidelines of the new “Ancestor’s Instructions,” the Prince of Yan set forth his own constitution about the rules, customs, and laws of his realm. He ordered that his sta¤, both military and civilian, come to his o‹ce every morning and reminded them that he had the supreme authority over the life and death and promotion and demotion of his own employees and troops. He also made it clear that all the inhabitants within his domain would be subject to his authority and that imperial censors and o‹cials of Beiping surveillance o‹ces could not interfere with his personnel and judiciary a¤airs.

  He further decreed that whenever services were rendered or construction under-taken, his sta¤ should pay the artisans and workers all the accrued expenses 42

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  and bills in a timely fashion.12 It was in such an environment that the Prince of Yan began to develop his nascent administrative skills and to extend his influence into the surrounding area, where Mongols still accounted for one-third of the population. He had the opportunity to stumble and regain his equi-librium, and he learned from his mistakes. In only a short period, he was able to build a strong web of relations with some of the ablest people in Beiping.

  Sir Walter Scott put it this way: “What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” One person within his network who helped him practice deception was the legendary Buddhist monk Dao Yan.

  Dao Yan, originally named Yao Guangxiao, was born in 1335 into the family of a struggling Suzhou physician. He had a somewhat deformed body, “like a sick tiger with triangular eyes.” But his private life belied his grotesque appearance. He entered the monastery at the tender age of fourteen and was ordained upon reaching eighteen. In addition to the Confucian classics, he studied the arts of war, yin-yang theory, and The Book of Changes; he also became a noted poet and calligrapher, seemingly turning to scholarship, hard work, and acqui-sition of encyclopedic knowledge to escape temptations of the flesh. Because of his well-rounded talents, governors, ministers, and generals consulted him obsequiously on everything from the material and intellectual resources of their provinces to their own political futures. It is said that this strange monk was magisterial in distinguishing “great” men from others less deserving of that adjective. Before long, he became a social idol.

  At the funeral service of Empress Ma in 1382, Dao Yan—one of the monks chosen to perform Buddhist rituals—met the Prince of Yan for the first time.

  It is believed that during a confabulation, the strange monk told the prince that he wanted to give him a white hat. In the written Chinese language, if the word bai ’, which means “white”—is added to the top of the word wang ˝, which means “prince,” that combination makes another word, huang ”, or

  “emperor.” In other words, the prince who dared to wear a white hat would someday become the emperor of China. It was rumored that the emperor secretly revealed to his wife on her deathbed that he might favor the Prince of Yan as his heir apparent over their eldest son, Zhu Biao.13 Detractors of the Prince of Yan insisted that there had been no such revelation and that the story was fabricated by people such as Dao Yan, who had an interest in the prince’s succession. There was reportedly some friction between the emperor and the Prince of Yan at Empress Ma’s funeral, but when the latter asked to have Dao Yan for his princely establishment, the emperor raised no objection.14

  By November 1382 Dao Yan had arrived in Beiping to become abbot of Celebrating Longevity (Qingshou) Monastery, a historical shrine first built by 43

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  the Jurchen in the twelfth century and repeatedly refurbished by the Mongols.

  It had two brick pagodas, one with nine stories and the other seven, and served as the center of Buddhist worship in Beiping. Before long the Prince of Yan o‹cially welcomed Dao Yan into the fold as the newest member of his brain trust. There was between the prince and the monk a decisive bond of congenial minds, and they often talked long into the night. A few years later, it was Dao Yan who arranged for a fortune-teller to advise the prince to grow his whiskers down to his waist and to start a rebellion.15 After the Prince of Yan ascended the throne, he twice named Dao Yan supervising commissioner for the revision of The Hongwu Veritable Record (Ming Taizu shilu; 1418), from which Dao Yan and his editors skillfully expunged everything unfavorable or embarrass-ing about the Prince of Yan. In addition, Dao Yan supervised the compilation of the monumental Grand Encyclopedia of Yongle (Yongle dadian; 1407) and other o‹cial documents, possibly including Records of Obeying Heaven to Suppress Trouble (Fengtian jingnan ji), which justified the prince’s rebellion against his ill-fated nephew, Emperor Jianwen (1377–1402), as well as his ultimate “usurpation” in 1402. Records of Obeying Heaven to Suppress Trouble provided an extremely favorable portrait of the prince and later formed the basis for the first nine chapters of The Yongle Veritable Record (Ming Taizong shilu; 1430). A portion of this masterly document records the following: Emperor Yongle’s literary talents and military skills excelled compared to those of both ancient and contemporary people. He was diligent in learning and was endowed with a photographic memory. Among the books he mastered were the Six Classics, histories of various dynasties, philosophical treatises by masters, and texts on astronomy and geography. He daily discussed ethics and political issues with eminent scholars, often from dawn to dusk. He spoke with ease, and his language was precise, clear, and indicative of deep didactic thought. He always conducted himself with mod-esty and sincerity but easily showed his generosity and humanity toward others. He retained the service of able people according to their talents, and brilliant and virtuous scholars were delighted to work with hi
m. Even his servants and soldiers found pleasure working for him. Whenever he could spare time, he studied the arts of warfare and practiced both archery and horseback riding. He was so skilled and swift that even the veteran generals were no match for him. At every battle, he was able to size up his enemies and scored victory as if he could see a distance of a thousand li. He was known for his swift reward of valor and harsh punishment of failure in duty, and he always kept his promises. Consequently, his prestige could hold 44

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  the barbarians under his sway and command the obedience of the frontier people, who dared not approach our defense barriers. At home, he put life in order, personally leading and promoting frugality, which resulted in a tranquil society without crises. The superiors and their subordinates got along harmoniously, harvest was plentiful year in and year out, merchants and travelers could sleep in the wilderness without danger, no one would pick up lost goods along the highway, and no litigation was filed at court.

  Frequently, His Majesty would visit his people, feeling and soothing their pain and learning the common touch. His subjects—man and woman, young and old—all loved him. He was indeed a magnanimous and great leader, always thinking big and far.16

  The above account has aroused suspicion among scholars, even though it is generally agreed that the prince was tall in stature and that he was a strikingly good-looking man with an enviably handsome beard. In order to corroborate his traits of intelligence, erudition, humaneness, frugality, and diligence, his sycophants had to contrive a passage of praise based on words supposedly received from his generally harsh father. According to this passage, Emperor Hongwu once said, “The Prince of Yan treats his subordinates with humaneness and calm, knows how to alleviate distress among the people, and vigorously promotes agricultural production. He did very well against foreign invasions and has substantially contributed to the security of the empire.”17

  These traits were of course considered important qualifications for an heir apparent, and it is probably true that the emperor adored the spirit and toughness of his fourth son, but under the rules of primogeniture, the Prince of Yan was automatically disqualified from succeeding to his father’s throne. Because so many documents were allegedly destroyed during the process of revision and pasteurization, the evidence of Emperor Hongwu’s intentions is frag-mentary and contradictory, to say the least. The questions a biographer must answer then are these: Did Hongwu ever intend to set aside his meek and scholarly eldest son as heir in favor of the Prince of Yan? And when did the Prince of Yan actually conceive of the idea that the throne was rightfully his?

  According to a Korean source, the Prince of Yan had harbored such an ambition as early as 1390, when he had just turned thirty. Two years earlier, in 1388, when the Ming government established a garrison on the Hamhung plains north of Iron Pass, along the Yalu River, the Koryö dynasty (of the Korean Wang family) defied the Ming decision and dispatched General Yi Songgye to resist the Ming territorial aggrandizement. Instead of fighting the Chinese in Liaodong, General Yi marched his army back from Wihwa Island at the mouth 45

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  of the Yalu River and imprisoned the last Koryö king. But before establishing his own dynasty in Korea, Yi sent a tribute mission to Nanjing in order to secure the support of the Ming emperor. The Korean delegation was led by Governor Cho (pronounced Zhao in Chinese) of Pyongyang, who traveled by land (via Manchuria) to Beiping instead of by the more precarious sea route. In mid-summer 1390 Cho arrived in Beiping and was received by the Prince of Yan for an audience. During the meandering, one-on-one conversation with the extremely confident and irresistible prince, the Korean guest interpreted that the prince had already espoused the idea of becoming the emperor of China.

  After all, the Prince of Yan had just returned from his first triumphant victory over the Mongols, and, according to Confucian tradition, a man of thirty ought to be independent in both his career and his thinking. Nevertheless, one should not read too much into the recollection of a Korean envoy who might have had an ulterior motive for telling the story after 1402 when the Prince of Yan had become the overlord of the Korean king.18

  In spite of the fact that Emperor Hongwu watched all of his children with cool paternal eyes, he was frequently impressed with the burning energy and risk-taking of his fourth son. Time and again the Prince of Yan seemed able to dictate his own destiny by nimbly executing his niche services, in particular, waging successful battles against the Mongols. Within the framework of the political-military system, the most important power given to him was his prerogative as the commander of his own troops. As the prince understood it, his troops were to counterbalance those of the regional military commander, as the latter could not move his troops without both an order from the emperor and the prince’s approval. But the prince not only could move and drill his troops as he wished; he could also reward and promote his own soldiers without going through the hierarchical military bureaucracy. Moreover, whenever there was an emergency, he could take command of both his own troops and those of the regional garrison command. Indeed, during the late 1380s and early 1390s, the centuries-old polar conflict between the agricultural Chinese and the pastoral nomads would resume, and because the Ming could not inflict a coup de grâce on the Mongols, the Prince of Yan was given command over the forces that were trained by his mentor General Fu Youde and another veteran theater commander, Feng Sheng (1330–95).19

  In the early 1380s a lesser Mongol leader by the name of Naghachu (d. 1388) organized the Uriyangqad subgroup in Liaodong—the modern nomenclature for Manchuria—and engaged in small invasions and raids into Ming territory.

  Like other nomadic peoples, the Uriyangqad primarily depended upon stock-breeding, hunting, and some fishing, consequently clashing with the agricul-46

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  tural Chinese who were settled in urban and rural centers throughout the southern part of Manchuria. To remove this thorn from his northeastern frontier, Emperor Hongwu ordered General Feng Sheng and the Prince of Yan to prepare a punitive expedition. After storing millions of piculs of foodstu¤s at four advance bases near the Great Wall, the huge army of two hundred thousand men crossed the Liao River in July 1387. In only a few days the Ming forces had surrounded the Mongol stronghold at Jinshan, about 120 kilometers north of Shenyang. Commander-in-Chief Feng Sheng, who had been Emperor Hongwu’s bodyguard, was assisted by General Fu Youde at the front and by another outstanding general, Lan Yu (d. 1393), who commanded at the rear.

  Even though the Prince of Yan probably functioned only as a journeyman and directed his princely guard troops in limited action, he had the opportunity to witness both the heroic deeds and callous conduct of his tutors. In addition, this was the first time he had the chance to study the terrain of his near neighbor, whose civil administration was part of Shandong but whose military administration was to be under the Beiping regional military commission.

  (Later it would be jointly administered under Liaodong and Beiping.) While General Lan Yu was destroying portions of the Mongol army north of the Great Wall, rice, weapons, and other supplies were transported across the Great Wall into the Manchurian heartland. Naghachu and his followers, numbering hundreds of thousands, finally succumbed to the Ming forces without much of a fight. However, during the ceremony of surrender at Lan Yu’s tent, General Feng Sheng’s son-in-law created a ghastly scene when he stabbed Naghachu in the shoulder with a dagger. Worse still, General Feng later took several rare Mongol steeds for his own booty, tricked Naghachu’s wife into hand-ing over priceless jewelry and treasures, and coerced a Mongol princess to become his concubine.20 The Prince of Yan was repelled by such conduct and probably related these incidents to his father. In the meantime, he pondered whether he could turn these people into his own asset. Indeed, soon after ascending the throne he would compensate the Uriyangqad by allowing them to move south and occupy the territory just north of the Great Wall.21

  Th
e year 1388 was a good one for Ming China, with a vigorous economy and strong military. The Ming constructed sixteen new cities along the Fujian coast for a better defense against Japanese pirates and transferred hundreds of thousands of Mongols from Shandong to Yunnan to improve living conditions of the captives and to ease the fears of the Chinese population. By mid-May, another Ming army of 150,000 men, commanded by General Lan Yu, had marched some 850 kilometers north of Beiping to the extreme end of the Gobi Desert. During this blitzkrieg, the Ming forces actually located the Mongol 47

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  emperor Toghus Temur (r. 1378–88) and the crown prince, both of whom narrowly escaped. Nevertheless, they captured the second son of Toghus Temur and a general named Qarajang, plus hundreds of thousands of Mongols and their livestock.22 The Prince of Yan’s spirits quickly sagged when he learned that a Mongol imperial consort who had been captured by the narcissistic Lan Yu had hanged herself. Having always had an equivocal attitude toward Lan Yu, the prince exploited the situation to the full, making sure that his father learned about Lan Yu’s flagrant acts against his prisoners of war and his vora-cious appetite for titillation.

  Emperor Hongwu was indeed very concerned about the mistreatment of the surrendered Mongols and about the coarsening of military culture in general. In 1389 he had General Feng Sheng confined in Fengyang’s special penitentiary for his callous behavior in Liaodong. More important, fixating on perpetuating his family’s paramount power, the emperor began to develop a deep suspicion of the military nobles as a class and became more intolerant of Lan Yu’s smut and scandals in particular. For these reasons, he removed veteran generals—those who had helped him win the empire—from theater command and replaced them with his own sons. Consequently, beginning in 1390, the Prince of Yan and his brothers the Prince of Jin and the Prince of Qi were given their own commands in the campaigns against enemies of the Ming.