Beginning early in the autumn of 1403, Yongle sent his eunuchs overseas and across China’s land frontiers to search for such tribute as pearls and crystals, aloe and rose perfumes, agate, coral trees, and incense and he induced some thirty-eight states to send trade missions to China.49 In order to promote and regulate the tribute trade, he established in 1405 three maritime trade superintendencies in Quanzhou, Fujian; Ningbo, Zhejiang; and Guangzhou, Guangdong. He further decreed that Quanzhou was in charge of tribute a¤airs with the Ryukyu Islands, which traded sulfur for China’s porcelainware and iron tools. Ningbo was to deal exclusively with the Japanese, who exchanged 123
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sulfur, copper ore, lacquerware, swords, and fans for Chinese silk fabrics, sil-verware, medicine, and books. Finally, Guangzhou was to manage all cargoes from Southeast Asia, where spices and pepper—highly valued by the Chinese for medicinal purposes and seasoning—were abundant and cheap. Yongle’s government specified the frequency, number of ships, nature of goods, and personnel of the tribute mission allotted to each state. Every foreign state was considered a vassal of China. Yongle provided government hostels as quarters for tribute missions from vassal states and markets for the exchange of goods.50
Under the tribute trade system, economic intercourse took two main forms: the exchange of tribute products for imperial gifts as well as the normal trade of goods, both legal and contraband, with the Chinese. Tribute products, called
“o‹cial goods,” were sent to the emperor in exchange for imperial gifts such as dragon robes, gold and silver coins, porcelain, and silks. After the foreign merchant paid a 6 percent commission, a portion of the normal trade goods, called “private cargoes,” could then be sold or bartered at the port of entry.
The port superintendent, rank 5b and always a eunuch, bartered the best 60
percent of the cargo on behalf of the emperor and let the foreigners sell the rest to licensed Chinese merchants. Yongle’s government stored both the o‹cial tribute goods and the private merchandise it had purchased in the imperial granaries, once again under the watchful eyes of court eunuchs. It then sold the goods for an artificially high price several times the exchange value.
Pepper, for example, was often used for compensating service rendered the government. In 1403 Yongle rewarded four catties of pepper and thirty taels of silver to an o‹cial who made an imperial seal for him. An estimated quarter of a million servicemen received pepper in 1420 as payment instead of winter clothing.51 It was indeed a clever scheme that enabled Yongle to acquire cheap foreign tribute goods under monopoly and then use them as payment to his o‹cials and military personnel.
In order to maintain e¤ective operation of the Grand Canal and of foreign trade, Yongle’s engineers also developed cutting-edge technologies in civil and hydraulic engineering, including the use of a mixture of pounded earth and reeds as a construction material, the use of wood for building bridges, novel designs of gates and locks, and the construction of various sizes of ships. Yongle had the resources and technology to not only build gigantic palaces but to launch epic maritime explorations while he was rehabilitating the canal system. As canal transportation made it easier and faster to haul building materials, tribute goods, and grain and salt to the north, the restless emperor wanted to speed up the construction of his new capital. Under the supervision of his heir apparent, 124
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the construction of the new capital started in 1406 but proceeded irregularly.
A year later Yongle o‹cially authorized the eventual transfer of the central government to Beijing. The majority of Ming bureaucrats came from the southern gentry class and were not excited at all about moving their homes to a cold and windy northern city, but the few who openly opposed the plan, including the administration commissioner of Henan, Zhou Wenbao, were quickly silenced by exile or imprisonment. On the other hand, Yongle’s key advisors, including all of his grand secretaries and six ministers, voiced their support for a new capital. From 1409 on the emperor spent most of his time in Beijing, while sending the heir apparent back to Nanjing to head a regency council.52
Yongle sent such o‹cials as Guo Zi, Zhang Sigong, and Shi Kui to gather durable, fragrant, close-grained nanmu cedar from Sichuan and the straight, strong shanmu fir, as well as elm, oak, camphor, catalpa, and other suitable wood from all over the empire. Some logs weighed as much as twenty metric tons and took four long years to haul to the construction site. Yongle also charged the veteran military commander Chen Gui (d. 1415) to build kilns that could produce specially designed bricks and tiles. In early 1417, two years after the eighty-five-year-old Chen passed away, Yongle left Nanjing for good so that he could personally supervise the construction of his new capital.
All told, over two hundred thousand workers, artisans, and engineers took part in the construction of the spectacular imperial complex, which covered an area of approximately 101 hectares. The complex was located at the center of Beijing, surrounded by the huge Taiyi Lake and a fifty-two-meter-wide moat called the Jade River, and protected by a ten-meter-high outer wall. The center of the complex was the Forbidden City, an area 961 meters long by 753 meters wide. Within the Forbidden City, Yongle built six major palaces from south to north in a straight line and numerous two-story structures roofed with yellow ceramic tile and flanked by various shapes and sizes of courtyards. To reinforce the Forbidden City’s security, he constructed an inner palace wall supported by a sca¤olding of one hundred thousand poles, each of which was fifty cubits long (one Chinese cubit equals 35.8 centimeters). This wall was painted vermilion and was marked o¤ at each corner by a colorful, cross-shaped tower, which was covered with seventy-two roof ribs. The chief architect of the undertaking was the Annamese eunuch Nguyen An (d. 1453), who worked hand in glove with Minister of Public Works Wu Zhong. Nguyen was a talented artist, ingenious architect, and expert civil engineer who was also known for his remarkable loyalty, frugality, and, above all, incorruptibility. In fact, although he literally ran the Ministry of Public Works during the first half of the fifteenth century, he died penniless.53
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Inside the elegantly designed Forbidden City were the residential quarters of the emperor and his family, studies and libraries, temples, imperial gardens, and a park. It was reported that to do the delicate and painstaking work of constructing these sites, Nguyen An recruited some six thousand skilled carpenters and masons, some of whom were serving time and had to wear the notorious cangue while working in the palace. The cangue was a ninety-one-centimeter-square wooden board with a hole in the center and weighed fourteen to forty-five kilograms. As punishment, the convict wore the cangue locked around his neck, and his hands were chained by handcu¤s. Although he was not jailed and was allowed to pursue an otherwise normal life, he was required to stand for a requisite number of hours per day in public and to endure humiliation.
When such convicts were brought to the construction site, the handcu¤s were removed, and they could work and eat with their own hands. If they completed their work assignments to the satisfaction of their supervisors, they were set free. Many apparently could not endure the working conditions and attempted to escape. When three of the newly completed gigantic palace buildings—
Respect Heaven Hall, Flower-Covered Hall, and Prudence Hall—were damaged by violent storms and lightning, several highly vocal literati, who were critical of the costs of transplanting the capital and of constructing the new palace complex, used the disastrous occasion to second-guess Yongle. Among them was a Hanlin reader-in-waiting by the name of Li Shimian (1374–1450), who presented Yongle with a long memorial laced with doomsday warnings.
Portions of the admonitory memorial are as follows:
For over two decades Your Majesty has been engrossed with the construction of Beijing. . . . But from the onset of the construction, the costs have been staggering . . . and the excessive personnel wh
o were in charge of the project have bungled their jobs. The peasants, who were coerced to provide labor, were separated from their families and could not attend to their farming and silk production. . . . At the same time, the demands on the populace from your bureaucrats have increased day by day. Last year when they said they needed green and blue paint, hundreds of thousands of people were ordered to find such materials. If the people could not give what the o‹cials demanded, they had to pay money instead, and some of the monies were pocketed by the o‹cials. . . . The capital is the foundation of the world, but the people are the foundation of the capital. If the people feel secure, then the capital will be secure, and if the capital is secure, then the foundation of the country is solid, and the world will be at peace. . . . But since the beginning, even the carpenters and masons have used your name to force people 126
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to move out of their homes, thereby creating a new army of homeless people.
At present, a starving multitude in Shandong, Henan, Shanxi, and Shaanxi eat nothing but tree bark, grass, and whatever crumbs they can find. Others, in desperation, are forced to sell wives and children for their own survival.
. . . In contrast, tens of thousands of Buddhist monks and Daoist priests, who were brought here to pray in various temples, daily consume hundreds of piculs of rice. . . . Since Respect Heaven Hall, where you conduct state business and receive the audience of o‹cials, burned, it is time to reflect and to reform. You should send all of those poor workers home so as to pla-cate the anger of heaven. I for one would gladly accompany you when and if you decide to return to Nanjing and to report to your father at his tomb about the natural calamities.54
Even though Yongle was terrified and upset by the disaster, he did nothing to disguise his seething contempt for Li Shimian’s traditionalist harangues and had Li thrown in jail. According to Hafiz-i Abru, an envoy from Samarkand who was visiting Beijing at the time, the construction of the imposing architectural masterpiece forged on.55 On the day of the lunar New Year of 1421, after the heir apparent and his family had safely arrived in Beijing, Yongle could wait no longer, and he formally declared Beijing to be the national capital and Nanjing an auxiliary capital with a skeletal replica of the central government.
He dispatched twenty-six high-ranking capital o‹cials to tour various regions of the empire, pacifying and soothing both the troops and the civilian population. He also deployed seventy-two battalions and guard units, totaling three hundred thousand troops, to protect his new capital. In the ensuing years, Nguyen An and his crew added to this gigantic complex artificial hills, bronze statues, adorned pavilions, and sculptures to embellish its elegance. Pines, cypresses, and rare flowers were planted to enhance its gorgeous landscape.56
A Western parallel is reflected in the actions and words of Augustus Caesar, who said, “I found Rome in brick but leave it in marble.” In 1380 Yongle—then Prince of Yan—found Beijing in ruins, but, four-and-a-half decades later, he left it festooned in splendor. He was to have only three-and-a-half years to enjoy his new home, o‹ces, and playground.
Beijing was to become the mightiest city of Asia, and the Forbidden City, in whose creation Yongle invested so much money, time, and energy, was to remain for the Chinese people the focus of all creation and the nerve center of the Chinese nation for the rest of the Ming and on into succeeding eras. For the next five hundred years, until the 1920s, all power in China flowed from Beijing. Twenty-three successive emperors of China—thirteen more from the 127
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Ming dynasty and ten from the Qing—would turn Yongle’s Forbidden City into a world of privileged secrets and secret privileges. It was here that emperors made the most crucial decisions, celebrated countless triumphant returns from military campaigns, received unruly prisoners of war, and whipped their craven o‹cials. It was also in the cloistered chambers of this huge imperial complex that o‹cial documents were compiled and volume after volume of the so-called standard histories of imperial China were written and passed on to future generations. It is the recorded minutes of discussions there that allow us a fleeting glimpse inside the walls of this immense palace. Today, the Forbidden City stands as the world’s largest and best preserved example of medieval architecture, as a symbol of China’s imperial past, and also as an important part of Yongle’s legacy.
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7 / The Emperor of Culture
Immediately after his death, Yongle was given the temple name Taizong, or Grand Ancestor, which had traditionally been used for strong second emperors in Chinese dynasties. But Yongle was also canonized as Wen Huangdi, or Emperor of Culture, the highest accolade for a Chinese emperor.
Readers might wonder why a dynamic political leader whose first love was military science and who had devoted his entire career to warfare would merit—
and indeed, would have cherished—a title awarded for dignity, rectitude, and moral leadership. In history, the brilliance of a great ruler often shines in many directions. Yongle was mindful that Chinese tradition dictates that the successor to the dynastic founder fulfill what the founder had begun: the first emperor relied upon force, military might, and harsh means to establish the dynasty, but the second emperor was obliged to use humanism, education, and enlightened means to consolidate and perpetuate it. Yongle’s successors insisted that it was he, not Jianwen, who should be considered the second emperor of the Ming dynasty. That is why the fourth year of Jianwen (1402) was changed retroactively to the thirty-fifth year of Hongwu. Throughout his reign, the con-templative Yongle was extremely sensitive about being identified only as a warrior who knew very little and did nothing about China’s cultural heritage. In order to cultivate the aura of a sage-king and live up to the expectations of tradition, Yongle sponsored a torrent of literary publications and compilations.
Even though some of the publications were merely frills or were purposefully designed as political propaganda, other literary projects, such as The Grand Encyclopedia of Yongle, were resplendent with enduring wisdom and have lasted as long as the Forbidden City that Yongle built. Because he was instrumental in assembling volumes of Chinese classics in the humanities, Yongle was able to add literary fame to his legacy.
In keeping with his aim of observing the sage-king tradition, Yongle promoted Confucian moral education, sponsored imperial publications, and fol-129
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lowed prescribed ritual proceedings that his father had established. Since Yongle, as emperor, had to make regular state sacrifices to heaven to legitimize his authority to rule, he paid close attention to both ritual and music, the twin expressions of China’s imperial government.1 In ritual and in musical matters, he in general followed his father’s Prescribed Ritual Proceedings (Liyi dingshi), promulgated in 1387. Although he took to heart his father’s principle of frugality in festivities and ordered the Ministry of Rites not to construct a model of the legendary “nine-dragon chariot,” a stupendous vehicle of jade and gold, he nevertheless scrupulously observed the complete system of ritual and music specified in The Rites of the Zhou (Zhouli), an ancient classic promoted by Confucius.2 As soon as Yongle assumed the throne, he hired more court musicians ( dianyue guan), all male, for the Court of Imperial Sacrifices, who performed on ancient instruments such as yellow bells, stone chimes, bamboo flutes, mouth-organs, two-stringed fiddles, three-stringed banjos, moon gui-tars, and red drums. From these instruments made of metal, stone, silk, bamboo, gourds, pottery, skin, and wood, eight tones could be di¤erentiated. Bells belonged to the metal category; the timbres and voices of chimes came from an L-shaped musical stone; the fiddle, with its silken strings, belonged to the silk category; the transverse flute to the bamboo family; the panpipes, with thirteen reeds, to the gourd family; the egg-shaped mouth-organ called xun to the pottery family; the drum to the skin family; and the castanet called zhu to the wood family. Among the most frequently observed rituals in which specific songs were p
layed were state banquets for the royal princes or vassals from foreign countries, court banquets for the emperor’s courtiers, celebrations associated with the grand archery contest, promotions of ceremony of care for the aged, sacrificial rites at the Ancestral Temple and the Altar of Earth and Grain, and imperial audiences.3
In order to demonstrate that he was a filial son and a worthy successor to his father’s throne, Yongle decreed that his father’s Guide to Filial Piety and Caring (Xiaocilu; 1375) be strictly observed in matters of royal funerals and mourning practices. As for the personal conduct of the members of the imperial family, Yongle also stuck to the code provided by his father’s Ancestor’s Instructions (Huang Ming zuxun; 1395).4 Generally speaking, his musicians did not compose new songs and were content to play songs passed on from the Tang and Song dynasties.5 Among the songs his court musicians normally played while entertaining the imperial family and Yongle’s guests were Banquet Music (a four-part piece accompanied by dancers), Long-Life Music (reportedly composed by the Tang Empress Wu [625–750]), Music of Peace, Honor to the Majesty Music, First Full-Moon Music, and Dragon Pool Music. On special occasions 130
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Yongle’s musicians would perform Music of Grand Victory, with a troupe of dancers wearing five-colored armor and carrying long lances in their hands, or the chivalrous and energetic Battle-Line Smashing Music, in which the dancers shook the mountains and dales with their vigorous and brave movements. Of course, during the Yongle reign, the Chinese, high and low, rich and poor, continued to enjoy both southern and northern style opera, with its dramatic tunes.6
In addition to ritual and music, Yongle also supported the civil service examination and the National University, founded in Nanjing in 1368 by his father.
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