It was 1363. Zhu Yuanzhang was fighting his archrival at Lake Poyang. He had been leading a rebellion for fifteen years by then. But most of that time, he was fighting other rebel groups. Because the Mongols were doing their own thing in the palace. Then his archrival peeked out of a window and got 360 no-scoped. It was 1363. The sniper scope hadn’t been invented yet.
When Zhu Yuanzhang was born, his family was so poor that his name was a number. He was 88. His father was 54. His grandfather was 01. His first job was as a beggar. He later became a monk, because people were more willing to give food to monks. Then he founded the Ming dynasty. But deep down inside, he was still that insecure beggar.
The beggar had trust issues, so he personally audited all the taxes, down to the amount of rice grains. Any mistake in the books meant the whole book had to be redone. It became common for accountants to carry blank ledgers with them. He thought they were all committing fraud and killed them all. He also created paper money, but the money wasn’t backed by anything. Like memecoins. He forced people to exchange their gold and silver for this money. The memecoins crashed almost immediately.
He only cared about his descendants. He made all of them princes, gave them land, and gave them money. But he didn’t seem to understand the concept of exponential growth. He had 25 sons. Let’s be conservative and say each of his sons had 10 sons. Within two hundred years, there would be no free land left in the empire to give out.
He went all-in on his eldest son. He killed most of his founding team to clear the path for him. Everything he’d done was to prepare the empire for his perfect son. Then his perfect son died. Now who could be his successor? He considered the other sons. He thought they were not good enough. In the end, he went all-in again on his teenage grandson and killed the rest of his founding team.
Then Zhu Yuanzhang died. He forced 40 concubines and their servants to die with him.
The boy became the next emperor. His ministers kept telling him, your uncles will rebel. So he started demoting his uncles. One of the uncles, Zhu Di, was like, oh no I’m next. So he started acting like he was mad. The emperor spared him out of pity. Hey Zhu Di, don’t be afraid. Then Zhu Di rebelled. He said, dear nephew, your court is too dirty. Uncle will clean it up for you.
The emperor told the imperial army, don’t kill him. Don’t make me an uncle-killer. He thought there was still a chance of reconciliation. Hey Zhu Di, don’t make it bad. But those words were like giving Zhu Di the invincibility star. Because now, no one dared to hurt him. He went straight to the capital, and the imperial army surrendered.
Welp, Zhu Di turned out to be the Zhu Yuanzhang 2.0. He wasn’t lying about cleaning up his nephew’s court. He killed the ministers, their families, their students, their Twitter followers. I’m surprised there were still people left to be killed.
When the capital fell, the nephew’s body was never found. And that bothered Zhu Di. So he sent a eunuch to sail around the world to hunt down the nephew. And maybe improve some foreign relationships on the side.
Zhu Yuanzhang formed his own KGB. But Zhu Di found them untrustworthy, so he formed a KGB of the KGB to monitor the KGB. Later, another emperor would find both untrustworthy and form a KGB of the KGB of the KGB. Then a KGB of the KGB of the KGB of the KGB. Putin would be jealous.
He enjoyed beating the leftover Yuan people. He enjoyed it so much that he moved the capital to the northern border. He said, the emperor should be the goalkeeper of the country. He went Garfield-hunting five times, and died on the way back from the last one.