1. He is well known for having an...almost artistically ugly face that some people have described as looking like the sole of a shoe. Look up his portrait on the internet and you'll see what I mean.
2. His wife, Queen Ma, was from a poor family too, and she never bound her feet. Despite being Queen, she was widely ridiculed for this, to the point that even today, the phrase "Ma showing her feet" (露马脚) means, "to expose a tell/to show a flaw."
3. Because Zhu Yuanzhang had exactly enough of an education to be literate, he is well known for his incredibly colloquial imperial orders with absolutely zero attempt at founding formal or poetic. One famous imperial decree what was he issued peasants encouraging them in the face of pirate threats, "With the blessing of the Heavens, your Emperor decrees: Tell everybody get their knives ready. We gon' kill those motherfuckers as soon as they land."
4. He's legendarily credited with inventing moon cakes by hiding secret messages in cakes passed out to rebel soldiers as a gift for the Full Moon Festival about when to coordinate their attacks.
5. To prevent his ministers from living lavish lives at the expense of the peasants, Zhu Yuanzhang started the tradition of the "four dishes, one soup" (四菜一汤), that remains the standard for how a government official should eat until the modern day. The original four dishes he offered his ministers was stir-fried turnips, stir-fried chives, steamed rape, another bowl of steamed rape, and green onions and tofu soup.
6. There was an office in Ming Dynasty called the "The Divine Mint". Pretty impressive title, right? You'd think they printed money, right? No. They don't print money at all. They printed toilet paper.
7. In a traditional three-character Chinese name, the first character is your surname. The second character would be shared by everyone in your generation. The third is decided on by consulting a Daoist about the best fengshui for your name. For example, my brothers and named Yingdong, Yingqiao, and Yinghao. All with Ying as the middle character of their name. Zhu Yuanzhang not only wrote down what the middle character should be for all his children's children going down 20 generations, he wrote different instructions for each of his children, basically personally naming just about the entirety of the massive Ming extended family.
8. Where Tang Dynasty ministers had about 100 days paid leave every year. Infamously a workaholic, Zhu Yuanzhang's poor ministers only got 18 days off a year. A fact which they left large amounts of poetry complaining about.
>He is well known for having an...almost artistically ugly face that some people have described as looking like the sole of a shoe.
I have a friend who describes Matt Smith like this.
>One famous imperial decree what was he issued peasants encouraging them in the face of pirate threats, "With the blessing of the Heavens, your Emperor decrees: Tell everybody get their knives ready. We gon' kill those motherfuckers as soon as they land."
Do you have a link to this? I find it hilarious and also it'd be interesting to compare his wording to modern Mandarin.
My first introduction to Ming history, as a 10-year old, was Princess Changping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Changping and that Cantonese opera with Yam Kim Fai and Bak Sheut Sin. I distinctly remembered thinking, what a useless father she had lol
:( I feel really bad for the last Emperor of Ming. In every other Dynasty, the final Emperor is either spectacularly evil and corrupt (like Hu Hai or Yang Huang) or a literal child. But the last Emperor of Ming was actually a decent and competent guy. He just inherited a country with completely fucked economics, a completely empty treasury, sky-high Imperial family expenses he couldn't cut down, and then got punched in the face by a mini-Ice Age, and the endless cycles of drought, locusts, and plague that came with it. I honestly think Li Shimin could've been thrown in that situation and not necessarily have known what to do with it.
Oh, that was the instinctive thought of a 10-year old girl who idolised her dad and figured dads were all-powerful settlers of wrongs. As you say, he was truly fucked either way. :(
:) I know, I know, I just wanted to rant a little about that poor guy. I remember being a little kid and genuinely being really mad at Liu Bang for being a shitty dad (and shitty husband). But now that I'm grown up, I'm like, you know, he's definitely in the Top 10 Emperors of China.
My primary association with this dynasty is Ming vases as the quintessential expensive decorative antique. Knowing that a huge amount of European money went into buying Chinese porcelain in this era, the idea of Ming vases makes more sense. I guess there were a lot of Ming ceramics floating around in Europe in the following centuries.
Pft. Ming vases are nothing compared to Song porcelain--that's the true pinnacle of Chinese pottery. There are only 65 known examples of the best pottery factory left from the Song Dynasty. Every single example of Song Dynasty porcelain is truly priceless. Song Dynasty porcelain is so valuable that broken shards of pottery have been auctioned for 27 million USD.
Ming vases are only well known among western circles precisely because they're cheap enough to be affordable to own as decoration. >.>
Some Cool Facts about Zhu Yuanzhang:
1. He is well known for having an...almost artistically ugly face that some people have described as looking like the sole of a shoe. Look up his portrait on the internet and you'll see what I mean.
2. His wife, Queen Ma, was from a poor family too, and she never bound her feet. Despite being Queen, she was widely ridiculed for this, to the point that even today, the phrase "Ma showing her feet" (露马脚) means, "to expose a tell/to show a flaw."
3. Because Zhu Yuanzhang had exactly enough of an education to be literate, he is well known for his incredibly colloquial imperial orders with absolutely zero attempt at founding formal or poetic. One famous imperial decree what was he issued peasants encouraging them in the face of pirate threats, "With the blessing of the Heavens, your Emperor decrees: Tell everybody get their knives ready. We gon' kill those motherfuckers as soon as they land."
4. He's legendarily credited with inventing moon cakes by hiding secret messages in cakes passed out to rebel soldiers as a gift for the Full Moon Festival about when to coordinate their attacks.
5. To prevent his ministers from living lavish lives at the expense of the peasants, Zhu Yuanzhang started the tradition of the "four dishes, one soup" (四菜一汤), that remains the standard for how a government official should eat until the modern day. The original four dishes he offered his ministers was stir-fried turnips, stir-fried chives, steamed rape, another bowl of steamed rape, and green onions and tofu soup.
6. There was an office in Ming Dynasty called the "The Divine Mint". Pretty impressive title, right? You'd think they printed money, right? No. They don't print money at all. They printed toilet paper.
7. In a traditional three-character Chinese name, the first character is your surname. The second character would be shared by everyone in your generation. The third is decided on by consulting a Daoist about the best fengshui for your name. For example, my brothers and named Yingdong, Yingqiao, and Yinghao. All with Ying as the middle character of their name. Zhu Yuanzhang not only wrote down what the middle character should be for all his children's children going down 20 generations, he wrote different instructions for each of his children, basically personally naming just about the entirety of the massive Ming extended family.
8. Where Tang Dynasty ministers had about 100 days paid leave every year. Infamously a workaholic, Zhu Yuanzhang's poor ministers only got 18 days off a year. A fact which they left large amounts of poetry complaining about.
>He is well known for having an...almost artistically ugly face that some people have described as looking like the sole of a shoe.
I have a friend who describes Matt Smith like this.
>One famous imperial decree what was he issued peasants encouraging them in the face of pirate threats, "With the blessing of the Heavens, your Emperor decrees: Tell everybody get their knives ready. We gon' kill those motherfuckers as soon as they land."
Do you have a link to this? I find it hilarious and also it'd be interesting to compare his wording to modern Mandarin.
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/27525753
There's an article on all the plainly-worded Royal Decrees Zhu Yuanzhang wrote.
My first introduction to Ming history, as a 10-year old, was Princess Changping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Changping and that Cantonese opera with Yam Kim Fai and Bak Sheut Sin. I distinctly remembered thinking, what a useless father she had lol
:( I feel really bad for the last Emperor of Ming. In every other Dynasty, the final Emperor is either spectacularly evil and corrupt (like Hu Hai or Yang Huang) or a literal child. But the last Emperor of Ming was actually a decent and competent guy. He just inherited a country with completely fucked economics, a completely empty treasury, sky-high Imperial family expenses he couldn't cut down, and then got punched in the face by a mini-Ice Age, and the endless cycles of drought, locusts, and plague that came with it. I honestly think Li Shimin could've been thrown in that situation and not necessarily have known what to do with it.
Oh, that was the instinctive thought of a 10-year old girl who idolised her dad and figured dads were all-powerful settlers of wrongs. As you say, he was truly fucked either way. :(
:) I know, I know, I just wanted to rant a little about that poor guy. I remember being a little kid and genuinely being really mad at Liu Bang for being a shitty dad (and shitty husband). But now that I'm grown up, I'm like, you know, he's definitely in the Top 10 Emperors of China.
My primary association with this dynasty is Ming vases as the quintessential expensive decorative antique. Knowing that a huge amount of European money went into buying Chinese porcelain in this era, the idea of Ming vases makes more sense. I guess there were a lot of Ming ceramics floating around in Europe in the following centuries.
Pft. Ming vases are nothing compared to Song porcelain--that's the true pinnacle of Chinese pottery. There are only 65 known examples of the best pottery factory left from the Song Dynasty. Every single example of Song Dynasty porcelain is truly priceless. Song Dynasty porcelain is so valuable that broken shards of pottery have been auctioned for 27 million USD.
Ming vases are only well known among western circles precisely because they're cheap enough to be affordable to own as decoration. >.>
唐詩宋詞？ More like 唐詩宋瓷！