The story of Zhu Yuanzhang originated from a bowl, just as the history of the Ming Dynasty originated from him.
Zhu Yuanzhang was the most legendary civilian emperor in Chinese history, who worked his way up from the bottom to eventually establish the Ming Dynasty.
In the Internet era, many people jokingly called him "a bowl at the beginning and a victory in the Ming Dynasty", although this statement is a little ridiculous, but it truly reflects Zhu Yuanzhang's background and experience.
During Zhu Yuanzhang's childhood, his hometown suffered a severe drought and plague, which put his family directly into a desperate situation, and almost all of his elders died.
After experiencing the hardships and hardships of life, Zhu Yuanzhang had to choose to become a monk in order to survive. However, in the temple, he found that the local disaster was becoming more and more serious, and the food in the temple became overstretched.
Therefore, Zhu Yuanzhang went out as a monk to make a living.
Although his behavior was practically indistinguishable from that of a beggar, after the outbreak of the peasant uprising at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, he joined the rebel army and gradually expanded his sphere of influence, eventually establishing the Ming Dynasty.
Regarding Zhu Yuanzhang's extraordinary experience, his family has never shied away from it, and the romance of later generations has also described it, so this story is well known to the majority of readers.
Many people are full of curiosity about Zhu Yuanzhang's childhood life, why his family was so poor after the natural disaster, and what kind of story would happen in his childhood?
We can answer these questions by learning about his family history.
Although Zhu Yuanzhang was born in poverty, when he became the overlord of one side, he still worked hard to trace his family history and wrote the "Zhu's Shide Monument".
According to his own account, his family originally lived in Jurong County, southeast of Nanjing.
Zhu Yuanzhang's fifth ancestor is called Zhu Zhongba, the fourth ancestor is called Zhu Bailiu, his grandfather is called Zhu Sijiu, his grandfather is called Zhu Chuyi, and his father is called Zhu Wusi.
Looking at the names of the old Zhu family may be a little casual, but in fact, the customs and habits of the Yuan Dynasty are hidden behind these names.
During the Yuan Dynasty, it was difficult for the low-class people to have a tall name, and according to custom, their names were usually the number or date of birth of the age of their parents.
Therefore, the name of the old Zhu family was not chosen at random, but followed the customs and habits of the time.
When a person is still struggling in poverty, his name may just be a code name.
However, when he succeeds, he can change his name to match his new identity and cultural literacy.
For example, Zhu Yuanzhang was known as Zhu Chongba when he was young, but when he joined the rebel army and became the overlord of one side, he changed his name to Zhu Yuanzhang, which showed his success and new social status.
Interestingly, Zhu Yuanzhang's success even affected his father, who changed his name from Zhu Wusi to Zhu Shizhen. This may have only happened in the Yuan Dynasty, as the seemingly sloppy name actually alluded to the poverty of the Zhu Yuanzhang family for generations.
Their family has been farming for generations for a living, and Zhu Yuanzhang himself said that their family originally had their own land.
In the history of Zhu Yuanzhang's family, they had to flee many times due to heavy taxes and labor by the local government.
Unable to bear the exorbitant taxes and labor, his grandfather fled his hometown with his family and eventually settled in the Xuyi region of Jiangsu.
When his father faced the same predicament, he also chose to flee and finally settled in the Fengyang area of Anhui Province. This incident had a profound impact on Zhu Yuanzhang.
Zhu Yuanzhang's family did not help collect the corpses or help them when his father died, because the taxes and labor were too high, causing the family to flee every other generation.
As a result of this constant migration, their families and land could not be passed on, and they eventually became tenant farmers. Due to the long-term move, they lost contact with their relatives, so when Zhu Yuanzhang's parents died, they could not find relatives to help.
The old Zhu family's life is so difficult, not because they don't work hard. If we look at it from a modern point of view, we can attribute all the evils of the old society.
Under that system, land annexation led to a highly unequal distribution of wealth.
Although the people at the bottom were diligent, in the end most of the fruits of their labor were seized by the landlord class.
Therefore, even if the old Zhu family made great efforts, they were still unable to solve the problem of food and clothing in the end.
This is indeed the case, but in the historical context of the time, this great principle needs to be slightly deformed. Specifically, the suffering of Zhu Yuanzhang's family was mainly due to the main line of history, because the ruling strategy of the Yuan Dynasty at that time was wrong. Zhu Yuanzhang was born in 1328 AD, and just 34 years before he was born, Kublai Khan, the founding emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, died. ”
From a historical perspective, Kublai Khan was a legendary leader who led the Yuan dynasty to conquer the Southern Song Dynasty, unify the Central Plains, and sweep across Asia and even Europe.
However, from the perspective of ordinary people, especially the people in Jiangnan, this history is tragic.
After Kublai Khan unified the Southern Song Dynasty, he established a "system of racial discrimination" that divided the people of the Yuan dynasty into four classes, namely the Mongols, the Semu, the Han, and the Nan.
Among them, the Nanren refer to the people of the original Southern Song Dynasty.
Zhu Yuanzhang's family came from a humble background, and it happened to be the lowest among the southerners.
After the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty, the rulers led by Kublai Khan had a headache with the issue of tax collection, which is not surprising, because the Yuan Dynasty was a typical nomadic civilization and was not very good at collecting taxes, especially agricultural taxes.
Therefore, the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty had an idea and invented a good system called the "package tax system".
The Yuan Dynasty inherited the commercial tax outsourcing system of the Southern Song Dynasty, which was a commercial tax outsourcing phenomenon due to the development of commerce in the Southern Song Dynasty.
Under this system, the tax bearer needs to pay enough taxes to the state every year, and the tax of a certain industry in a certain region is completely collected by him, and the specific tax collection method is determined by him.
This system was inherited and promoted by the Yuan Dynasty, so that all the tax revenue in the Central Plains was outsourced.
The tax package system of the Yuan Dynasty seemed to increase taxes for the first time, but in fact, it made the people at the bottom suffer. The tax collector used the power in his hands to set up a name and let the people bear several times the tax stipulated by the people.
This system not only made it difficult for the Yuan Dynasty to obtain substantial financial revenue, but also made the people at the bottom bear a heavy economic burden and physical labor.
This kind of exploitation of the people at the bottom also became one of the important reasons for the fall of the Yuan Dynasty.
Since the people in charge of collecting taxes in the past generations would squeeze every penny out of the old Zhu family, in order to survive, the people of the old Zhu family would flee every few decades.
After Yuan Chengzong ascended the throne, he rectified the rule of officials and reduced taxes, which is expected to change this situation.
Sadly, he lived in the Yuan Dynasty, not the Han or Tang Dynasty.
Yuan Chengzong reigned for thirteen years, and although he alleviated the *** within the Yuan Dynasty to a certain extent, he was unable to solve the essence of the problem.
Therefore, even after his death, the Yuan dynasty remained seriously contradictory.
At this time, Zhu Yuanzhang's father had reached adulthood, and the social order of the Yuan Dynasty began to be turbulent.
In the process of governance, the two emperors of the Yuan Dynasty tried to solve the problems of the ruling class through Sinicization reforms, but they encountered opposition from the conservative aristocracy of the Yuan Dynasty.
This opposition eventually led to the famous South Slope Change.
This incident stemmed from the emperor's attempt to implement a large-scale Confucian reform, but the conservative aristocracy opposed this proposal and even directly assassinated the emperor, making the Yuan Dynasty's Sinicization reform a complete failure.
Since then, the domestic contradictions in the Yuan Dynasty have become increasingly intensified, and in the past ten years, the emperor has changed frequently, and the country's political situation has been turbulent.
Zhu Yuanzhang was born in such a social background. In the Jiangnan region, the Nanren, as the fourth class of the lower class of society, suffered oppression.
Due to the special tax package system, the old Zhu family has to pay a large amount of taxes every year.
In addition, since their family has no land, they can only work for others.
This also means that even if the people of the old Zhu family work hard, they can only barely make ends meet at most.
To make matters worse, during these two decades, the Yuan Dynasty frequently changed emperors, its control over the localities gradually weakened, and the rule of officials became more and more corrupt.
As a result, those responsible for collecting taxes have become more and more unscrupulous, and the ways in which they collect taxes are also diverse.
Despite the harsh environment, the people of the Zhu family always insisted on their hope for life, especially the old Zhu family. Despite their limited financial resources, they managed to have four sons and two daughters.
These four sons are named Zhu Chong.
Fifth, Zhu Chong. Sixth, Zhu Chongqi and Zhu Chongba. As for the two daughters, the eldest sister married early and cut off contact with the family.
When Zhu Yuanzhang was chased and killed, he fled to his eldest sister's house, but because the eldest sister refused to avoid trouble.
The second daughter married a man named Li Zhen, and their living conditions were not good, barely able to maintain food and clothing.
However, Li Wenzhong, the son born to the second daughter, became one of the six founding dukes of the Ming Dynasty.
From Zhu Yuanzhang's point of view, his early life can be said to be very difficult.
He was born into a poor family, and because the family had no land, his father and several older brothers had to work for a landlord surnamed Liu in the same village.
In such an environment, Zhu Yuanzhang gradually grew.
However, due to the heavy tax burden of the Yuan Dynasty, it was difficult for his family to accumulate wealth even if they went all out. When Zhu Yuanzhang was six years old, he heard that the capital had changed a new emperor.
At that time, he would never have imagined that this newly appointed little emperor would be driven back to the grassland by him decades later and become the last emperor of the Yuan Dynasty.
When Zhu Yuanzhang was 16 years old, the area was hit by a severe drought, which led to a reduction in grain production. The following year, locust plagues and plagues followed, leaving the old Zhu family in a difficult situation.
His second and third brothers died before this, and his parents and eldest brother also died in the plague. Except for Zhu Yuanzhang and his two sisters, as well as one of his eldest brother's sons, who survived, the entire family was almost destroyed.
This surviving son was Zhu Wenzheng, who later played an important role in the Battle of Hongdu.
In that cruel era, it was already an incredible miracle that Zhu Yuanzhang was able to survive. Since his family had no land, no food and no money, he was unable to provide a burial for his family after their death.
Therefore, he could only ask the rich man Liu in the village to help bury his family. At first, Rich Liu was unwilling, but looking at the miserable situation of Zhu Yuanzhang's family, he finally decided to give Zhu Yuanzhang a piece of land so that he could bury his family.
Many later generations believed that Liu Caizhu was a representative of the exploiting class and a bad person. But if we look at the historical background at that time, Rich Liu has actually done quite well.
Although Liu's family owned a few plots of land, the high taxes and disasters in Anhui made their food reserves seriously insufficient. In this case, the fact that Rich Liu can give Zhu Yuanzhang a piece of land is already the maximum of their ability.
However, Zhu Yuanzhang knew how to be grateful, and after the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, he granted Liu the title of Marquis of Yihui, which lasted until the fall of the Ming Dynasty and became a symbol of their family and the country's shared fate.
Seventeen-year-old Zhu Yuanzhang, his relatives have passed away one after another, and the future is confused. Fortunately, he was recommended by his neighbor, Lao Wang's aunt, to go to the temple to become a monk, at least to solve the problem of food and clothing.
Zhu Yuanzhang's career as a monk began.