Zhu Yuanzhang was born on what we would now call October 20, 1328.

To mark his 695th birthday, I have updated my annotated translation of his autobiographical text, known as the Imperial Tomb Tablet of the Great Ming 大明皇陵之碑.

Click here to download a free (November 2023) PDF of this text.

Leave me a comment if you have any suggestions for this translation, which is an ongoing project…

One of the remarkable aspects of the Imperial Tomb Tablet is what it does not do: Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, who ruled the Celestial Kingdom for 30 years after ascending the Dragon Throne in 1368, does not dwell on his military exploits. The first third of this 96-line text gives no indication of the battles won or the armies defeated. This disinterest in bragging is made clear from the opening line, when Zhu begins by describing himself first as a filial son, and second as an emperor. The only other times when he refers to his royal status, is when he describes his parents as “imperial,” though that was a posthumous title for them.

As background: soon after becoming emperor in 1368, the Ming founder transformed his family’s burial place in Fengyang, modern Anhui Province, into a grand imperial cemetery for the House of Zhu.  He ordered that a stone tablet be placed before the graves, and carved with the words he wanted his descendants to read and ponder for generation after generation.  The PDF monograph listed above is my translation of these words.

It should also be noted that this text is a second draft. The first was composed by Wei Su, a respected Confucian scholar, and written in consultation with the emperor soon after the dynasty was founded, but Zhu Yuanzhang came to dislike it. He decided to write a new version himself, and his text still stands today, carved into stone and erected at the site of his parents’ burial.

So what is different? Zhu’s final draft is far more personal, more emotional, and more tragic:
• Where Wei Su wrote, “In the Jiashen year, the Imperial Father and Imperial Mother Chen both passed away,” Zhu ignored the date and mourned, “All at once, calamities gripped the land and my family met with disaster. My imperial father had reached the age of 64, and my imperial mother 59, when they perished.”
• Wei Su noted politely that the poor family had no burial plot, while Zhu angrily named his landlord, Liu De, as a bad person who “would not attend to our needs, carrying on with his arrogant shouting” until the landlord’s elder brother came to the family’s rescue with the offer of a final resting place.
• Wei Su indicated that the orphaned young man faced an uncertain future, but Zhu cried out “what did I have but fear to the point of madness?”

Clearly, the emperor wanted his descendants to understand the tragedy that he had managed to survive, but that claimed his parents and eldest brother. Moreover, he wanted to express gratitude for those who had helped him – he stresses the kind landlord’s brother, and also his neighbor Old Mother Wang, who got him admitted to the nearby temple so that he would not starve to death. Most touching is his description of the sacrifice made by his surviving brother, who left the village to roam the countryside in search of food and thus left all that remained to eat (meager though it was) for Zhu Yuanzhang. “My brother wept for me, and I grieved for my brother; under the bright sun in Heaven, our sorrow rent our hearts.” Zhu never saw this brother again, and it is quite possible that he soon starved to death in the devastated region.

It is the emperor’s willingness to face his raw emotions that makes this text so unusual, and so gripping. And because this particular struggling orphan went on to become the ruler of China, the story of his family provides an extraordinary insight into the world of 14th-century peasant

For me, the most important reason to read this text, is that Zhu Yuanzhang’s words reach across time and place to offer insight into what makes us human – the struggle to survive, the compassion of friends and family, the need to write it all down for future generations to contemplate.