October 21, 2025, marks the 697th birthday of Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of China’s Ming Dynasty. He was born (on what corresponds to Oct. 21 on our modern calendar) in 1328, founded the Ming Dynasty in 1368, and died in 1398. Those lucky eights seem auspicious except that they are based on the Western Gregorian calendar and would have meant nothing to Zhu Yuanzhang himself. In the context of his era, he was born in an Earth Dragon year on the 18th day of the 9th month of the 1st year of the Tianli 天曆 reign of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty’s Wenzong 元文宗 Emperor Tugh Temur.

However you cite it, we are a mere three years from the big 700!

To mark this day, here’s a poem that is attributed to Zhu Yuanzhang. Written in 1355, it’s titled “Climbing Jilong Mountain” and describes the view of a summit near today’s Hexian, Anhui Province, located along the northern banks of the Yangtze River:

Finished hunting on the west slope,
we gather our flags to rest;
One mountain emerges,
from the myriad modest peaks.
A lofty boulder, like a pillar for the sky;
It props up Old Heaven,
and Old Heaven knows it.

罢猎西山坐拥旗，一山出地万山卑。
崔巍巨石如天柱，撑著老天天自知。

It is said that Zhu Yuanzhang wrote this poem while viewing Mount Jilong with his wife, the future Empress Ma. This would have been when he was a rising leader, one among many in the Red Turban rebellion raising armies to fight the Mongol Yuan Dynasty. He had not yet managed to get his army across the Yangtze, but already he had his sights on the city known today as Nanjing, the place where he would launch his dynasty. 

Zhu Yuanzhang is writing about a mountain, but these lyrics have also been read as a bold declaration of his ambitions. He is the lofty boulder emerging to dominate the landscape.

How did his future empress respond to the recitation of such a poem? Did she scoff at his audacious words? Clap her hands in delight? Or lower her eyes and hold her tongue? 

No mere mortal could have guessed the extent of the role Zhu Yuanzhang would play in the annals of Chinese history once he crossed the river. 

Only Old Heaven understood how this one young man was about to change the world.