For now, let's put an end to the Northern Yuan War and take a look at how Zhu Yuanzhang set about establishing his country.

  After Zhu Yuanzhang established the country, the first task was to give it a name, which is extremely important, just like people today giving their children names, this name will be called for hundreds of years, and cannot be sloppy.

  In the eyes of many people, Mongolians are a nation on horseback with limited cultural refinement. However, the dynasty they established was named Yuan, which has a profound origin. The character "Yuan" is derived from the I Ching's "Great indeed is the origin of Qian", also representing their admiration for Chinese culture.

  When Zhu Yuanzhang named his dynasty the Ming, there was much controversy. Many people believed that this was because Zhu Yuanzhang came from the White Lotus Sect, so he took this name. Others believed that the Yuan was a northern regime, which according to Feng Shui is water and belongs to Yin, while Zhu Yuanzhang established his capital in the south and used the southern fire of Ming to suppress the northern water of Yin.

  Of course, the situation can only be asked of Zhu Yuanzhang himself.

  After giving his country a good name, he also considered finding himself a glorious ancestor. Although he often called himself "Huaiyou Bu Yi", putting on an air of heroism that didn't care about humble origins, the ministers all knew that these titles were only for him to say, and whoever dared to speak them in front of him would be waiting to lose their head. He had originally considered recognizing Zhu Xi, a great saint of the Song Dynasty, as his ancestor, but an objective reason forced him to abandon this idea.

  Because Zhu Xi lived too close to their time, it was not easy to mix water and fish, let alone cheat people, even themselves could not be deceived. So they gave up on this.

  After more than 20 years of war, the Chinese land was filled with starving people, and the fields were deserted. The main task of the founding emperor was to restore production. Zhu Yuanzhang did a good job in this regard. He paid great attention to the three rural issues and put all his enthusiasm on the peasants. In the third year of Hongwu (1370), he stipulated that anyone who opened up wasteland would be exempt from rent for three years. Moreover, in order to encourage reclamation, he formulated a decree: as long as you opened up wasteland, this land belonged to you, even if the original owner came back, you didn't have to be afraid, I, Zhu Yuanzhang, would support you. This greatly promoted the progress of reclamation.

  To encourage farming, he also issued a decree that all criminals, except those who committed capital crimes, would be sent to work in the fields, which was considered a good deed. It's worth noting that most of these so-called "criminals" were actually officials, and at one point there were over 10,000 officials working in the fields in Fengyang alone. The specific reason for this will be discussed later. At the same time, he also greatly reduced taxes in various places, except for one location.

  This place was the Jiangnan region occupied by Zhang Shicheng. As the local people supported Zhang Shicheng, he was very dissatisfied and stipulated that the taxes in Jiangnan were several times higher than those in other places. This regulation was not abolished until later. From this we can see that Zhu Yuanzhang is a person who must revenge when he has a grudge. Please remember this personality trait of his, which will be very beneficial for us to analyze his later behavior.

  In contrast, he hated merchants very much, which is likely related to his experience of being cheated by a merchant named Shen Wansan when he was young. At that time, the famous rich man Shen Wansan became the victim of his policy of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce. This Shen Wansan was extremely wealthy, with a legendary "treasure basin" in his home, which made his wealth endless. He also wanted to learn from Lü Buwei and engage in political speculation. He voluntarily surrendered to Zhu Yuanzhang and spent money building one-third of the city wall of Nanjing. These walls were very strong, built with high-quality granite, using glutinous rice as mortar, and coated with lime on the outside, making them impregnable.

  Shen Wansan spent a lot of money, hoping that Zhu Yuanzhang would give him some benefits, but he never understood what kind of person Zhu Yuanzhang was. After hearing about this matter, Zhu Yuanzhang remained calm and collected, waiting for the city wall to be completed before preparing to kill him. Shen Wansan was really too stupid - how could someone like Zhu Yuanzhang tolerate a merchant building the capital's city wall?! It wasn't until Empress Ma repeatedly advised him that Zhu Yuanzhang didn't take action, but he still confiscated Shen Wansan's property and exiled him to Yunnan.

  Shen Wansan made a loss for the first time in his life, but he was not the only unfortunate one. Almost all merchants suffered from discrimination. Zhu Yuanzhang's restriction on merchants' behavior seemed ordinary, but it changed the development direction of China, which had been dominated by commerce since the Song Dynasty, to a great extent. This had a profound impact on China's development. We will elaborate on this later.

  In terms of political system, he almost copied all the institutions of the Yuan Dynasty. The central government set up the Zhongshu Province, with the left and right prime ministers in charge of national affairs, and six ministries under it. At that time, many people thought that Zhu Yuanzhang's Ming government would continue to follow the official system of the Yuan Dynasty, but what happened later was beyond their expectations. This will be discussed later.

  There are many more systems in place tomorrow, and we introduce the above ones just to lay the groundwork for what happens next.