Chapter 4 Chapter 2 Zhu Chongba, the Hungry Child

Before the age of twenty-five, Zhu Yuanzhang's deepest feeling about life was: hunger. A dream that Zhu Yuanzhang often had in his life was that a table of big fish and big meat was in front of him, but when he reached out to grab it, he was interrupted by various accidents: the dining table suddenly disappeared, and the big fish and big meat suddenly turned into a pile of dirt Kela, or, he was suddenly picked up by an adult's hand and thrown outside the house.Waking up from the dream, he would hear the constant groaning in his stomach, and the hunger was like a knife scraping his stomach over and over again.

The greatest life ideal of the future Emperor Taizu in his early years was to be able to eat a full meal happily. Throughout the year, Zhu Wusi's family used the coarsest grain in the world to fill their stomachs and intestines.Moreover, even the roughest grain is always not enough.That broken iron pot can only see a bit of meat during the Chinese New Year. This is not the case of the poor peasant Zhu Wusi and his family.This is the scene of most peasants in the Yuan Empire.Not only Dayuan, for thousands of years, this land has been a huge empty stomach. If you don't believe me, please read the words of Mencius.In 300 BC, Meng Ke traveled around the world, appealing loudly for his political views.And the political goal he regards as perfect is nothing more than "full life in happy years, avoiding death in bad years", that is to say, in good weather, everyone can have enough to eat; in famine years, people will not starve to death.He used figurative language to exaggerate his political ideals:

For a five-mu house, the trees are planted with mulberry trees, and those fifty can be clothed with silk; chickens, pigs, dogs, and pigs can be eaten without losing their time; those of seventy can eat meat; for a field of one hundred mu, don’t take away its time, and eat it by a few mouths. Home, you can have no hunger. What this self-satisfied exaggeration brings us is a kind of sour feeling: a "family of several people" who cultivates "a field of a hundred acres" struggles all his life, but cannot "clothes" before the age of fifty, and cannot "clothes" before the age of seventy. It was not possible to "eat meat" before.Such a life turned out to be the "kingly way" ideal that our ancestors dreamed of!

However, this poor ideal has rarely been realized in this land.Hunger and extreme poverty have always followed our ancestors, together with wars and disasters, from the time of Mencius through the Han, Tang, Song and Ming Dynasties.During the two thousand years, the prosperous times of ample food and clothing were far less than the tragic years of cuan (cuan) bones.