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Hongwou had the satisfaction of restoring amicable relations with the King of Corea, a state in which the Chinese have always taken naturally enough a great interest from its proximity, as well as from an apprehension that the Japanese might make use of it as a vantage ground for the invasion of the continent.
Throughout his life he was in the presence of the emperor respectful, and so reserved that one might have doubted his capacity to speak." Hongwou was in the habit of speaking thus in his praise: "My orders received, he forthwith departed; his task accomplished, he returned without pride and without boasting. He loves not women, he does not amass wealth.
These noble sentiments, to which there is nothing contradictory in the whole life of Hongwou, would alone place his reign high among the most civilizing and humanly interesting epochs in Chinese history. To his people he appeared as a real benefactor as well as a just prince.
When Hongwou saw this edifice, he exclaimed, "How is it possible for men to neglect the most important affairs of life for the sole object of devoting their attention to useless buildings? If the Mongols in place of amusing themselves with these trifles had applied their energies to the task of contenting the people, would they not have preserved the scepter in their family?"
In this small and secluded valley appeared, about the middle of the fourteenth century, when the emperor Hongwou was fighting with the Mongols, a man named Aisin Gioro. Tradition attributes to him a miraculous birth, while calumny asserts that he was a runaway Mongol; but at any rate he became lord of Hootooala and ancestor of its race of conquerors.
Changtu, the Xanadu of Coleridge, the famous summer palace of Kublai, had been destroyed during the campaigns with the Mongols, and Hongwou systematically discouraged any attempt to embellish the northern capital, Pekin, which, under the Kin and Yuen dynasties, had become identified with foreign rulers.
The population of the empire thus restored did not much exceed sixty millions. The last ten years of the reign of Hongwou were passed in tranquillity, marred by only one unpleasant incident, the mutiny of a portion of his army under an ambitious general.
But Hongwou instead conferred on him a minor title of nobility, and expressed his policy in a speech equally creditable to his wisdom as a statesman and his heart as a man: "The last ruler of the Yuens took heed only of his pleasures.
Considering his many declarations that his only ambition was to reform and not to destroy the administration of his nephew, his first act obliterating the reign of Wenti from the records and constituting himself the immediate successor of Hongwou was not calculated to support his alleged indifference to power.
Thus, with the flight of Chunti, the Mongol or Yuen dynasty came to an end, and the Mongols only reappear in Chinese history as the humble allies of the Manchus, when they undertook the conquest of China in the seventeenth century. Having expelled the Mongols, Choo assumed the style of Hongwou, and he gave his dynasty the name of Ming, which signifies "bright."
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