yung-loh

Updated: May 7, 2025

Seventy-three years before Columbus discovered America the Emperor Yung-loh, whose tomb I saw near Nankou, built the great wall that surrounds the Tartar City to this day forty feet high, wide enough on top for four or five carriages to drive abreast, and thirteen miles around. Yet the history which the foreigner in Peking is likely to have most often in mind is really very recent.

Clarence Hamilton Poe - Where Half The World Is Waking Up : The Old and the New in Japan, China, the Philippines, and India, Reported With Especial Reference to American Conditions

Of these, the most striking is the Temple or Altar of Heaven in the southern part of the Chinese City, erected by the Ming Emperor, Yung-loh, in 1421; the enclosure, a fine park, measures about six thousand feet around. There are three large, imposing gates, south, east, and west. To the north, the wall is crescent shaped and is without an entrance.

Ellen Mary Hayes Peck - Travels in the Far East