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Now let’s talk about the urban construction in the Ming Dynasty. In the late years of the Yuan Dynasty, China was plunged in chaos by the outbreak of peasants’ uprisings all over its territory. In the late years of the Yuan Dynasty, China was plunged in chaos by the outbreak of peasants’ uprisings all over its territory. After years of incessant war, Zhu Yuanzhang gained tremendous advantage in the south. In 1364 CE, he proclaimed himself King of Wu and founded his regime. In 1368 he officially proclaimed himself emperor and founded the Ming Dynasty, with Yingtian Fu, now Nanjing, as capital and Hongwu as his reign title. Afterwards, he sent his generals on a northward expedition. The Shundi Emperor of Yuan, the last emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, fled to the prairies in the north. The Yuan Dynasty collapsed. China reverted to a united dynasty ruled the Han people. The Yuan Dynasty was not long-lived. As a regime founded by nomads, it had not completely inherited the numerous institutions and cultural systems of the Song Dynasty and earlier Han-ruled dynasties. Especially in the early years of the Mongolian empire, for some military reasons, the rulers were inclined to destroying the cities in China. Especially in the early years of the Mongolian empire, for some military reasons, the rulers were inclined to destroying the cities in China. What use could these cities have for nomadic people after all, except that they could impede their assault? Consequently, the walls of many cities were demolished. Though some cities were restored in the mid and late Yuan Dynasty, then there came the war again, which wreaked fresh destruction. So in its early years, the Ming Dynasty was faced with a situation that everything was wanting of reconstruction. That is to say, most of the cities in China were in a state of dilapidation, with the city walls of many of them almost gone. Under such circumstances, an advisor proposed to Zhu Yuanzhang a guideline that the new empire should 'build high walls, amass grain and take time to claim the throne'. The first part of the proposal, i.e. ‘build high walls’, was in fact a suggestion that Zhu should advance the reconstruction of the cities in the areas under his control and repair and restore the city walls that had been destroyed. After the founding of the Ming Dynasty and the utter overturn of the Yuan Dynasty, to ward off the Mongolians' southward invasion, a strenuous effort was made to rebuild the Great Wall. In fact, most of the remaining parts of the Great Wall we can see today were built in the Ming Dynasty. The Ming Dynasty lasted nearly 280 years, with a total of sixteen emperors ruling China in succession. Three of them had very important influence upon urban construction and architecture. The first one was of course Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder emperor. Ever since he proclaimed himself emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang had been committed to rebuilding the Han people’s institutions and systems, which were, as it often turned out, closely associated with architecture and with cities. So the emperor promulgated a series of decrees, which included rigorous specifications regulating the scale and design of palaces, as well as all the other important types of architecture such as prince's mansions, altars and temples, mausoleums and tombs, and schools. As a result, a fairly full-fledged system was established. It is safe to say that this system shaped Chinese architecture as the Chinese feudal society gradually met its end, because the later Qing Dynasty inherited all the rules and regulations on architecture from the Ming Dynasty. During the years of Hongwu, Zhu Yuanzhang assigned his sons to garrison the different parts of China. Dadu in the Yuan Dynasty was renamed Beiping and enfeoffed to Zhu Di, his fourth son and Prince of Yan. In the years of Jianwen, on the pretext of ‘relieving the calamity’, Zhu Di launched a southward expedition. After several years of war, he usurped the throne of his nephew, the Jianwen Emperor and made himself a new emperor, the Chengzu Emperor of Ming or the second Ming emperor who had tremendous influence upon the urban construction and architecture of the Ming Dynasty. The usurper changed the reign title to Yongle. Hardly when he ascended to the throne did he earnestly seek to move the capital back to his base, Beiping. Of course, he also had political and military considerations. So in the first year of Yongle, he renamed Beiping Beijing and built it as a secondary capital. Starting from the 4th year of Yongle, he launched a vigorous effort to build new palace buildings in Beijing and strived to transform the city over and all. In the 19th year of Yongle, that is, in 1421 CE, Zhu Di, the Chengzu Emperor of Ming, officially moved the capital to Beijing. The third Ming emperor which had important influence upon capital construction was Zhu Houcong, the Shizong Emperor whose reign title was Jiajing. In reign in the mid Ming Dynasty, he was the nephew of the Xiaozong Emperor, who was the father of the Wuzong Emperor. After the Wuzong Emperor deceased without heir, the royal family and the officials had a discussion and decided to fetch Zhu Houcong, then Prince of Xing, to Beijing as the crown prince. As prescribed by the royal hereditary code, he should acknowledge the late Xiaozong Emperor as his father so that he could legitimate his status as the direct heir and then his rule of China. But the young emperor’s real father was Prince Xingxian. Maybe obliged by filial piety, he was eager to entitle his real father emperor posthumously —an act against the feudal code in ancient China. As a result, he met with fierce opposition from the officialdom and stirred up a great controversy in the court. Today we may think of this matter as insignificant. However it was of paramount importance in the ancient feudal society. To hammer it home that he had the supreme final say on the ritual system, on the one hand, he kept arguing with his officials; on the other, he launched large-scale transformation projects for sacrificial structures in Beijing, in the hope of asserting his power to reform the system. Moreover, he also had an outer city built in the south of today’s Beijing and thus shaped the T-shaped layout of the old town of Beijing. In the Ming Dynasty, autocratic monarchy had been continuously consolidated in politics. Culture was terribly constrained by shackles. The imperial examinations system was full-fledged, with the 'eight-legged article' employed to select scholars for official posts--a means that, safe to say, severely crippled the development of ideology, culture, science and technology. On the other hand, especially after the mid Ming Dynasty, the court and upper classes were increasingly plagued by corruption. Law enforcement became notoriously slack throughout the entire Ming Empire. In the Jiangnan Region and the areas along the Grand Canal, some seeds of capitalism emerged, accompanied by great strides in commodity economy. The general mood of society showed trends in favour of luxury. It should be admitted that this social mood had been greatly conducive to the development of architecture, particularly gardens. Therefore in the late Ming Dynasty, the theory on garden building attained maturity in China. Many fine examples of garden buildings were created, especially in the Jiangnan Region and in Beijing. In religion, the Ming rulers had the utmost bias for Taoism but upheld Buddhism at the same time, which had resulted in new development of the two types of religious architecture. Compared with the previous dynasty, the Ming Dynasty saw the construction of Buddhist temples falling into set patterns. I will elaborate on this later. Besides, there existed another trend—the integration of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. To wit, in some special temples, Confucius of Confucianism, Sakyamuni Buddha of Buddhism and the deities of Taoism would be worshipped together. In architecture, the complexes of the Ming Dynasty were significantly better in architectural design than those of the previous dynasties. Though individual structures seemed to be smaller and smaller in scale, the ways of their combinations became increasingly diversified. Therefore, most of the numerous excellent architectural complexes preserved today were built in the Ming Dynasty. As far as wooden construction is concerned, a new development was that the designs were set and simplified. Compared with Yuan architecture, the eaves were further shortened; the curves were not so distinct but somewhat straightened; the bracket sets were further downsized but increased in number. As a result, Ming architecture took on a more elegant style. Of course, we are mainly talking about the official-style architecture in the north. The architecture in the south, particularly in the Jiangnan Region, tended to be more exquisite and more flexibly designed. In other words, the distinction between southern and northern architecture was augmented in the Ming Dynasty. This is the plan of a large-scale residential complex in Dongyang, Zhejiang. It is the place where the Lu clan has lived for hundreds of years. The structures preserved now were mostly built in the Ming Dynasty. As we can see, the complex, as a whole, looks very magnificent and majestic. In terms of material, the technology of firing and processing bricks improved remarkably. The output of bricks was far greater than that of any previous dynasty. Prior to the Ming Dynasty, most city ramparts and house walls had been built with rammed earth. But in the Ming Dynasty, bricks were often used instead. Even if rammed earth was still used for the middle parts of city walls, a thick layer of bricks would nearly always be employed to reinforce them. It should be said that such a treatment had greatly improved the robustness of the buildings. Besides, a large number of ‘beamless halls’ were also constructed. They are in fact fairly large-scale structures solely supported by brick arches, without using any wooden frame. As no wooden beam is used, it is thus known as 'beamless hall'. The most famous examples are the Imperial Archives built in the Ming Dynasty and the great hall of Linggu Temple preserved in Nanjing. They are both of the classic beamless-hall design. In decoration, the Ming Dynasty witnessed a great development in the glazing technology. The colours of glaze were more diversified than in the previous Dynasties; and it was very thick and glossy. Many halls in the palaces, Buddhist and Taoist temples used glazed tiles in large quantities for roofing. Even walls were decorated with many glazed members, which lent radiance and splendour to the structures. Besides, some Buddhist temples would assemble pagodas with glazed members. The most famous of them is the nine-storeyed pagoda of Baoen Temple in Nanjing. It was once included in the Seven World Wonders in the medieval times. Unfortunately it was destroyed in the war during the period of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. So far only some broken members have been preserved. But through them we can still get a glimpse of the superb technique in the time. In many architectural complexes, glazed screen walls were often constructed, together with some glazed doorways. All these have supplied more evidence for the remarkable skills. During the Ming Dynasty, the exchange between China and the rest of the world became more frequent and deeper. Because Europe was then in the middle of the Renaissance, European Jesuit priests came to China in the years of Wanli in the late Ming Dynasty. The first to arrive was Matteo Ricci. They brought the latest Western technology to China and started to build churches, thereby opening a new chapter for the exchange between Chinese and Western architecture. This is the world atlas drawn by Matteo Ricci. Thanks to their efforts, the Chinese developed a better understanding of the world than in any of the previous dynasties. They came to see that except China, there were other countries and other advanced civilisations.