Great Ming: I Keep Complaining About Poverty, and Zhu Yuanzhang Shows Up at My Door

After transmigrating to the Ming Dynasty, Song Jiao becomes the magistrate of Pei County. He knows that serving as an official during the Hongwu era is perilous at every step, and that corruption is punishable by death. Year after year, he sends Zhu Yuanzhang memorials lamenting his poverty, pretending to be poor to avoid trouble while quietly improving people’s livelihoods, building roads, promoting commerce, and modernizing farming until Pei County becomes a paradise on earth. Zhu Yuanzhang visits the ancestral homeland incognito under the pretext of paying respects to his ancestors, intending to punish Song Jiao for extravagance, corruption, and callously endangering lives. But as he digs deeper at every turn, reality repeatedly proves him wrong, completely overturning his understanding of how to govern.