The Fifteenth Year of Wanli: Zhang Juzheng's Reform Swan Song

In the early years of Wanli, the Ming Dynasty was in critical condition: the treasury was exhausted, the border troops were defeated, and corruption was rampant. The ten-year-old emperor sat on a dragon throne, but the civil and military officials in the dynasty had their own thoughts. When the building was about to collapse, Zhang Juzheng, the chief assistant, supported the crisis alone. He implemented the imperial examination law and inserted the power of the cabinet directly into the bones of local bureaucracy; he cleared all the land in the country and took back millions of hectares of hidden land from the powerful; he reformed the water transportation and salt policy and injected a torrent of silver into the depleted national treasury. In just ten years, Taichou accumulated four million taels of silver, and its nine-border defense line was impregnable. It was known as the "Wanli Zhongxing" in history. However, every tael of silver is stained with the blood and tears of those with vested interests. The feudal lords, nobles, officials, and eunuchs—all the vested interest groups in the entire empire united to fight back. Zhang Juzheng suppressed them with an iron fist, but he didn't know that he was heading towards the fate of a lonely minister. When he died suddenly due to overwork, Emperor Wanli, who was only twenty years old, began to take revenge madly: ransacking his home, digging up his graves, and liquidating his party members. All the achievements of ten years of reform have been overturned, the warehouses are once again empty, and the border defenses have collapsed. Forty years later, when Nurhachi's cavalry broke through Liaodong, the veterans of the Manchu Dynasty remembered in despair the "powerful traitor" they reviled. At that time, there were only the last twenty-four years left before the demise of the Ming Dynasty. This is a story about power, reform and betrayal, as well as an empire's last attempt to save itself before sinking. When the ideal torch burns in reality, does it illuminate a way to survive or a desperate situation?