China, The dynasty's founder

Chu Y�an-chang, founder of the new dynasty, came from a family of physiognomists from K'ai-feng who in Y�an times had deteriorated into itinerant tenant farmers in northern Anhwei Province. Orphaned by famine and plague in 1344, young Chu was taken into a small Buddhist monastery near Feng-yang city as a lay novice. For more than three years he wandered as a mendicant through