Saving Ming

Saving Ming is a long historical time-travel novel by Fu Chun Shan Ju, first serialized on Tiexue Reading (later reprinted and circulated in edited versions on other platforms), running about 6.22 million characters and now complete. The story opens with a modern person's consciousness arriving in the late Ming and becoming Zhu Youjian, the Prince of Xin, who is about to ascend the throne—the future Chongzhen Emperor. At this time the Ming dynasty faces internal and external troubles: the Later Jin loom in Liaodong; inside the passes, famine is constant and displaced people rise up; at court, factions scheme against one another; the treasury is empty; and local gentry and nobles exploit the people layer upon layer. The protagonist does not immediately launch a bloody purge and sweep the realm; instead he advances reform by "boiling a frog in warm water": first using his existing image to lull the courtiers, then starting from small matters, playing by the rules from a moral high ground to gradually take power back from the civil bureaucracy, Jiangnan gentry, and local forces; then he rectifies the bureaucracy and the military, trains a new army, establishes new schools, cleans up finances, and curbs land annexation, nipping peasant uprisings in the bud. After building up national strength through patient development, the Ming army finally clashes head-on with the Later Jin beyond the passes and defeats them; on land, the court reopens trade routes to the Western Regions and extends its influence toward the Middle East; at sea, it contends with emerging Western powers for shipping routes and discourse, opening the curtain on a colonial and maritime era belonging to the Great Ming. Told from the emperor's perspective, the book covers many aspects of late Ming politics, military affairs, economy, diplomacy, and social life, and is one of the larger and more influential works in the "save the falling sky" genre of late Ming fiction.