Nanjing under Emperor Yongle truly displayed the splendor of a prosperous age and was, to a certain extent, the center of the Eastern world.
The city walls Zhu Yuanzhang had designed were still unfinished by the time of his death, and Zhu Di did not care much whether they would ever be completed. He wanted to undertake another massive project: erecting an unprecedented stele for Zhu Yuanzhang, carving all his father's great achievements onto the enormous stone, and using it to establish the legitimacy of his own succession to the throne.
Fang Xiaoru was the finest writer in Nanjing at the time. After Zhu Di entered the city, he ordered Fang Xiaoru to draft his proclamation of accession, but Fang Xiaoru refused. It was said that he even wrote the character "usurper" on the paper. In a fit of rage, Zhu Di not only exterminated Fang Xiaoru's entire family, but also wiped out his ten clans.
Official histories rarely recorded Zhu Di's scandals, since they had been filtered. Unofficial accounts, however, came in every variety, and Nanjing people especially loved discussing them. For instance, when Zhu Yunwen wished to reduce the power of the feudal princes in Nanjing, they talked about how Zhu Di had pretended to be mad and foolish on the streets of Beijing. There was also a method called the Melon-Vine Sweep, even more brutal than exterminating ten clans. Anyone with even the slightest connection was arrested and prosecuted.
Later, Emperor Yongle's stele was never completed. It was simply too large and could only lie quietly in the outskirts of Nanjing. Zhu Di instead commissioned the Yongle Encyclopedia, which preserved all kinds of documents from before the fifteenth century. At the time, it could be called without precedent; only the Complete Library of the Four Branches of