The Yongle Emperor is a character in Book One (Awake to Emptiness) in The Years of Rice and Salt.

According to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yongle_Emperor
The Yongle Emperor (May 2, 1360 – August 12, 1424), born Zhu Di (Chu Ti) , was the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty of China from 1402 to 1424. His era name "Yongle" means "Perpetually Jubilant". He is generally considered one of the greatest emperors of the Ming Dynasty, and to be among the greatest Chinese emperors.
He was the Prince of Yan (燕王), possessing a heavy military base in Beijing. He became known as Chengzu of Ming Dynasty (明成祖 also written Cheng Zu, or Ch'eng Tsu (Cheng Tsu) in Wade-Giles) after becoming emperor following a civil war. His usurpation of the throne is now sometimes called the "Second Founding" of the Ming.
He moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing, and constructed the Forbidden City there. After its dilapidation and disuse during the Yuan Dynasty and Hongwu's reign, the Yongle Emperor had the Grand Canal of China repaired and reopened in order to supply the new capital of Beijing in the north with a steady flow of goods and southern foodstuffs. He commissioned most of the exploratory sea voyages of Zheng He. During his reign the monumental Yongle Encyclopedia was completed. Although his father Zhu Yuanzhang was reluctant to do so when he was emperor, Yongle upheld the civil service examinations for drafting educated government officials instead of using simple recommendation and appointment.
The Yongle Emperor is buried in the Changling (長陵) tomb, the central and largest mausoleum of the Ming Dynasty Tombs.

[edit] Reign

Due to the stress and overwhelming amount of thinking involved in running a post-rebellion empire, Yongle searched for scholars to join his staff. He had many of the best scholars chosen as candidates and took great care in choosing them, even creating terms by which he hired people. He was also concerned about the degeneration of Buddhism in China.
Aside from the religious matters, the Emperor wished to establish an alliance with the Karmapa similar to the one the Yuan (1277-1367 CE) rulers had established with the Sakyapa.[2] He apparently offered to send armies to unify Tibet under the Karmapa but Deshin Shekpa refused this rather un-Buddhist offer.[3]
Deshin left Nanjing on 17th May, 1408 CE.[4] In 1410 he returned to Tsurphu where he had his monastery rebuilt which had been severely damaged by an earthquake.
When it was time for him to choose an heir, Yongle very much wanted to choose his second son, Gaoxu. Gaoxu was an athletic warrior type that contrasted sharply with his older brother's intellectual and humanitarian nature. Despite much counsel from his advisors, Yongle chose his older son, Gaozhi (the future Hongxi Emperor), as his heir apparent mainly due to advising from Xie Jin. As a result, Gaoxu became infuriated and refused to give up jockeying for his father's favor and refusing to move to Yunnan province (of which he was prince). He even went so far as to undermine Xie Jin's council and eventually killed him.
After Yongle's overthrow of Jianwen, China's countryside was devastated. The fragile new economy had to deal with low production and depopulation. Yongle laid out a long and extensive plan to strengthen and stabilize the new economy, but first he had to silence dissension. He created an elaborate system of censors to remove corrupt officials from office that spread such rumors. Yongle dispatched some of his most trusted officers to reveal or destroy secret societies, Jianwen loyalists, and even bandits. To strengthen the economy, he was forced to fight population decline by reclaiming land, utilizing the most he could from the Chinese people, and maximizing textile and agricultural production.
Yongle also worked to reclaim production rich regions such as the Lower Yangtze Delta and called for a massive rebuilding of the Grand Canal of China. During his reign, the Grand Canal was almost completely rebuilt and was eventually moving imported goods from all over the world. Yongle's short-term goal was to revitalize northern urban centers, especially his new capital at Beijing. Before the Grand Canal was reinstated grain was transferred to Beijing in two ways; one route was simply via the East China Sea; the other was a far more laborious process of transferring the grain from large to small shallow barges (after passing the Huai River and having to cross southwestern Shandong), then transferred back to large river barges on the Yellow River before finally reaching Beijing.[5] With the necessary tribute grain shipments of 4 million shi (one shi equal to 107 liters) to the north each year, both processes became incredibly inefficient.[5] It was a magistrate of Jining, Shandong who sent a memorial to Yongle protesting the current method of grain shipment, a wise request that Yongle ultimately granted.[6]
Yongle ambitiously planned to move China's capital to Beijing. According to a popular legend, the capital was moved when the emperor's advisors brought the emperor to the hills surrounding Nanjing and pointed out the emperor's palace showing the vulnerablity of the palace to artillery attack. He planned to build a massive network of structures in Beijing in which government offices, officials, and the imperial family itself resided. After a painfully long construction time, the Forbidden City was finally completed and became the political capital of China for the next 500 years.
Yongle sponsored and created many cultural traditions in China. He promoted Confucianism and kept traditional ritual ceremonies with a rich cultural theme. His respect for Chinese culture was apparent. He commissioned his grand secretary, Xie Jin, to write a compilation of every subject and every known book of the Chinese. The massive project's goal was to preserve Chinese culture and literature in writing. The initial copy took 17 months to transcribe and another copy was transcribed in 1557. The book, named the Yongle Encyclopedia, is still considered one of the most marvelous human achievements in history, despite it being lost by time.
Yongle's tolerance of Chinese ideas that did not agree with his own philosophies was well-known. He treated Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism equally (though he favored Confucianism). Strict Confucianists considered him hypocritical, but his even handed approach helped him win the support of the people and unify China. His love for Chinese culture sparked a sincere hatred for Mongolian culture. He considered it rotten and forbade the use of popular Mongolian names, habits, language, and clothing. Great lengths were taken by Yongle to eradicate Mongolian culture from China.


[edit] Exploration of the World
As part of his desire to expand Chinese influence, Emperor Yongle sponsored the massive and long term Zheng He expeditions. These were China's only major sea-going explorations of the world (although the Chinese had been sailing to Arabia, Africa, and Egypt since the Tang Dynasty, from 618-907 AD). The first expedition launched in 1405 (18 years before Henry the Navigator began Portugal's voyages of discovery). The expeditions were all under the command of China's greatest admiral, Zheng He. At least seven expeditions were launched, each bigger and more expensive than the last. Some of the boats used were apparently the largest sail-powered boats in human history (National Geographic, May 2004).
The Zheng He expeditions were a remarkable technical and logistical achievement. It is very likely that the last expedition reached as far as Madagascar, thousands of miles from where it started. Zhu Di's successors, the Hongxi Emperor and the Xuande Emperor, felt the expeditions were harmful to the Chinese state. The Hongxi Emperor ended further expeditions and the Xuande Emperor suppressed much of the information about the Zheng He voyages.

References
Robinson references the Yongle Emperor in Book One (Awake to Emptiness) on pages 38-39, 60, 62-65, 67-78
Robinson references the Yongle Emperor in Book One (Awake to Emptiness) in order to establish the Chinese influence and therefore the influence of the east on the rest of the world in his alternative history. He references Yongle Emperor because the emperor funded Zheng He's expeditions and voyages of exploration and because the emperor was one of China's greatest emperor's and brought China much prosperity and influence in the rest of the world. Robinson also sets the stage for his alternative view of history where the Industrial Revolution occurs in the east due in part to their large populations of people, citizens and foreign slaves, and Robinson makes sure to point out China's large population of people. Robinson references the Yongle Emperor to illustrate China's and the east's impact and influence on world history, culture, and historical events.