Liu Bowen: the early Ming adviser turned into a legend

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“He knew five hundred years into the past and five hundred into the future”: popular lore made Liu Ji almost an immortal. Yet the Liu Ji of the History of the Ming is an adviser versed in celestial studies who repeatedly suffered political exclusion. His biography records military and political strategy as well as interpretations of celestial omens; “miraculous diviner” alone cannot describe him.

Begin with Liu Ji in the official history. His courtesy name was Bowen, and he came from Qingtian. His Ming biography calls him broadly learned in the classics and histories and especially skilled in celestial studies. He passed the imperial examination under the Yuan and held office, then resigned and returned home amid the dynasty’s final turmoil. After taking eastern Zhejiang, Zhu Yuanzhang heard of him and invited him with gifts. Liu emerged from retirement to become one of Zhu’s most important advisers. His contributions were substantive: repeated military stratagems, participation in drafting early Ming institutions, and Yulizi, a work discussing government. In the first year of Wu, 1367, he served as Director of Astronomy and submitted the Wushen Datong Calendar; he later became Deputy Censor-in-Chief while also holding the astronomy directorship. “Understanding the heavens” was an official responsibility, not a metaphor. After the Ming was founded he was created Count of Chengyi. But his position soon deteriorated: he clashed with the Huaixi group of founding nobles and offended Chancellor Hu Weiyong, eventually falling ill amid distress and resentment. The biography says Hu sent a physician to treat him; after taking the medicine, Liu felt something like a fist-sized stone accumulated in his abdomen. He died shortly afterward, in the eighth Hongwu year, 1375, aged sixty-five.

A common misreading needs correcting: some claim that his Ming biography contains no predictive element and that his celestial knowledge meant only the calendar knowledge expected of a scholar-official. That is inaccurate. The biography contains several accounts that seem mysterious today. In 1367, when “Mars remained in the Heart mansion,” Liu requested an edict of imperial self-reproach: the configuration was a grave omen in traditional celestial divination. When Zhu intended executions and first described a dream, Liu interpreted it as a sign of gaining territory and people and advised delaying punishment; three days later, Haining reportedly submitted. At the battle of Poyang Lake, victory was decided on a day when Venus and Jupiter came into conflict. Zhu also asked him about celestial phenomena in handwritten letters, and Liu answered in detail. The biography even calls his foresight “godlike.” Such records remind us that calendar calculation, celestial divination, and political judgment often overlapped in antiquity. Liu was both an astronomy official and a strategist, but not every incident in the biography was a standard duty of that office, nor can the office simply be equated with a modern scientist.

How, then, did the image of an immortal Liu Bowen acquire so much detail? One unavoidable example is the circulating Shaobing Ge, or Song of the Baked Cake. It links a dialogue between ruler and minister to the fortunes of later dynasties, inviting readers to match each line against events already known. A historical match does not prove that the text predates the event. Evaluating a prophecy first requires identifying when a particular version appeared and whether its wording was altered or expanded. This article has not completed a textual history of the Shaobing Ge, so it neither attributes its words directly to Liu Ji nor claims that all versions have been proved to be prophecies written after the fact.

Similar stories describe Liu Bowen “severing dragon veins.” In these legends, Zhu orders Liu to travel the land and cut the preceding dynasty’s dragon veins so that the Ming realm will last forever. Local versions attach a mountain gap or a river’s changed course to him. Their shared pattern is to project anxiety about dynastic legitimacy onto an all-knowing adviser: emperors need evidence of Heaven’s mandate, popular audiences need stories of extraordinary men, and Liu becomes a convenient vessel.

The key evidence here is the concluding appraisal in chapter 128 of the History of the Ming. Its compilers praise Liu’s role in founding the dynasty while criticizing later attempts to attach prophecy and divination stories to him: these, they argue, fail to explain his learning and contributions, and so are excluded. That criticism is real, but it does not name the Shaobing Ge and cannot be treated as authentication or rejection of every circulating text. More revealingly, the same chapter still records celestial omens, dream interpretation, and choosing dates. The compilers did not erase them all; they preserved some accounts while distancing themselves from extravagant marvels.

The distinction matters. Liu Ji’s legendary status need not mean he personally practiced deception. On the contrary, the Ming biography portrays an upright man whose advice Zhu often accepted and who would not flatter the powerful. Later audiences had their own uses for a supernatural Liu: his name could lend force to political commentary or make storytelling more compelling. Those are possible incentives for transmission. But each prophetic text still needs its own date and history of circulation; one explanation cannot be assigned to every teller.

Read alongside our article on Li Chunfeng, the comparison becomes more interesting. Both men held the astronomy directorship; neither fits neatly into “only a calendar expert” or “only a strategist.” Liu’s historical identity was already rich, yet later tellers often amplified the side easiest to turn into a story. His biography needs neither an immediate elevation to immortality nor the immediate deletion of its omen accounts. First distinguish the historical text from later legends, and a Liu Bowen with strategy, character, and a place within his own era’s knowledge will reappear.