After the Song dynasty was defeated in 1279, all of China came under the rule of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Han people did not accept foreign rule and organized resistance against the Mongols. The most prominent of the anti-Mongol societies and sects was the White Lotus, a secret Buddhist organization heavily influenced by Manichaeism. The leader of the White Lotus was Han Shantong, the father of Han Lin'er.
A long-planned uprising broke out in May 1351 in central China among peasants gathered to reconstruct the dikes on the Yellow River. Han Shantong became the leader of the rebels, claiming to be a descendant of the Song emperor Huizong and an incarnation of Maitreya Buddha. However, he was soon captured by government troops and executed in January 1355. Then, his position at the head of the movement was taken over by the young Han Lin'er. With the support of Liu Futong, the most influential of the Red Turban leaders, he was proclaimed emperor of the restored Song dynasty on 16 March 1355 in Bozhou (present-day Bozhou, Anhui Province).[1] In 1357–58, Song troops occupied considerable territories in the North China Plain, and Han Lin'er relocated with the government to the conquered Kaifeng.
In 1359, however, the Mongol army inflicted a series of defeats on the Song and drove them out of Kaifeng. Until 1362, only the province of Jiangnan, ruled by Zhu Yuanzhang and formally subordinate to Han, and a small, depopulated area around Anfeng, the center of one of the prefectures in the west of today's Anhui province, remained of the Song state.[2]
In January 1363, the army of another rebel state, Wu, made a surprise attack on Anfeng and killed the de facto leader of the Song regime, Liu Futong. Han Lin'er was saved by Zhu Yuanzhang's troops from the attack.[3] Zhu then settled the powerless Han with his court in his territory near Nanjing.
In January 1367, Han Lin'er drowned while sailing on the Yangtze River.[4]
^Mote, Frederick W (1988). "The rise of the Ming dynasty 1330–1367". In Mote, Frederick W.; Twitchett, Denis C (eds.). The Cambridge History of China Volume 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 1. Cambridge University Press. p. 42. ISBN0521243327.
^Dreyer, Edward L (1988). "Military origins of Ming China". In Mote, Frederick W.; Twitchett, Denis C (eds.). The Cambridge History of China Volume 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 1. Cambridge University Press. p. 68. ISBN0521243327.
