Mu Ying

Mu Ying (1345-1392) was a general during the Ming Dynasty, and an adopted son of its founder, the Hongwu Emperor (aka Zhu Yuanzhang). Mu Ying was one of the few capable generals who survived the massacre of the Hongwu Emperor.

Mu and his descendants guarded Yunnan, a province near Burma and Vietnam, until the end of the Ming Dynasty. As late as the 1650s, his descendant Mu Tianbao was one of the main supporters of the Yongli Emperor, the last emperor of the Southern Ming Dynasty, and accompanied the fugitive emperor all the way into Burma. He was a muslim.

Popular culture
The descendants of Mu Ying are featured in Louis Cha's Wuxia novel The Deer and the Cauldron, set in the early Qing Dynasty. The Mu Prince Residence based in Yunnan is a pro-Ming secret organisation that houses the descendants of Mu Ying and his followers. Mu Jianping of the seven wives of Wei Xiaobao (the protagonist), and her brother Mu Jiansheng, are direct descendants of Mu Ying.