Ming: Zheng He, the Wall, the Forbidden City
The Ming founding by Zhu Yuanzhang (1368), the Yongle emperor and the move to Beijing, the Forbidden City (completed 1420), the brick Great Wall rebuilt against the Mongols, Zheng He's seven voyages to India, Arabia and East Africa, the end of the voyages, silver from the Americas and Japan, Jesuits at court, and the Ming collapse in 1644.
Walls and voyages
Most of the Great Wall visible today near Beijing is Ming brickwork, built mainly in the 16th century against the Mongols, rather than the earlier rammed-earth walls of the Qin and Han. In the late Ming, silver mined in Spanish America and Japan flowed into China to pay for silk and porcelain, connecting China to the first global economy; Manila galleons linked Acapulco and Manila from 1565.
Comparing voyages: Zheng He's fleets sailed decades before Columbus and were far larger, but had different aims: displays of Ming power and gathering tribute, not colonies. Claims that his fleets reached the Americas (Gavin Menzies, 2002) are rejected by historians for lack of evidence.
Edward Dreyer, Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405-1433 (2007); Timothy Brook, The Troubled Empire (2010); Arthur Waldron, The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth (1990); Ma Huan, Yingya Shenglan (1433), an account by a voyage interpreter.