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Last Emperors

University of California Press

A survey of the material culture of the Qing court reveals a great deal about the self-image of the rulers and the politics of rulership. It was no accident that Qing court society was an eclectic blend of several cultural traditions. The Qing empire was founded on multiethnic coalitions, and its rulers sought to perpetuate these alliances by addressing each of the constituent peoples that came under Qing rule in their own cultural vocabularies. While determined to retain their own identity as Manchus, heirs to the ruling tradition of the Jurchen Jin, the Qing rulers projected images of rulership in the cultural patterns of the Han and Inner Asian peoples whom they identified as their primary constituents. Their first and most powerful ties were with the Mongols. They courted Han Chinese literati in the language of Confucianism and cast Manchu rulers as dharmaraja*

The major capital, Peking, was not only the capital of the preceding dynasty, the Ming (1368-1644), but was a capital of the Liao, Jin, and Yuan as well. The Manchus also commemorated Shengjing as a symbol of the Manchu homeland, and Rehe (Chengde after 1824) was an informal summer capital for at least the first half of the dynasty. Like earlier Inner Asian conquest regimes, the Manchus adopted a policy of residential segregation for the conquest elite. In their language, dress, and other cultural policies the rulers strove to perpetuate their own separate identity as a people, continuing a process of self-definition that began in the late sixteenth century. Nurgaci commissioned the creation of a written language. His successor took the name "Manchu" by imperial injunction in 1635, elaborated on thehistorical origins for the ruling group, and strengthened Manchu identification with a martial tradition. This chapter focuses on the ways in which Qing court society deliberately included many signs of the non-Han cultural origins of its rulers and promoted representation of the regime as cosmopolitan and multiethnic.

Multiple Capitals

The Qing system of multiple capitals was modeled after that of the Khitan Liao (907-1115), Jurchen Jin (1115-1234), and Mongol Yuan (1272-1368), the non-Han conquest regimes that dominated North China from the tenth to fourteenth centuries. Herbert Franke summarizes the significance of this pattern: "Unlike a proper Chinese dynasty, which normally had one capital, the Liao had five capitals, as did the Chin. In both cases this can be interpreted as a remnant of the times when even the rulers had no fixed abode, but it was also a remnant of a ritualized system of seasonal sojourns. On a more practical level, the system of multiple capitals also provided the means to establish centralized agencies in more than one locality."1

Capitals were moved as geopolitical circumstances changed, to facilitate military advance and to consolidate control over newly acquired lands. These policies are illustrated in the history of the Liao and Jin capitals, which moved southward as their armies pushed into North China. Since the political center of these regimes was wherever the ruler and his troops chose to be, capital designations, which adopted the Chinese vocabulary of the cardinal directions, were subject to changes that must have been bewildering from the Han Chinese perspective. Thus the Jin "northern capital" was first Lindong (1138-50), then Ningcheng (1153-1215); their "central capital" was first Ningcheng (1120-53), then Peking (1153-1215), and finally, after the Mongols took Peking, Loyang (1215-33). Liaoyang, like Ningcheng and Peking a former Liao capital, was at various points the Jin "southern capital" (1132-53) and their "eastern capital" (1117-32, 1153-1212), while Datong, the "western capital" of the Liao, was also the western capital of the Jin.2

The desire to be close to the prospective battlefield prompted Nurgaci, the founder of the Manchu regime, to shift his headquarters seven times as he unified the Jurchen tribes by force. Only two of these early political centers were commemorated after 1644. The first, Hetu Ala, was Nurgaci's capital from 1603 until 1619 and the site at which he declared the establishment of the Later Jin state (1616). His successors retained an administrative presence at Hetu Ala (renamed Yenden or Xingjing in 1636) throughout the dynasty. Shenyang, renamed Mukden hoton (in Chinese, Shengjing) in 1634, was Nurgaci's last capital city and the capital until 1644. After the Shunzhi emperor (reigned 1644-61) moved to Peking, Shengjing was retained as a secondary capital.3 Nurgaci and his son Hongtaiji were interred in nearby tombs, so Shengjing was periodically visited by the Qing rulers, and its palaces were renovated through the Qianlong reign (1736-95).

Chengde

If Peking was the primary capital and Shengjing the symbolic "original" capital, the summer capital of Chengde was selected for symbolic and practical reasons. It lay north of the Great Wall, on the boundary between the North China plain and the Mongolian steppe. The Liao, Jin, and Yuan had all had capitals in this area, and the Kangxi emperor consciously followed their precedent when he decided to create a summer capital here. Philippe Forêt argues that the Qing "assumption of simultaneous responsibilities as Emperors of the Han subjects, Khans of the Manchu-Mongol populations and bodhisattva for Lamaist believers led to the elaboration of a system of three capitals, one in Manchuria (Mukden), one in China proper (Peking), and one in Inner Mongolia (Chengde)," with Chengde also serving as "a religious capital for Tibet."4

The search for a northern summer retreat began even before the end of the conquest. Dorgon, regent for the infant Shunzhi emperor, cited the precedents set by previous non-Han dynasties of removing from Peking to "escape the heat of summer days" and ordered construction of a small summer retreat in Chengde shortly before his death. Work on the summer villa stopped when he died and did not resume until after the suppression of the Rebellion of the Three Feudatories.5

Chengde and Mulan were selected as imperial sites by the Kangxi emperor (r. 1662-1722), who turned his attention to the Russian incursions on the empire's northern border as the pacification of southern China drew to a close. Xuanye liked to inspect the terrain for himself, with an eye to military strategy, and the 1675 revolt by Burni, grandson of the Chahar leader Ligdan Khan, underlined the importance of cultivating his Mongol allies. In 1681, on the second of his northern tours beyond the Great Wall, the emperor ventured into the territory of the Kharachin banner of the Josoto League and hunted on the southeastern edge of the Mongol plateau, inlands occupied by the Khorchin, Aokhan, and Ongnirod Mongols. This site became Mulan, the Qing imperial hunting preserve. Xuanye also visited the military governor's headquarters in Jilin, a garrison created to keep...