the emperor and his women - Denver Museum of Nature & Science

4. 

THE EMPEROR AND HIS WOMEN: 

THREE VIEWS OF FOOTBINDING, 

ETHNICITY, AND EMPIRE 

The emperor and his women constitutes a topic 

popular with historians and viewers of soap operas alike, 

for seldom does a man's conduct in his bedchambers generate 

so much public significance. Our fascination with 

the harem and the pathos of female jealousy in a polygynous 

household is evinced by the popularity of Raise the 

Red Lantern, a novel and film set in an ambiguous timeplace 

called old China. The reception of the film ou tside 

China bespeaks the ease with which any feudal landlord 

with a big house could play emperor, and that audiences 

would find this play credible and enjoyable .! "Th e 

emperor and his women" remains a poignant symbol long 

after the collapse of the imperial order because it is the 

microcosm of an entire social institution: the patriarchal 

and polygynous Chinese family.2 

In reality, only well-endowed men-no more than 

ten percent of the population-could afford to keep multiple 

wives. Yet as an idealized expression of male privilege 

polygyny enjoys enduring currency in and out of China. 

Keith McMahon has found that the polygamist ranks as 

the most popular and powerful archetype in 18th-century 

Chinese fiction, a testimony to the socially "legitimized 

and condoned access of one man to many women" and 

the Chinese male "obsession with potency and numbers" 

(McMah on 1995:27). Legal and economic restrictions 

aside, "polygyny was the most desired and respected form 

of marriage" for Qing men (McMahon 1995:22). 

Polygyny is enticing because it binds emperor 

and common man in a mimetic relationship-the 

emperor is archetype of a form of respectable masculinity 

for society whereas man fancies himself little emperor. 

This mimetic relationship is one-sided; herein lies the 

emperor's power. This essay is an investigation of the 

operation and limitation of the emperor's power to be 

"the original," not a study of the amorous life of any particular 

emperor. In three fragments, we explore the 

modern history of the production of "the emperor and 

his women" as a stock image, as well as its attendant 

tropes of polygyny, Oriental harem, and despotism. Two 

Denver Museum of Natural History 

DOROTHY KO 

recurring themes, footbinding and ethnic differences, 

provide common points of entry. 

Each of the three parts of this essay is built on a 

specific textual site: pictorial and literary descriptions of 

the Chinese harem, a series of edicts issued by the Qing 

monarchs prohibiting footbinding, and jottings from the 

1930s about a curious practice called Manchu footbinding. 

Each cluster of texts tells a story about the relationship 

and distance between an "emperor" and "his women" in 

the literal or metaphorical sense. Taken together, these 

three stories highligh t the connections between the imperial 

and the imperium, the fluidity of ethnic identities, as 

well as the power of imperial decrees and visual images in 

shaping imagination, attitudes, and experiences. 

THE SPECTACLE OF ETHNICITY 

The emperors of China's last dynasty were 

Manchus, as is well known. Five of the twenty empresses 

in Qing history, however, were Mongols, and concubines 

were occasionally Han (Rawski 1991:176; Harrell 

1995:196) . Because sons of all concubines and empresses 

were eligible to become heir, Qing emperors were, in 

fact, not "Manchu" in th e purist sense of the term. 

Ethnicity is thus an important consideration in the relationship 

between the Qing emperor and his women. 

Anthropologists have shown that ethnic identities, 

as absolute as they may seem to the peoples locked in ethnic 

conflicts, do not stem from any ubiquitous or 

immutable cultural, linguistic, or religious attributes. 

Membership in any ethnic group may expand or contract 

over time, changeable as it is by political manipulation and 

negotiation. The only constant factor is that the question 

of Who belongs? can be answered only by excluding the 

Other, aliens who do not belong (Harrell 1995; Brown 

1996). In other words, perceptions of the other are always 

implicated in definitions of self. The making of ethnic 

identities thus involves two related processes: what 

Michael Taussig has called "mimesis," or imitation, and 

Series 3, No. 15, p.37, November 1, 1998

"alterity," the positing of a self-other opposition. The former 

creates the impression of sameness whereas the latter 

makes difference seem immutable (Taussig 1993). 

There is no better example of the artificiality of 

ethnic identities than the history of the Manchus. There 

were, in fact, no Manchus before 1635, when leader 

Hongtaiji invented the name "Manzhou" to weld his followers 

into a military machine. On the eve of the Qing 

conquest of the Chinese heartland in 1644, any follower 

who was loyal to the leading Aisin Gioro clan could be 

classified a Manchu (Chen 1991). The other common 

name for Manchu, "bannerman" (qiun), is equally 

ambiguous. The Eight Banners were primarily politicomilitary 

units, not ethnic or cultural groupings. After the 

Qing conquest, bannermen were dispersed in garrisons 

throughout the empire, organized as they were into 

Manchu, Mongol, and Han-martial divisions. They were 

as diverse in origins as in their command of the Manchu 

language, military skills, and self-identities (Crossley 

1990a and b; Elliott 1993). 

Modern history textbooks, however, tend to present 

the complex story of Manchu-Han difference in 

black-and-white terms, using the model of cultural assimilation. 

Written from a nationalistic (or one may say "Hanchauvinist") 

standpoint, these books portray the Manchus 

as barbaric aliens from China's northeast who became sinicized 

in the beginning of the 17th century. Having 

learned the Chinese language and adopted a bureaucratic 

government, they gained enough power to wrestle the 

Mandate of Heaven from the ailing Ming dynasty. 

However, the assimilated Manchus appeared to be aliens 

once again toward the end of the dynasty, when China suffered 

internal violence and foreign aggression. When they 

were finally toppled by Chinese revolutionaries who established 

a republic in 1912, the Manchus were admitted as 

one of the five "races" in the newly expanded Chinese 

nationhood (Duara 1995:36-37, 75-76) . 

In adopting the "sinification" or assimilation 

model of ethnicity, this conventional account bifurcates 

Chinese and Manchu into mutually exclusive groups. It is 

unconvincing in explaining Qing demise and its threecentury 

longevity. A more dynamic approach seeks to 

investigate the processes of political manipulation that 

engineered such differences and then camouflaged them 

as "natural." Social histOlians have described how the writing 

of a genealogy of origins and descent served such a 

purpose for the Qianlong emperor in the 18th century, 

when it was increasingly difficult to tell the Manchus apart 

from the Han (Crossley 1987). This and other projects 

touting the Manchu hunting and shamanic traditions 

were so successful in naturalizing Manchu distinctions that 

we tend to forget that when the name Manchu was first 


DOROTHYKO 

coined, it referred to political allegiance, not cultural or 

"racial" purity. 

In short, recent scholarship has emphasized that 

ethnicities are made, not born, and that we need the mirror 

of the Other to define who we are. Building on this 

foundation, this essay examines one little-explored aspect 

of the construction and naturalizing of Chinese ethnic 

identities: the importance of female attire as a visible 

marker of differences. Clothing is laden with ambiguous 

meanings because "being personal, it is susceptible to individual 

manipulation. Being public, it has social import" 

(Hendrickson 1996:2) . Chinese emperors, in particular, 

were fully aware that clothing is an important instrument 

of rule. After all, performance-putting on a good showis 

at the heart of imperial rulership. 

THE CHINESE HAREM: THE EMPEROR 

AND HIS WOMEN-AS-VETEMENTS 

Not only is clothing useful to rulership, it also 

is fundamental to our ways of seeing and understanding 

the world. Our imagination of the harem, a forbidden 

feminine space, is given concrete shapes and colors 

primarily by dress and articles of clothing. In Montesquieu's 

1721 novel, Lettres persanes, harem women were 

called veternents ("clothing") (Behdad 1989: 119). The 

Oriental women in the paintings of Eugene Delacroix 

(1798-1863), draped as they often are in lavish clothing 

and slippers in Turkish style, appear still and passive. 

When they appear as nudes they stroke the viewer's 

erotic and sadistic pleasure (Graham-Brown 1988:70-71; 

Nochlin 1989:41-43). Nudity is a form of clothing, and 

in this expanded sense clothing exposes as much as it 

decorates harem women. It also defines them, fixes them 

in an imaginary time-place, even to the point of imprisoning 

them. We would not be able to see harem women 

without clothing as the mediator. 

The most powerful article of clothing is the veil, 

pervasive in studio photographs and colonial postcards 

popular since the late 19th century (Alloula 1986; 

Graham-Brown 1988). A mere piece of cloth forms a significant 

boundary: In the harem, women are plentiful but 

off-limits. The veil-what we can see, albeit not what we 

want to see-evokes a world of secluded space and forbidden 

pleasures. Without the veil it would be hard to imagine 

the Oriental harem, its excesses of polygamy, and the 

privilege of the despotic master. The despot is never visibly 

present in the harem, but his power is keenly felt 

through the subjugation and longing of his multiple 

women. The bound foot, as we will see, structures the 

Orientalist imagination regarding China in much the 

same way as the veil. 


THE EMPEROR AND HIS WOMEN: THREE VIEWS OF FOOTBINDING, ETHNICITY, AND EMPIRE 

The image of the "Oriental" harem is the product 

of Europe's entanglement with the Ottoman Empire in 

the 18th and 19th centuries, as is the focus of an explosion 

of recent scholarship after the publication of Said's seminal 

Orientalism in 1979. 3 Paintings of the Chinese harem 

are rare, but Jesuit missionaries described the harem 

intrigues of the Ming court in detail, and the polygamy of 

Chinese emperors was a familiar trope to the reading public 

in 17th-century Europe (Lach 1965:774; Yazawa 1990). 

'When we encounter a rare pictorial depiction of a Chinese 

harem in a 19th-century lithograph entitled "Baigneuses a 

leur toilette" ("Bathers Getting Dressed") (Fig. 6), it is not 

surprising to find that it shares many generic traits of the 

Turkish harem: the theme of polygyny, the thrill of 

voyeurism, and the erotic import of clothing. 

In this snapshot, clothing, or rather the act of 

dressing, clearly stnlctures the viewer's gaze. In the center 

of the print are three palace ladies caught in various stages 

of the toilette after their bath. Three others, still bathing 

in a pool in the garden, also display different degrees of 

being clothed. The sequential time one experiences in life 

is arrested and transformed. Temporally the frame is 

frozen at one moment, but spatially the image is composed 

of three disjointed frames: the dressed, the halfdressed, 

and the nude. In a provocative gesture, one 

bather by the pool props up her chin with one hand and 

stares into the viewer's eyes, as if to mock the latter's dispersed 

sight. 

The young woman leaning on a porcelain stool is, 

according to the captions that accompany the 1925 

reprint of the lithograph, "completely shod, and has 

already put on the wide satin trousers in which ladies of 

the opulent class adorn themselves." She offers a side view 

of her right foot, neatly dressed and adorned with a flared 

anklet. The lady to her left showcases a dorsal view of both 

feet, also shod. "The third is occupied with putting on her 

shoes. One of these feet is naked, and only allows the big 

toe to be seen in its natural position, the other digits having 

been forced back beneath the sole of the foot. One 

can see on the carpet the other Turkish slipper (babouche) 

or ankle boot, of which the extremity is truncated as if the 

foot were nonexistent." The writer of the captions 

sounded like a lecturer: "It is rare, in fact, that tile foot of a 

Chinese beauty thus mutilated would be longer than three 

or four inches" (Malpiere 1925-1927; cf. Levy 1984:172; 

original in color) . He was, coincidentally, correct on most 

of the ethnographic details about footbinding. The binder 

in the hands of the naked lady and her ankle boot on the 

floor look contrived, but the anklets resemble those featured 

in Chinese erotic prints from the Ming dynasty. 

If the artist and writer had painstakingly tried to 

get the details of footbinding right, the rest of the ladies' 


attire bespeaks a curious hybridity. Their hair is piled high 

into a knot; the standing lady is clad in a chemise; all have 

high-waisted silhouettes. These were, in fact, fashionable 

styles in 1830s Paris and do not resem ble anything a 

Chinese would have worn. 4 Two of the three distant ladies 

are draped in shrawls and look faintly south Asian. This 

hybridity of styles, both fanciful and real, serves as a 

reminder that the depiction of the Oriental harem is not 

about ethnographic accuracy but visual enticement. 

Indeed, studio photographs of Middle Eastern women 

were often dressed in bizarre concoctions that mixed ethnic 

and class styles (Graham-Brown 1988:120). 

Generic conventions aside, the blatant transposition 

of Parisian fashion onto Chinese bodies merits reflection. 

Descriptions and drawings of Chinese attire had circulated 

in Europe since the 17th century. The most 

authoritative source, William Chambers' 1757 treatise on 

Chinese material culture, is mentioned in the captions. 

These sources may not be accurate, but it was common 

knowledge that Chinese styles were at odds with European 

ones (Ko 1997). Did the artist care that his audience know 

these are Chinese women? A clue may be found in the 

description of the lady leaning on the porcelain stool as 

"completely shod," cited above. Naked from the waist up, 

she is no longer caught up in getting dressed but instead 

reposes her lower body on a low wooden stand normally 

used to exhibit antiques. Her tiny shod foot is the object 

on display. We may surmise that the binder and anklet 

constitute a synecdoche for clothing in general. Indeed, 

readers in 19th-century Europe were so familiar with footbinding 

as a marker of Chinese ethnicity that there was no 

mistaking these bathers' ethnicity even though they look 

French from head to ankle. 

The centrality of clothing, the shod foot to be 

exact, to the erotic content of this image of the Chinese 

harem is also evinced by its peripheral treatment of the 

bath. Bathing is a salient theme in Orientalist paintings. 

In analyzing Jean-Leon Gerome's painting "Moorish 

Bath," which features a black servant holding a large 

basin for her naked white mistress, Linda Nochlin 

describes its elements as "the purest distillations of the 

Orientalist bath scene." She sees the juxtaposition of the 

unfeminine black figure with the pearly white body as 

suggestive of the latter's readiness for the sultan's bed. 

Furthermore, "this sense of erotic availability is spiced 

with still more forbidden overtones, for the conjunction 

of black and white, or dark and li ght female bodies, 

whether naked or in the guise of mistress and maidservant, 

has traditionally signified lesbianism" (Nochlin 

1989:49) . 

In imaginary China, bathing merely provided an 

excuse for the dressing to occur. There was even some 


doubt as to whether the Chinese were bathers at all. In the 

captions, a long rebuttal was leveled at travelers who 

asserted that baths were unknown to the Chinese. Lord 

Macartney, it was said, mentioned mineral waters at the 

foot of mountains northeast of Beijing that were called 

"Emperor's Baths." Moreover, allegedly there were large 

lakes in the imperial compound where the fairest of the 

harem ladies sojourned in the summer (Malpiere 

1925-1927). A vague association is thus established 

between the harem and bodies of water, but in the Chinese 

harem there is no tension between black and white or 

between mistress and servant. Absent, too, is the strong 

homoeroticism associated with Moorish baths. The point 

of the print, as the captions put it, is dressing: "These 

young women having just tasted the pleasure of the bath 

furnish us with an occasion to explain the various parts of 

their toilette that we have only mentioned briefly before. "5 

As in many other Orientalist paintings, the master 

of the women is present even though he is not shown in 

the picture. The immured ladies were preparing themselves 

for him, and their various stages of dressing will lead 

to one moment of resolution, when the emperor 

announces his selection for the night. Meanwhile, in his 

absence, the bountiful land and multiple women are available 

for our perusal. Whatever our reaction to "Bathers," it 

was designed to entice readers in 19th-century France. 

The seduction of the image hinges on the seductive power 

of footbinding. The effectiveness of this seduction can be 

gauged only upon further research into the history of 

reception of this print. 

It should also be mentioned in passing that the 

harem is not a European invention. The harem enjoys a 

long history in Chinese literature and art. The ladies 

depicted in palace-style poetry and paintings of generic 

beauties are stereo typically immured and pining for their 

absent men, more akin to the "Bathers" we have viewed 

(Wu 1997) . The sensuality of the harem in Ming erotic 

prints and novels, however, is produced by the very visibility 

and activity of the emperor. Indeed, in novels of the 

"erotic history" genre, the emperor is always the protagonist 

(Kang 1996: 182-199). The bodily presence of the 

emperor marks a salient difference between the European 

and Chinese constructions of the harem, affecting the 

manner of reader identification and hence the shape of 

male fantasy. Because of the limitation of space, these 

issues will have to await another essay. 

We may conclude by noting that the visual codes 

and structures of desire that constitute the enticement of 

the harem are culture- and time-specific. The seduction 

mayor may not work. But when it does, the result is as fantastic 

as a miraculous birth. The viewing of harem pictures 

brings to life two emperors: the polygynous despot and the 


DOROTIfY KO 

viewer who, for a few pleasurable moments, can don the 

mantle of imperial splendor. This mantle of male privilege 

is tailored from the identification of the multiple women 

with vetements. 

THE CHINESE IMPERIUM: THE DESPOTIC 

EMPEROR AND HIS UNRULY FEMALE SUBJECTS 

The snapshot of the Chinese harem we have 

viewed bespeaks the stability of footbinding as a sign of 

Chinese ethnicity in European eyes. To appreciate the 

power of clothing as cultural boundary-markers, however, 

we need to backtrack and ponder how difficult it is to produce 

that immutability. In a world in which styles change, 

goods travel, and people are creative, how do self-other 

distinctions become so real and stable? Or, if ethnic 

boundaries are constructed, how come they appear so 

immutable? To attempt an answer, we need to connect 

snapshots into a long scroll that can be unrolled and 

viewed in myriad ways. 

The theme of the scroll, the focus of this section, is 

the long-standing anxieties of Qing emperors over their 

unruly women's feet. Before we examine their prohibition 

edicts, a closer look into the problems of clothing regulation 

and identifYing Han-Manchu differences is in order. 

Curators have often referred to distinct and presumably 

timeless Manchu stylistic elements-the "horsehoof' cuff, 

the queue, the unbound feet-to identify garments or 

visual images. But these so-called Manchu elements, 

allegedly remanents from their "nomadic" past, were not 

intrinsic. They were made into primordial signs by political 

decrees and acquired immutability through the sediments 

of time. Furthermore, in the course of the dynasty 

and on the edges of the imperium, what the signs signified 

could undergo a sea change. The queue, for example, was 

a sign of "Han-ness" in the eyes of the Tungans (Chinesespeaking 

Muslims) in Altishahr, part of the Qing empire 

in Xinjiang, in the 19th century (Millward 1993). 

This is not to deny that there are material and 

technological constraints to any way of life, and that such 

material conditions are often made into ethnic traits. 

According to a creative hypothesis, nomadic and agrarian 

peoples developed divergent sartorial traditions, the former 

originating from animal skins and the latter cloth. 

Unlike cloth, skins cannot be woven into wider widths and 

made to drape like, say, the wide sleeves and bodice on 

Ming robes. The symmetry and grain of skins also demand 

different garment construction. Indeed, structural similarities 

between Manchu garments and those of horse-riding 

peoples from southern Siberia, Mongolia, and the 

Eurasian steppe have been noted (Burnham 1973:20-21; 

Vollmer 1977:21-25; Wilson 1996:18-24). 


THE EMPEROR AND HIS WOMEN: THREE VIEWS OF FOOTBINDlNG, ETHNICITY, AND EMPIRE 

The animal-skin theory offers a tantalizing explanation 

for the narrower sleeves and tighter body that 

emerged as the most distinct sign of Manchu court robes. 

Its comparative insights also suggest a lack of uniqueness in 

the Manchu's origins. There is, however, no concrete evidence 

for the Manchus being a skin-based people beyond 

the mythical age. In any case, the issue at stake in the 

redesign of tighter sleeves with horsehoof cuffs is not its 

origin but its political function. Manchu emperors were 

compelled to keep alive a mythical nomadic past and martial 

heritage to impress their Chinese subjects into submission 

and to teach their renegade fellow Manchus. 

Horsehoof cuffs, cut as they were from cloth, are no different 

from the hunting expeditions staged by Kangxi in 

their utility as ethnic performances. 

As long as a few distingushing traits were kept conspicuous, 

the court could manipulate Han symbols and 

appropriate Ming practices. By and large, early Qing court 

attire followed the rank indicators and cosmological symbolisms 

of the Ming (Wakeman 1985; Zhou 1992:472-489; 

Garrett 1994). Other stylistic elements that became identified 

as Manchu included the use of a peacock feather on 

top of official headgear to signity rank instead of a swan 

feather, exclusive use of toggle buttons as means of closure, 

and new shapes of the front flaps on coats (Zhou 

1992:475) . They were construed as "Manchu" elements 

simply because the Qing court used them but not the 

Ming. 6 The early Qing monarchs also developed the 

dragon motif, first found on Tang imperial coats, on their 

semiformal court coat (jifu). Dragons became Manchu 

signs simply because Qing court and society overused 

them profusely (Vollmer 1977:40-45). 

Such hybridity in style means that it is futile to isolate 

essential Manchu characteristics that transcend time. 

If it were possible, Qing emperors would not have so assiduously 

revised regulations and compiled ritual manuals 

that clarified the parameters of proper court attire, a process 

repeated throughout the dynasty.7 

If even the regimented world of court clothing is 

characterized by hybridity and flux, how much more so 

is the everyday wear of people in the empire! Indeed, 

regulating vernacular dress seemed Sisyphean in its 

impossibility and necessity. In society at large, clothing 

was useful politically in signifying political oneness, a 

contrast to the obsession with hierarchies and distinctions 

in rank as was the case with court attire. In other 

words, outside the forbidden palace, the persistence of 

ethnic boundaries incurred imperial wrath, not the confusion 

of rank among the officialdom. Han women who 

refused to give up footbinding did not transgress boundaries; 

they posed a problem in their appearance of 

immutable authenticity. 


Before the Manchus entered the Pass, their leaders 

made no gender distinction in enforcing sartorial conformity 

among their subjects. In 1636, barely one year 

after Hongtaiji coined the name Manchu, he sought to 

define Manchu identity in cultural terms-hunting, clothing, 

hairstyle-all d e manding an intimate process of 

embodiment. At first, the responsibility of embodying oneness 

fell to the Han Chinese under his jurisdiction: "All 

Han people-be they official or commoner, male or 

female-their clothes and adornments will have to conform 

to Manchu styles. Males are not allowed to fashion 

wide collars and sleeves; females are not allowed to comb 

up their hair [shutouJ nor bind their feet." Two years later, 

Hongtaiji in turn admonished his Manchu followers to 

look the part and stop imitating Han clothing and footbinding 

(Wakeman 1985:206-208; Chen 1991:147-149). 

During the Qing conquest of the south, Han men 

were forced to shave their forehead, to grow a queue, and 

to wear Manchu clothing as pledges of allegiance-a form 

of involuntary mimesis, if we may. The infamous order 

incited popular resistance in the Jiangnan region in the 

1640s, but after it was quelled barbers and tailors quickly 

and quietly learned new tricks (Godley 1994:55-59).8 

Under the facade of this fabricated oneness, society was 

plagued by ethnic violence and factional strife. Qing rule 

was not secured until the 1680s, when Ming loyalist resistance 

in the south and on the island of Formosa as well as 

the Three Feudatories rebellion were subdued. 

When the foundation of the dynasty was still shaky, 

footbinding was a nagging reminder of the distance 

between the ruler and the ruled. It posed enough of a 

threat that Kangxi (1662-1722) decided to take action 

soon after he became emperor. In 1664, he decreed that 

all girls born after the year he ascended to the throne not 

be allowed to begin binding. The offender's father would 

be punished by flogging and exile, and the local officials 

would also be held accountable. Kangxi was wise in recognizing 

the futility of convincing women with feet already 

arched to unwrap their binders. But his attempt to create a 

new female culture from a clean slate fell onto deaf ears. 

Three or four years later, the Ministry of Rites urged him 

to retract the ban (Zhao 1957:656). 

Qing emperors gave up ordering Han women to 

change their styles after the failures of Hongtaiji and Kangxi. 

The enforced male hair shaving in the 1640s, in turn, had 

eradicated all visible distinctions between most Manchu and 

Han men in everyday life. Why did Han men comply but not 

women, who became embodiments of Han identity with 

their wide sleeves and bound feet? How come it was female 

bodies that were made signposts of ethnic identity? 

The first explanation is that the coercive bans in 

the early Qing may have had the unintended effect of 

Series 3, No. 15, p. 41, November 1, 1998

THE EMPEROR AND HIS WOME : THREE VIEWS OF FOOTBINDING, ETHNICITY, AND EMPIRE 

the base of her small toe. Then she moved the 

cloth up by two- to thl'ee-tenths of an inch [Jen}, 

wrapped a second round. Then she moved 

another two- to three-tenths of an inch until the 

binder covered the foot. With three rounds the 

binding was done. H er goal was not to bend the 

four toes, nor would she wrap up her heel, fearing 

that the foot would bend into an arch. Since her 

aim was merely narrow feet and clustered toes-a 

slightly pointy look-she tended to succeed in at 

most a month. After binding, she had to wear an 

extremely tight sock. (Yao 1934:193-194, 

emphases mine). 

This modest and reasonable goal-by no means a form of 

mutilation-allowed Manchu girls to start binding five to 

ten years later than Han girls. The former appeared strong 

willed, responsible, and in con trol of their lives. 

In contrast, modern narratives of footbinding 

among Han women took as their point of departure the 

infant daughter's ignorance and dependence on her 

mother. The intense pain, the cries, and the tears that 

cemented the mother-daughter bond in a violent, confrontational 

setting were central to accounts of Chinese 

footbinding. Calling attention to the centrality of mothers 

as actors and transmitters of women's culture, anthropologist 

C. Fred Blake termed footbinding "a voluntary ordeal 

undertaken by mothers to inform their daughters how to succeed 

in a world authored by men" (Blake 1994:676, 

emphasis mine). The depiction of the voluntary, independent, 

and successful Manchu daughter is predicated on 

such a different concept of female agency and subjectivity 

that one would hesitate to refer to knife-blading as "footbinding." 

The Wise Man of Old Peking admitted that it 

was his choice of words: "Banner females did not call it 

'footbinding' [chanzu} but rather 'blading' fda tiao'er}" 

(Yao 1934:194) . 

Toward the end of his narrative, the Wise Man 

presented himself as a voyeur: "Banner women bladed in 

extreme secrecy for they'were afraid to be seen byothers." 

This secrecy enhanced the authentic appeal of his 

own account: "These are all facts witnessed by the 

author's own eyes when he was young. They are being 

recounted now at random, for later the knowledge would 

probably be lost" (Yao 1934: 194). His voyeurism evoked 

an imaginary harem populated by fashionable teenage 

girls. This harem of modern girls, located as it was in the 

recent past, was already in danger of obliteration because 

of the frightening speed of change in the modern age. 

This kind of nostalgic voyeurism is often infused with a 

longing for childhood, remembered as a time-place in 

which a boy enjoys the company of multiple females- 


mother, sisters, maids, and others-while watching them 

with abandon (Yao 1934:282). As such this nostalgia is 

structured by a similar desire that produced the Oriental 

harem: male fantasy for polygyny. 

The narrative ended with the same nostalgic note 

with which it began: "Since the first year of the Republic 

[1912], banner women had gradually changed their old 

custom. Now no one blades any more" (Yao 1934:194). In 

the end, the Qing dynasty fell, the imperium could not 

hold, and even a modern form of footbinding became a 

relic. The absence of the emperor, the removal of old hierarchies 

and privileges, and the hollowing out of the capital 

enabled discourses of new forms of agency. Narratives of 

Manchu footbinding, structured by a nostalgia and a longing 

for the agency of the modern woman, are thus 

mementos of the past while they serve as prolegomenon 

for an uncertain future. 

Even today, the portrait of the independent and 

fashion-conscious Manchu woman squeezing her toes into 

tight socks continues to cut a striking contrast to the tortured 

and subjugated Han woman, an image of the beleaguered 

Chinese nation itself. Once the enemy of Chinese 

nationalism, the vanquished Manchus did not vanish: 

They have become more visible as their women embody 

the new national pursuit of speed, fashion, and selfcontrol. 

Although footbinding ceases to be practiced by 

modern women, as a reminder that the emperor is dead it 

remains useful to the articulation of national and ethnic 

differences in the modern age. 

REALITY AND THE REALLY MADE-UP 

The above discussion has underscored the 

fragility of ethnic identities, the usefulness of female 

attire to their reinforcement, as well as the ambiguous 

and shifting meanings of sartorial signs. In the eyes of 

French readers, footbinding signified Chinese ethnicity 

that was part of but also distinct from a general 

"Oriental" identity. To Qing monarchs, the bound foot 

marked the boundary between Han and Manchu. 

Tabloid writers and readers in 1930s northeastern China, 

in turn, were likely to interpret a special form of Manchu 

"footbinding" as a harbinger of a modern national 

Chinese character. Surely, footbinding is a marker of ethnic 

boundaries within China as well as between China 

and the rest of the world, as scholars have often asserted. 

Yet an important caveat has to be added, that the practice 

and meanings of footbinding are as ambiguous and 

unstable as ethnic identities. 

As for ethnicity-as-spectacIe, our insights are 

deceptively simple: Eyesight is important, but it cannot be 

trusted. What we cannot see exercises enormous power on 

Series 3, No. 15, p.4S, November 1, 1998

5. 

POWER IN THE INNER COURT 

OF THE QING DYNASTY: 

THE EMPEROR'S CLOTHES 

Chinese court apparel defined and sustained the 

elite who were responsible for good government on earth 

and harmony with Heaven. Ritual and ceremonial clothing, 

toge the r with a rich variety of accoutrement, were 

regarded as absolutely n ecessary to maintain the prope r 

hierarchical order in society. From a Confucian perspective, 

proper clothing ensured that virtue would be recognized 

and praised, so that the base e lements of society 

would not e n croach upo n their superiors. The Han 

dynasty (206 B. C.- A.D. 220) historian Ban Gu (d. A.D. 92) 

noted, "[T] he ancients used clothing for the purpose of 

distinguishing between the noble and the common and to 

illustrate virtue so as to e ncourage the imitation of good 

example" (Ban Gu 1963:8203). Thus prope r clothing contributed 

to the harmony in the socio-poli tical-religious 

order and contributed to the civilizing authority of the 

state. Because the emperor's clothes embodied notions of 

power, changes to the impe rial wardrobe were a matter 

not of fashion but of state. 

ROLE OF THE EMPEROR 

The e mperor was viewed as the center of the 

Chin ese universe . His position was linke d to the 

Confucian family ideal and the sense of order based on 

correct behavior. Within the basic social unit, the family, 

the high est respect was paid to the male head of the 

family. In turn, he performed rituals and religious ceremonies 

on behalf of his kin. By extension, the vi llage 

elder performed a parallel function within th e community, 

as did the local magistrates with in the prefecture. 

The emperor fulfilled the same posit ion for the 

whole human world. H e was the "Father-and-Mother," 

supreme magistrate and supreme priest on behalf of "All 

under Heaven." 

The e mperor's residence within the capital 

demonstrated his centrali ty in cosmic terms. From early 

times, and at least since the Han dynasty, the imperial 

palace was called Zijin after the Ziweiyuan ("Purple Tenuity 


JOHN E. VOLLMER 

Compound"), which consisted of several stars and constellations. 

The Ziweiyua n was the seat of the Emperor of 

H eaven. The imperial palace, the dwelling of the Son of 

Heave n , was supposed to be aligned with the Purple 

Tenuity as a demonstration that the position of the Son of 

Heaven was analogous to that the Emperor of H eaven 

directly overhead. 

Following this tradition, the Q ing designated the 

impe ria l p a lace as th e Zijincheng ("Purple Forbidde n 

City"). The Qing also observed th e ancient rituals that 

underscored the centrality of the emperor. For example, 

the Great Audience, h eld three times a year , and the 

Regular Audience, which occu rred three times each 

month, endorsed and extolled hierarchical structure confirming 

that the world was ordered as it ought to be. For 

these events, the Qing empe rors sat on the throne in the 

H all of Supreme H armony dressed in the most formal 

attire called chaoJu ("court/ ritual robes"). Everyone present 

had his place defined by blood relationship, political 

status, or geographic origin. The anonymous portrait of 

the Qianlong em peror ( 1736-1795) in the Pa lace 

Museum, Beijing, illustrates the focus of these magnificent 

spectacles, which were held thirty-nine times a year in the 

presence of hundreds of officials (Museum Boymans-van 

Beuningen 1990:120-121). 

Special cou rt events, including enthroneme nts, 

imperial birthdays, weddings, and the banque ts that 

accompanied these events, served much the same purpose. 

The album painting in the Palace Museum, Beijing, 

depicting the 1887 Grand Wedding of the Guangxu 

emperor (1875-1908) illustrates one such event. Special 

decorations in the shape of shuangxi ("double joy") characters 

are hung from the roofs of the Taihe Palace 

(Museum Boymans-van Beuninge n 1990: 132-137). 

Imperial garmen ts with similar shuangxi motifs that stylistically 

d ate from the same period are found in several 

museum collections (e.g. Victoria and Albert Museum 

T198-1948 and T253-1967; Denver Art Museum 1986.157) 

and might be related to this occasion. 


In addition to these purely ritualistic activities, the 

institutio n of emperorship was defined by five functions 

(Uitzinger 1990:71-91) . Every action of the emperor, 

whether attended by hundreds or observed by a few, was a 

public performance and demanded appropriate clothing 

to emphasize virtuous display. 

1 . THE SAC RAL ROLE : 

THE EMPEROR AS SON OF HEAVEN 

The emperor was mediator between the world and 

the higher powe rs. H e prayed and offe red sacrifices to 

ensure that everything went well or continued to go as it 

should. The emperor was the only person who could perform 

these tasks as he was Heaven's Son, the earthly manifestation 

of the supreme deity. He was said to nile by virtue 

of the Heavenly Mandate and selved to order human society. 

He was the central officiant at the great ritual sacrifices 

that occurred at the turn of the seasons and at other strategic 

moments during the calendar year. Following the conquest 

of 1644, the Qing emperors continued these ancient 

rites, as was the ir right, to establish harmony between 

humans and cosmos. 

Important sacrifices were performed at the altars 

in the suburbs beyond the walls of the capital; the most significant 

were in the south and n orth (Bredon 1931). For 

each of these occasions there was a prescribed color for 

clothes and ritual vessels. The sacrifice at the Altar of 

H eaven south of the Forbidden City was dedicated to the 

supreme deity and performed before sunrise during the 

night of the winte r solstice. The blue kesi ("silk tapestry") 

chaofu for theJiaqing emperor (1796-1820) in the Palace 

Museum, Beijing, is an example of a ritual robe created 

fo r this p articula r sacrifice (Museum Boym a ns-van 

Beuningen 1990:170-171) . At the summer solstice, the 

emperor wore ye llow robes and offered sacrifices at the 

Altar of Earth, in the northern suburb. On a fixed day in 

the spring be tween five and seven in the morning he wore 

red robes and sacrificed at the Altar of the Sun, in the eastern 

suburbs. On a similar fixed d ay in the autumn 

between the hours of five and seven in the evening, he sacrificed 

at the Altar of the Moon in the western suburbs. 

For the autumn ceremony, pale blue robes and accessories 

similar to the turquoise court n ecklace use d by the 

Qianlong empe ro r were used (Museum Boymans-van 

Beuningen 1990: 1 73) . 

The other annual sacrifices were conducted at the 

Altar of Agriculture in the southern suburbs during the 

spring. Here the emperor himself cut the first furrow, as 

shown in the hand scroll in the Musee Guimet collectio ns 

d a ting from the late 19th century (Dickinson and 

Wrigglesworth 1990:56). Annual rites at the Altar of Land 

and Grain in the southern suburbs symbolized sovereignty 



and authority as well as the fertility of the land. Sacrificial 

meals offered two times a year to Confucius linked state 

doctrine with the office of the emperor. There we re quarterly 

sacrifices at the Temple of the Impe rial An cestors 

and sacrifices twice a year to the emperors of previous 

dynasties. These sacrifices stressed continuity and the 

dynasty's right to the Heavenly Mandate. Other ritual obligations 

included twice yearly homage to the planet 

Jupiter, prayers for rain and good harvest, and sacrifices to 

the god of fire, the god of war, and the patron and protector 

of the capital. An annual total of thirty to forty d ays 

were fill ed with ritual. Each ritual was preceded by a twoor 

three-day fasting period. 

2 . ADMINISTRATIVE FUN C TION : 

THE EMPEROR AS SUPREME MAGISTRATE 

The role as h ead of state was preeminently secular. 

The emperor p e rused all incoming and outgoing 

state documents personally, literally hundreds of documents 

daily. With his personal seal he ratified every title, 

promotion, d emotion , and dismissal. The emperor was 

the highest court of appeal and could grant pardons or 

defer punishment. 

Daily audiences were held in the early morning. In 

theory these obligations continued whether the emperor 

was in residence in the Forbidden City or no t. Some were 

held in the summer palace. Meetings with the Council of 

State preceded the audience (Bartlett 1991) . Lunch time 

generally was reserved for personal audiences with blood 

relatives and high officials. 

For these events, the emperor's clothing refl ected 

political authority and control. Unde r the Qing emperors 

this class of clothing was called jifu ("auspicious coat"). 

The 1736 portrait of the Qianlong emperor in the hand 

scroll by Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), n ow in the 

Cleveland Museum of Art's collections, shows this type of 

coat. An embroidered satin example from the wardrobe of 

the Qianlong emperor is in the Palace Museum, Beijing 

(Museum Boymans-van Beuninge n 1990:180-181). 

3.THE SCHOLARLY ROLE : THE EMPEROR 

AS SUPREME MAN OF LETTERS 

The emperor as wen'l'en-Iiterally, "a man of culture"-was 

expected to have a knowledge of Confucian 

can o nical works and orthodox comme ntaries. At least 

once a month the emperor met with a select company of 

scholars who e lucidate d proble matic passages. The 

emperor as chief patron of scholarship and the arts commissioned 

works of art and instigated the compilation of 

encyclopedias (Kahn 1971). The practice of writing 

poetry, perfecting imperial calligraphy, and painting were 

part of this scholarly function. The anonymous portrait of 


elts, from which were suspended purses, chopsticks, and 

other personal tools, were also part of Manchu national 

dress (Garrett 1994; Musee du Petit Palais 1996:206-207). 

Like every dynasty before them, the Qing enacted 

sumptuary legislation to regulate the official wardrobe 

(Cammann: 1952:25). The Qing declared a new dynastic 

color to legitimize their rule in accordance with the 

ancient wuxing ("Five Phases system"). Wuxing was associated 

with the ancient yin-yang philosophy. In it, the five 

elements of the universe-earth, fire, water, metal, and 

wood-had a direct correspondence to seasons, directions, 

musical scales, and colors. The sequence black, blue, 

red, yellow, white was viewed as the natural succession of 

colors. Red, the official Ming dynasty color, was replaced 

by yellow, reflecting the ancient belief that element earth 

overcomes fire. All court clothing was to be harmonized 

with yellow. With the exception of rituals that required red 

robes, the Qing largely avoided the Ming dynastic color. 

Since at least the time ofJin dynasty (1115-1234), 

and possibly dating back to the time of Emperor Gaozu 

(618-626) of the Tang dynasty (618-907), wearing yellow 

robes has been the prerogative of the emperor. Early 

Qing edicts enshrined this ancient imperial precedent by 

reserving rning huang (bright yellow) for the emperor 

and his consort (Cammann 1952:25-27). The heir apparent 

and his consort used xing huang (apricot yellow), usually 

orange in tone; other members of the imperial clan 

used qiuxiangse (tawny yellow), which actually ranged 

from brown to plum-colored tones. Manchu nobles to 

the rank of third-degree prince used blue. All others 

used black. 

Similarly, the five-toed long dragon was reserved 

for the imperial clan; others used the four-toed rnang 

dragon (Wang 1994). The nine ranks of each of the civil 

and the military bureaucracies were required to wear 

badges based on the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) rank systems 

(Cammann 1944:71-130). Birds distinguished the 

civil officials; other kinds of animals identified military officers. 

Applying the squares to front and back of the surcoat, 

rather than placing them directly on the ritual and 

ceremonial robes, was a major change of presentation. 

REVISION TO COSTUME REGULATION 

BY THE QIANLONG EMPEROR 

In 1748 the Qianlong emperor commissioned a 

review of all previous costume regulations enacted by the 

dynasty. This review culminated in the promulgation of a 

comprehensive set of costume edicts in 1759. The 

Huangchao liqi tushi (Illustrated Precedents for the Ritual 

Paraphernalia of tile Imperial Court) classified all clothing 

and accessories used by the court from emperor to the 



lowest functionary (Dickinson and Wrigglesworth 1990; 

Medley 1982). 

Ostensibly the Huangchao liqi tushi was concerned 

with preserving Manchu identity. However, there were 

other reasons to enact new costume regulations beyond 

this official rationale. During the first century after the 

conquest, Qing wardrobe needs had expanded far beyond 

the ritual clothing specifically mentioned in earlier sumptuary 

laws. The proliferation of patterns and garments 

among Manchu nobility and Han-Chinese officials 

resulted in an abuse of privilege in the use of imagery originally 

controlled by entitlement or through imperial prerogative. 

Secondly, the position and role of the Qing 

emperor had changed. Beginning with the Kangxi 

emperor, and continuing under his son, the Yongzheng 

emperor, the image of the Qing emperor had been redefined, 

linking it more firmly to the ideals of the Chinese 

imperial model. 

Although largely undocumented, this shift in official 

thinking can be observed in the surviving garments. By 

the early decades of the 18th century, Manchu court 

clothes had been deliberately redesigned. Prior to this 

period most garments were made of a single fabric; edges 

were reinforced with interior facings or bindings of the 

same fabric. The brocaded, plum-colored satin robe dating 

from the Kangxi period in the Minneapolis Institute of 

Arts' collections is an example (Priest 1945, pI. 17). From 

the 1720s, constructions began to feature multiple fabrics. 

The ground fabric of the garment supported the principle 

decoration, and sleeves were made of pleated plain fabric 

or fabrics with woven stripes that imitated sets of parallel 

wrinkles from a pushed-up sleeve. A third fabric, usually 

blue or black, was patterned to complement the ground 

fabric and applied as external facings at the neck and top 

edge of the overlap and at the cuffs. The robes taken from 

the tomb of the Yongzheng emperor's brother, Quo 

Jinwang (d. 1738), that appeared on the Beijing art market 

in 1935-1936, help date the beginning of this stylistic 

change (Hughes 1945; Priest 1945, pI. 26-28). This cache 

was acquired by museums in Kansas City, Minneapolis, 

and New York. All of the jifu and changfu are made of 

multiple fabrics with contrasting sleeve extensions. 

Many of these features, such as the shaped overlap 

at the front and the sleeve extensions with cuffs, emphasized 

Manchu shapes and construction details. Overall, the 

restyling represented Han-Chinese tastes and can be 

traced to an ancient imperial model for imperial coats, 

such as those recovered from the site of Mashan, dating to 

the late Zhou dynasty (Krahl 1995; Sheng 1995). Mter the 

early 18th century, all court coat edges were bound with 

yet another figured fabric. These edges were invariably 

black or dark blue compound silk satin woven with gold 


POWER IN THE I NER COURT OF THE QING DYNASTY: THE EMPEROR'S CLOTHES 

patterns. This feature can be related to the innovations 

affected by theJin dynasty (Riboud 1995) . 

The number of dragons decorating the jifu, or 

semiformal court coat and chief administrative garment, 

was fixed at nine-eight symmetrically disposed on the 

surface and a ninth hidden under the front overlap. Since 

Zhou times, nine has been regarded as the number of 

Heaven. This number reflects the emperor's status as the 

Son of Heaven (Kuhn 1996; Vollmer 1998). The name for 

this coat, jifu, was adopted during the 18th century and is 

undoubtedly a reference to the name that appeared in the 

Zhouli (Rituals ofZhou) (Wang 1994). 

The twelve ancient symbols of imperial authority 

first appeared on the Manchu emperor's clothing in 1759. 

They were conspicuously absent from Qing ritual and ceremonial 

attire prior to this time. Their addition to the 

Qing imperial wardrobe reflects a conscious shift in 

Manchu political strategy. These symbols were incorporated 

into the general decorative schema of Qing court 

garments; hence their visual importance was diminished. 

Nonetheless, this addition emphatically demonstrated the 

Qing intention of embracing the traditional role of rulers 

of the Chinese empire as expressed in the Shujing (Book 

of History, pt. II, ch. I, 4), compiled from the last centuries 

of the Zhou dynasty to the 4th century A.D. It quotes the 

legendary pre-Shang dynasty (ca. 1600-1100 B.C.) founding 

emperor Shun as saying: "[My] ministers constitute my 

legs and anns, my ears and eyes. I wish to help and support 

my people;-you give effect to my wishes. I wish to spread 

the influence [of my government] through the four quarters;-you 

are my agents. I wish to see the emblematic figures 

of the ancients,-the sun, the moon, the stars, the 

mountain, the dragon, and the flowery fowl, which are 

depicted [on the upper garment]; the temple-cup, the 

aquatic grass, the flames, the grains of rice, the hatchet, 

and the symbol of distinction which are embroidered [on 

the lower garment:-I wish to see] all these displayed with 

the five colours, so as to form the [official robes]; it is 

yours to adjust them clearly" (Legge 1865:79-80, brackets 

indicate additions in accordance with later commentaries). 

The Qing placed the first four symbols-sun, 

moon, stars, and mountain-at the shoulders, chest, and 

midback. The symbol of distinction, hatchet, paired dragons, 

and the flowery bird appeared at waist level. Templecups, 

aquatic grass, grains of millet, and flames were 

placed at knee level on the skirts of the coat. 

Conceptually the Qing wardrobe did not change 

again after 1759. The Qianlong regulations were issued 

regularly throughout the remainder of the dynasty 

(Medley 1982). The new decorative schema drawn from 

Chinese ideals and applied to court clothing eventually 

influenced domestic wear. By the 19th century, other than 


garment shape, there was little to differentiate between 

Manchu and Han-Chinese clothing. 

From at least the early 18th century, we have evidence 

to suggest Qing emperors donned the garments of 

other nationalities. Jesuit artists in residence in Beijing 

painted Western dress portraits of the Yongzheng 

emperor. The depiction of the Qianlong emperor as a 

Buddhist saint shows him in Tibetan clerical dress (Wu 

1995). Court women participated in masquerade but also 

may have worn Chinese dress for comfort and because of 

its ancient associations with elegance and refinement. In 

the set of twelve hanging scrolls, women from the emperor 

Yongzheng's harem are shown wearing Han dress (Figs. 8 

and 9), although some scholars question the authenticity 

of these paintings as depictions of actual events. Within 

the context of Chinese Confucian art collecting and connoisseurship, 

the depictions of actual ceramics and metal 

work from the imperial collection lend weight to viewing 

the garments as illustrating actual practice. 

It is probably in the private residences that the 

most freedom of expression in personal dress was exercised. 

Earlier material is rare, but clothes from the private 

court ofCixi, the last dowager empress (1835-1908), 

reveal a personal taste (Regional Council 1996:32-47). 

These garments reflect Han-Chinese aesthetics in terms of 

how they were made. The turned back sleeves reveal a contrasting 

inner facing with complementary patterns. The 

use of externally applied facings as borders again feature 

color contrasts and complementary patterns. The floral 

decoration is influenced by the "boneless" naturalistic 

painting style Cixi practiced (Regional Council 1996:93). 

Some of her fonnal garments demonstrate the adaptation 

of imperial imagery to reflect her role as regent. Herjifu 

and gunfu often included the full set of the twelve symbols 

of imperial authority in violation of protocol. 

These aberrations of imperial prerogative are perhaps 

a fitting conclusion to a discussion about the clothes 

of the Qing emperors. As early Confucian writers recognized, 

appearances at the imperial court were of critical 

importance. When etiquette and proper dress were practiced 

with diligence, society was strengthened and imperial 

power was manifest. From the Confucian perspective, 

the relaxation of the sumptuary code was a symptom of 

the decay of Qing authority. 

LITERATURE CITED 

BAN, GU.1963. Baihu tongyi. Baizi quanshu ed. Gujin 

Wenhua Publishing Co., Taibei. 14:8203. 

BARTLETT, B. 1991. Emperors and ministers: the Grand 

Council in mid-Ch'ing China, 1723-1820. 

University of California Press, Berkeley. 417 pp. 


BREDON,.J. 193 1. Pe king: a historical and intimate 

description of its chief places of interest. Kelly and 

Walsh, Shanghai. 571 pp. 

CAMMANN, S.V.R. 1944. Development of the Mandarin 

Square. Harva rd Journal of Asian Studies 

8:71-1 30. 

---.1952. China's dragon robes.Ronald Press , New 

York. 231 pp. 

DICKINSON, G. and L. WRIGGLESWORTH. 1990. 

Impe ria l wardrobe. Bamboo Publishing, Ltd. , 

London. 203 pp. 

GARRETT, V.M. 1994. Chinese clothing: an illustrated 

guide. Oxford University Press, Hong Kong. 224 pp. 

HUGHES, L. 1945. The Kuo Ch'in Wang textiles. Gazette 

des Beaux-Arts 24:129-148. 

KAHN, H.L. 1971. Monarchy in the emperor's eyes: image 

and reality in the Ch ' ie n-lung re ign. Harvard 

Universi ty Press, Cambridge, Mass. 314 pp. 

KRAHL, R. 1995. Early Bronze Age dress. Orie ntatio ns 

26(5):58- 6l. 

KUHN, D. 1996. Le Vetement sous la Dynastie des Qing. 

Pages 111-119 in Musee du Pe tit Palais, La Cite 

interdite, vie publique et privee des empereurs de 

Chine 1644-191l. Catalog for an exhibition held 

at the Musee du Pe tit Pala is November 9, 

1996-February 23, 1997. Association Fran

and ink, using meticulous brushwork, and their acute 

attention to descriptive detail presages the practice of 

modern photo documentation. A realistic style suggests 

that the event depicted is real, when in fact it may have 

been invented to bolster the image of the sitter. 

Convincingly lifelike imperial portraits have a long 

history. The practice was quite mature by the Song dynasty 

(960-1279), when both formal and informal images of 

emperors were produced. A Song portrait of Emperor 

Song Huizong (1101-1126) sitting in a garden playing a 

zither may be the earliest imperial xingle tu. Imperial portraits 

continued to be produced in subsequent dynasties, 

but there was a new, extreme preoccupation with recording 

emperors engaged in literati-style pastimes that 

emerged in the Qing dynasty. As conquerors of a different 

ethnic and cultural background than their Chinese subjects, 

the Manchu sovereigns used paintings to support 

their claim to be the legitimate rulers of China. The 

"Portrait of the Kangxi Emperor Wearing Informal Dress 

[in the act of] Writing" was probably intended as a visual 

reinforcement of the Manchu ruler's thorough mastery of 

Chinese culture. In contrast, other court portraits, including 

one of Kangxi wearing armor, demonstrated continued 

allegiance to Manchu customs and martial strength. 

Imperial xingle tu were executed by professional 

court artists who seldom signed their works. Some of the 

known painters include the Italian missionary artist, 

Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), but the majority of the 

works were painted by Chinese artists, including the masters 

Jin Tingbiao (fl. ca. 1757-1767) and Ding Guanpeng 

(fl. 1726-1770). Most xingle tu were executed in a hybrid 

style that integrated Western and Chinese pictorial conventions. 

The rhetoric of Western realism proved useful 

for an imperial court determined to document in meticulous 

detail its greatness; employment of Chinese features 

suggested legitimate inheritance and continuity with 

China's past. 

A composite style is manifest in the "Portrait of 

the Kangxi Emperor Wearing Informal Dress [in the act 

of] Writing" in its simultaneous use of two systems of 

perspective. The emperor's writing table is rendered in 

a traditional Chinese manner that places the point of convergence 

at some imaginary point in front of the emperor, 

or behind the viewer's back. In contrast, the legs of the 

standing screen are rendered in accordance with standard 

Western focal perspective. If orthogonal lines are drawn 

extending from the screen's legs, they will converge in 

front of the viewer-the opposite of the situation for the 

table top. 

Kangxi no doubt practiced calligraphy for complicated 

reasons beyond amusement, and his staid posture 

in this portrait seems to belie enjoyment. Although the 


JAN STUART 

writing table is angled so that it would be natural to see the 

emperor's body turned, Kangxi is seated in an iconic pose 

at the center of the picture. The real subject of the poru'ait 

is not Kangxi at pleasure, nor even Kangxi as a person: 

The image evokes Imperial Sovereign as Calligrapher, one 

of the roles appropriate for the monarch. 

Chinese literature abounds with testimonies to the 

cultural significance of calligraphy, which has traditionally 

been judged as the sine qua non of the eli te. It was (and 

often still is) believed that a person reveals his erudition, 

ethical worth, and personal character through the appearance 

of his calligraphy as much as by the meaning of the 

words; thus, calligraphy became the most highly valued 

visual art. For the Kangxi emperor, whose rule was 

supreme over both Chinese and Manchu populations, 

exemplary brush writing was a means to demonstrate mastery 

of Chinese literati culture. Perhaps he truly loved 

practicing calligraphy just as some American presidents 

seem to enjoy jogging, but like a president who uses athletic 

stamina to project a youthful image (sanctified in 

American culture), Kangxi's "love" of calligraphy cannot 

be divorced from its political implications. 

Kangxi once wrote that after he gave away 500 calligraphy 

scrolls on a southern inspection tour, "still I have 

more than 2000 left" (Chang 1996:10), suggesting that for 

him the production of calligraphy scrolls was a significant 

duty. For example, Song Lao (1634-1713), the powerful 

governor ofJiangsu Province and a noted art connoisseur, 

received gifts of Kangxi's calligraphy on many occasions as 

gestures of imperial favor. Kangxi knew that presentation 

of his calligraphy was a way to honor and create a bond 

with officials whom he wanted to court as loyal supporters. 

One of an emperor's frustrations was the inherent tension 

in the Qing bureaucracy between the sovereign's theoretical 

role as absolute despot and his real need to rely on officials 

and provincial governors to execute his plans. 

Although no one would dare to criticize the 

emperor's calligraphy, nonetheless, it was beneficial to 

acquire an aesthetically pleasing style that revealed mastery 

of Chinese highbrow culture. Accordingly, Kangxi followed 

the brush model of the great painter-calligrapher 

and art theoretician, Dong Qichang (1555-1636), whose 

style became a standard for calligraphy at the Qing court 

for many generations. 

DEPICTIONS OF "PLEASURE" 

IN THE GARDEN 

Many xingle tu depict more ostensibly frivolous 

scenes than the Kangxi as Calligrapher portrait. 

Sometimes these are taken at face value and misunderstood 

as depictions of the emperors at le isure. The 

Series 3, No. 15, p. 56, November I, 1998

original audience no doubt would have decoded symbols 

in these paintings and understood them differently than a 

modern audience would. A large painting of 206 centimeters 

tall by lO1.6 centimeters wide, entitled "Yongzheng at 

Pleasure" (Yongzheng xingle tu; Fig. 10), can be analyzed to 

reveal the types of meanings imbedded in many imperial 

xingle tu. 

Yongzheng is depicted among garden trees and 

flowers in an outdoor setting with picnic boxes and wine 

cups laid out on a rock in the lower right corner. The 

emperor's identity is conspicuously manifest by his central 

position and iconic pose looking straight ahead. In 

contrast, the court officials present are rendered with 

slightly turned heads and averted gazes. Yongzheng 

wears an informal, deep mauve robe, the dark color of 

which stands out against the sea of dark and light blue 

garments worn by the officials. The ruler is further distinguished 

by the mat he sits upon, which is yellow, a color 

reserved for the emperor, close family members, and 

those granted a special privilege to use yellow. A boy 

wearing a yellow robe sits near the emperor, and he 

probably represents Hongli, Yongzheng's son who later 

became the Qianlong emperor. 

Yongzheng's formal pose undermines the believability 

of the title as "at Pleasure." Moreover, every detail in 

the painting is contrived. Although imperial records indicate 

that Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong all spent 

leisure time in their respective gardens, this painting probably 

does not document a real event. If it does, the artist 

manipulated the figures' poses and enhanced the natural 

scenery in order to convey a political message. The magnolia 

and crab apple trees and the peony flowers that fill 

the garden all bloom in the spring. However, magnolia 

trees usually flower a little earlier than peonies, which are 

shown here fully resplendent at the height of their season. 

The painter may have stretched the truth about the 

blooming season in order to make a point. 

By painting a magnolia, crab apple, and peony 

together, the painter created a rebus, or visual puzzle, that 

means "Wealth and Nobility in the Palace." Peonies are 

commonly known by their colloquial name that means 

"Rich and Noble Flower," and they are symbols of wealth 

and nobility. To associate this blessing with the palace, the 

artist resorted to word play with the names for "magnolia" 

(yulan) and "crab apple"(haitang). By taking a component 

from each name, the compound, yutang, which means 

'Jade Hall," is generated. Jade Hall has several conventional 

meanings, including connoting the emperor's 

palace. It also signifies the Hanlin Academy, to which top 

scholars aspired, and it is a poetic reference to the 

Dwelling of the Immortals. Thus the rebus can be 

extended to imply a palace compound blessed with 


IMPERIAL PASTIMES: DILEITANTISM AS STATECRAIT IN THE 18TH CENTURY 

immortality, high scholarly attainment, wealth, and nobility. 

It was commonly believed that a righteous ruler would 

be surrounded by such blessings. A painting ofYongzheng 

at the center of an image of good fortune signified his 

righteousness, which, in turn, reinforced his legitimacy. 

Given its large size, the painting may have been fitted 

into a standing screen meant to be placed behind the 

emperor's chair. As such it would have had a semipublic 

use, unlike a scroll that would have been kept in storage 

except for occasional viewing. A political reading for the 

painting seems especially appropriate if it was intended to 

be viewed by an audience in the palace. 

Other xingle tu that depict Yongzheng and Hongli 

in a garden have been documented as having occupied 

prominent places on palace walls. Wu Hung (1995) 

demonstrated that the small hanging scroll, "Spring's 

Peaceful Message" by Castiglione, now in the Palace 

Museum, Beijing, was a model for a large mural painted in 

Qianlong's residential quarters (Fig. 3). The painting purports 

to depict a pleasurable moment between father and 

son in a garden but is actually a serious metaphoric work. 

The subject alludes to the transmission of moral integrity 

and power from the reigning monarch Yongzheng to his 

son, the imperial heir. 2 

Yongzheng stands near bamboo and a table filled 

with scholarly accoutrements as he hands a plum bough to 

Hongli. Both bamboo and plum are emblems of scholarly 

integrity and moral purity, qualities which the artist is associating 

with the two men. Moreover, the flowering plum 

tree also is a symbol of spring. As "Everlasting Spring" was 

one of Hongli's sobriquets, the gift of a spring bough may 

have served as an allusion to the personage of the prince. 

Yongzheng's bestowal of the plum bough on Hongli symbolically 

reconfirmed his intention to hand the mandate 

to rule to Hongli. 

THE POWER OF 

HISTORICAL PRECEDENT 

The veiled political content of "Portrait of the 

Kangxi Emperor Wearing Informal Dress [in the act of] 

Writing," "Yongzheng at Pleasure," and "Spring's Peaceful 

Message" points to the difficulty of trying to ascertain what 

is a pleasurable pastime for an emperor. As Jonathan 

Spence (1974: xii) writes, "[Bly acceding to office the 

emperor became more than human, or conversely, if he 

revealed human traits, those traits must accord with the 

accepted historiographical patterns of imperial behavior." 

What few imperial amusements there were needed an 

aura of historicity. 

One of Qianlong's more frivolous recorded activities 

is rearing katydids and crickets, which, judging from 


the jottings of nonimpe rial cricket fans, was a delightful 

hobby. Some of the insects we re raised fo r their melodious 

chirping and others for their warlike behavior whe n 

pitched into battle in a miniature arena . But Qianlong 

only felt free to amuse himself once h e had establish ed 

that imperial precede nt was be hind him. In his poe m 

"Yo ng luowei" (Son g for katydids) , as cite d by Wang 

Shixiang (1993:44), the Qianlong emperor d escribed a 

tradition of "impe rial patriarchs" (huangzu) who ordered 

courtie rs to raise katydids in warm rooms: "Every time 

th e re was a b a nquet, they [the katydids] we re put in 

embroidered cages to chirp incessantly, which became a 

regulation (li)." Eve n for a pastime as lighthearted as raising 

katydids and crickets, the powelful Qianlong emperor 

fe lt compelled to cast his h obby in terms of already 

accepted historiographical patterns. 

Qianlong's comment may h ave alluded to the 

example of the Ming d yn asty Xuande e mpe ror 

(1 426-1435) who raised crickets and katydids with great 

enthusiasm. Xuande's passion even led to special commissions 

sent to the imperial kilns inJingdezhen for blue-andwhite 

porcelain cricket j ars painted with lyrical landscapes. 

Qianlong's poem also surely refers to his father and grandfather 

as "the imperial patriarchs" said to have raised crickets 

to put out at banquets. 

COLLECTING AND DISPLAYING ART 

AT THE PALACE 

The Qing emperors usually busied themselves with 

interests far more serious than dabbling with crickets. They 

set out to establish images of themselves as active participants 

and patrons in the art world, condoning dilettantism 

as a strategy to demonstrate cultura l superio ri ty. Like 

Kangxi, Qianlong was also a prolific calligrapher as well as 

an occasional painte r. He followed Do ng Qichang's style 

for calligraphy, perhaps motivated by filial respect for his 

grandfather Kangxi's choice of model. Qianlong's writing 

is creditable but rarely inspiring. Yet, this did not restrain 

him from inscribing more works of art in the palace collection 

than anyone else. Qianlong's calligraphy ofte n lacks 

internal force and tensile strength. Some times his long 

brush strokes seem to dangle like worms twisting from a 

fishing pole, limp and unconnected to the other strokes in 

a character. Nonetheless, Qianlong's inscriptions were considered 

to increase the value of the objects he inscribed. 

Collecting antiques and commissioning n ew art 

proved to be more important for the emperors than their 

own participation in creating calligraphy and painting. 

Judging fro m th e quantity of obj ects they amassed and 

the time spen t comme nting on them, a rt acquisition 

was a large-scale palace enterprise. Although it no doubt 


JAN STUART 

engendered some joy, the emperors approached collecting 

with the seriousness of work. Kangxi made it a habit 

after dinne r to engage in pleasant conversation and view 

works of art, which he believed lifted the spirits and aided 

in digesti on (Kangxi 1730; cited in Chang 1996: 12-1 3). 

Despite his o bvious pleasure, the dilige nce with which 

Kangxi and his two successors pursued art suggests conscious 

image building m o re than le isurely e njoyme nt. 

Their intense aesthetic interests signified that the emperors 

were cultivated and enlighten ed on a supramundane 

level, which supported their claim of political supremacy.3 

The e mperors ' colle cting mania drew on we llestablished 

practices of earlie r Chinese literati and imperial 

sovereigns. As early as the Han dynasty (206 B. C.- A.D. 

220) , empero rs and the wealthy social e lite acquire d 

antiques as status symbols. By the Tang dynasty (618-906) , 

both groups recognized art collecting as important to 

building a positive social image. But as Zhang Yanyuan 

(ca. S l 5- after 875), the a uthor of Record of Fam o us 

Painting Through the Ages (Lidai minghua ji; 847) admitted, 

collecting could also be an obsession (Pi). The Tang 

imperial sove reign must have agreed; his fixation wi th art 

led him to confiscate many scrolls from Zhang's family collection 

of painting and calligraphy. 

Since th e time of Zhang Yanyuan, acquiring art 

has often been associated with personal excess. This recurrent 

theme reached an extreme degree in lite rati circles in 

the late Ming dynasty whe n , in the 17th century, Chinese 

scholars collected and wrote about art with great passion. 

As the modern scholar Wai-yee Li has observed: ''The connoisseurly 

e ruoyment of things extends to the eruoymen t 

of b eing o neself p e rce ived as an aesthe tic image" (Li 

1995). The Manchu emperors adopted this attitude in an 

exaggerated manner. They also used collecting and connoisseurship 

to broad cast their power. Who else could 

have attempted to make an encyclopedic collection of past 

and contemporal), luxUl), goods and art? 

Scholars (e.g., Clunas 1991 ) who have studied late 

Ming attitudes about material culture have documented 

that the literati treated art as a commodity imbued with 

social and political meanings. The objects collected were a 

means to establish one's place within a social group and 

also were a vehicle to project a personal image. By the 17th 

centUl)" it had become fashionable, even laudable, to be 

perceived as an obsessive collector, n o matter whether 

one's passion was for paintings or scholars' rocks, as long 

as the chosen obj ect fit within the established perimeters 

of "scholarly taste ." As social approbation for collecting 

escalated , a n ew body of literature became popular that 

included books to iden tify highbrow, appropriately chic 

items to collect. (These books were, of course, not written 

in such obvious terms.) 


and sizes, placed at staggered levels to hold the maximum 

number of objects. The duobao ge was a practical solution 

to a display problem; it also satisfied the Qing emperors' 

vision of an aesthetic grounded in grandiosity. Under 

Qianlong the palace collection contained at least a million 

art object5. 

GIFTS AND TRIBUTE 

The imperial passion for art created opportunities 

for officials to supply the palace in return for imperial 

favor, leading to a virtual competition to present objects 

to the throne. For celebrations, including birthdays and 

holidays such as New Year's, gifts poured into the palace. 

While ordinary citizens relished such days as times for 

personal pleasure, for the emperors these holidays were 

state occasions marked by magnificently extravagant festivities. 

The ceremonial nature of these occasions is 

underscored by palace paintings in which the depictions 

of New Year's and Qianlong's birthday appear to be virtually 

identical. This similarity suggests the formulaic nature 

of these celebrations and reminds us that emperors were 

not portrayed as they looked or behaved at a given 

moment in time. Rather they were portrayed according to 

stereotypical notions. 

Tribute lists of objects sent from Guangdong and 

other provinces to the palace testify to the wealth of goods 

forwarded by governors and officials. The gifts highlighted 

personal loyalty and helped officials curry favor at 

court (Yang 1987). A set of gold and turquoise desk ornaments, 

including a ruyi scepter now in the Freer Gallery of 

Art, demonstrates the lavishness of many gifts (Fig. 11).4 

While contemporary objets d'art pleased the emperors, the 

courtiers who could present antique objects seemed to 

earn the greatest favor. 

To prove direct cause and effect between gift giving 

and promotion is difficult, but several officials who presented 

Kangxi with important antique art works also attained 

a high rank. Feng Yuanji became chancellor of the directorate 

of education after he presented Kangxi with the calligraphy 

"Clearing After a Snowfall" by Wang Xizhi (303-361), 

China's most famous calligrapher. The official Gao Shiqi 

(1645-1703), who had a long tenure at the impel;al court, 

included in the catalog of his personal painting collection a 

separate subsection entitled Gifts to the Emperor. "Indeed, 

his many gifts may have encouraged the emperor to be favorably 

disposed toward him"(Chang 1996:13). The scrolls 

listed as Gifts for the Emperor embrace works of v.l1;ed quality, 

including some decidedly lesser scrolls, which has led 

some scholars to assume that impel;al connoisseurship was 

uneven or deficient. Otherwise Gao would not have dared to 

offer such paintings. 


JAN STUART 

Qianlong also extended favor to "art donors." The 

Freer Gallery of Art houses two rare handscrolls by Cheng 

Qi, a little known Yuan dynasty painter active in the late 

13th century. One of these scrolls depicts multiple scenes 

of "Sericulture." It was presented to Qianlong by the 

court official Jiang Pu (1708-1761) sometime before 

1768. 5 In that year Qianlong obtained an additional scroll 

by Cheng Qi, which depicted scenes of "Rice Culture." In 

1 730 Jiang Pu received the highest degree-the jinshiand 

ultimately he was promoted to assistant grand secretary 

concurrently with the post president of the Board of 

Civil Office. Jiang Pu's presentation of "Sericulture" cannot 

account for all his good fortune in the court bureaucracy, 

but his generous donation may have improved his 

chances for continued success. He demonstrated some 

brilliance in statesmanship by presenting "Sericulture" to 

Qianlong and inscribing it with an offertory preface that 

acknowledged the "majestic sovereign and illustrious 

ruler as one who brings civilization to his people by teaching 

them sericulture and rice farming." Qianlong no 

doubt accepted this as a personal reference. To demonstrate 

(or feign) deep knowledge of such things, 

Qianlong wrote comments about rice cultivation and sericulture 

above each of Cheng Qi's illustrations. 

Qianlong also inscribed both of Cheng Qi's 

paintings with long prefaces that stress his connoisseudy 

acumen. When "Sericulture" was first presented 

to the emperor, Jiang Pu proposed that it was by the 

famous 12th-century artist Liu Songnian (a spurious signature 

of his appears on both paintings). By the time 

Qianlong acquired "Rice Culture," he showed his discerning 

eye by noting that the two paintings were actually 

by the same hand, that of Cheng Qi. Qianlong was 

led to this conclusion by the connoisseur Yao Shi (second 

half of the 13th century), whose colophon appears 

on "Rice Culture." 

The production of rice and silk were fundamental 

agrarian activities considered to be the basis of peace and 

prosperity, and as such, Qianlong recognized political 

expediency in these themes. Rice cultivation and sericulture 

had long been popular topics at court for paintings 

and porcelain decoration. Two court album leaves depicting 

Yongzheng as a prince show him either plowing a 

field or raising silk worms; they suggest the court's desire 

to demonstrate a bond between the ruling family's activities 

and the prosperity of the empire. Qianlong used 

Cheng Qi's scrolls to promote his own image as a ruler 

who could take the lead in teaching rice farming and silk 

production. In 1769 he ordered artisans to engrave 

Cheng's paintings on stone stela, so that he could distribute 

rubbings of the images to court officials (Pelliot 

1913:86). 


INSCRIPTIONS ON CERAMICS 

Qianlong routinely inscribed the art objects in his 

collection. His resolution to mark virtually every item 

reflected less of a leisurely perusal of art than an obsession 

with manifesting ego and power. He would brush a comment 

on a painting or have his calligraphy incised into the 

glaze ofa ceramic ware, or carved into the surface of wood 

or jade objects. Unfortunately many of his poetic inscriptions 

are doggerel (not surprising because he is said to 

have written 42,000 poems) , and some comments are 

transparent as "posturing" to enhance his image. 

The act of physically inscribing each object in 

the palace collection transformed connoisseurly enjoyment 

into an indelible record of imperial possession. 

Though crass, Qianlong's assertion of physical ownership 

has an analog in the behavior of animals that physically 

mark their territory. With animals and emperors 

alike, possession of territory is the clearest assertion of 

power: For Qianlong, his appreciation of art signified 

ownership of the intangible realm of culture. Of course, 

inscriptions also allowed Qianlong to express sentiments 

that furth ered his political ambitions in more 

complex ways. His overwhelming need to inscribe 

obj ects with his connoisseurly opinion projected an 

image of imperial grandeur on a monumental scale 

(Kahn 1985). 

A 13th-century Jun ware bowl from Henan 

Province, now in the Freer Gallery of Art, bears an inscription 

by Qianlong that was cut into the bowl's glaze in 1776 

(Fig. 12). The bowl is a heavily potted form with opalescent 

blue glaze shot through with splashes of purple from 

copper. In his inscription, Qianlong correctly assigns a 

date of Yuan dynasty to the bowl and acknowledges that it 

is not the equal of the fine Song-dynasty Jun wares already 

in the palace collection, nor is it the high standard that he 

usually collects. Rather, the bowl's importance lies in the 

fact that it was discovered by Qing soldiers in the northern 

frontier of Xinjiang Province, an area that Qianlong conquered 

in 1759. 

In the inscription, Qianlong ruminates about 

the history ofUrumchi (Wulumuqi) in Xinjiang, noting 

that the area was traditionally uncivilized. Qianlong 

wrote that Urumchi suffered many hardships over a 

thousand years, but "since the pacification of the 

province of IIi and the establishment of military garrisons 

[actions by Qianlong], the area has been opened 

to cultivation." He ends his comment: "Soldiers' 

encampments can safeguard the frontier peoples so 

that dwellers in small villages can endeavor to live happily 

for a hundred generations" (Qianlong 1749, chuan 

34:61-62; translation indebted to Thomas Lawton's 


IMPERIAL PASTIMES: DILETfANTISM AS STATECRAFf IN THE 18TH CENTURY 

unpublished notes). The emperor's text is a political 

polemic thinly disguised as an aesthetic appreciation of 

the bowl. 

Comments by Qianlong engraved on a Cizhoutype 

ceramic pillow of the 12th century, now in the collection 

of the Freer Gallery, demonstrate a different political 

expediency: using art as an opportunity to showcase scholarlyerudition 

(Fig. 13). Qianlong had his calligraphy 

incised into the pillow in 1768; the engraved characters 

were originally filled with cinnabar powder to make them 

stand out. 

The emperor aims to appear scholarly in his text 

but ironically begins with the mistaken judgment that the 

pillow is Ding ware, probably having been misled by its 

white color. Qianlong continues the text with several tortured 

literary allusions, which, like Qianlong's judgment 

as a connoisseur, also were unintentionally ironic. The 

emperor extols the pure white undecorated pillow as an 

example of the moral superiority of plainness; meanwhile, 

he destroyed that very quality by engraving his calligraphy 

and filling in the characters with bright red. His inscription 

ends with a more apt literary allusion to the classic 

story the "Yellow Millet Dream," in which a traveler takes a 

nap on a magic pillow and experiences a lifetime of events 

in the time it takes to cook millet. 

The examples discussed above suggest that 

Qianlong was always eager to use art to further his image 

as a cultured sovereign, no matter whether art collecting 

also brought genuine pleasure. Pleasure was secondary. 

The painting "Is It One or Two" by the court artist Yao 

Wenhan illustrates Qianlong seated in a room surrounded 

by ancient bronzes, which may reflect personal 

taste. Enthusiasm for bronzes a lso carried political 

momentum, as the antique ritual vessels were associated 

with China's "golden past." By possessing these treasures, 

Qianlong reinforced that he was the rightful legatee of 

ancient tradition. 

COMMISSIONING CONTEMPORARY ART 

In addition to accruing antique art, the Kangxi, 

Yongzheng, and Qianlong emperors appreciated contemporary 

precious objects. Kangxi and his heirs enjoyed 

chime clocks, enamelware, glassware, snuff bottles, 

Songh ua inkstones, ceramics, jades, scholarly accoutrements, 

and finely crafted furniture, in addition to the 

traditionally collected paintings, calligraphy, and bronzes. 

The diversity of objects that received imperial attention 

hints at admirable intellectual curiosity and broad aesthetic 

interests. A love of exoticism is indicated by the first 

four items, either made in Europe or manufactured in 

Chinese palace-run workshops that had adopted foreign 


technology and designs. Perhaps more to the point, the 

Western style indicated the universal comprehensiveness 

of the emperor's collection. 

The use of Songhua variegated slate, first used to 

make prized inkstones and carvings at the Qing imperial 

court, also owes some of its popularity to political gesturing. 

Before the 18th century, Duan stone from 

Guangdong had been the only popular choice for inkstones. 

It is surely no coincidence that Songhua slate is 

mined from below the water table in areas of Manchuria. 

(Some lesser quality Songhua stones come from 

Liaoning.) The shift in taste suggests ethnic pride. 

In 1680 Kangxi established the imperial workshops 

to oversee the production of items required at 

court. "Artisans chosen b y the Soochow [Suzhoul 

Imperial Silk Manufacturing Office and the Canton 

[Guangdongl Customs Office arrived from the south; 

glass workers chosen by the governor of Shantung 

[Shangdongl were sent to the capital, and painters from 

regional areas throughout the empire also gathered at 

court" (Chang 1996: II). The search for arts and crafts specialists 

from throughout the empire served the dual purpose 

of bringing the best specialists to court while representing 

the emperor's domain in a microcosm. 

Yongzheng continued the policy of drafting craftsmen 

from throughout the e mpire, but Qianlong gradually 

began to show partiality: For example, for woodworking, 

he ultimately preferred the intricate carving of Cantonese 

style. The aesthetic pleasure d e rived from this region's 

style overtook a need for comprehensiveness. But in other 

regards, the Qianlong imperial household continued its 

support of pan-Chinese and international art in order to 

further the image of the emperor presiding over a universal 

array of objects. 

TREASURE BOXES 

Obsession in collecting culminated at the court 

with the creation of "treasure boxes," portable repositories 

of miniature objects carefully assembled together. The 

palace craze for treasure boxes, which reached its height 

during the Qianlong reign, stemmed from several factors. 

The treasure boxes could amuse a viewer, but they also 

were practical as a way to organize and store thousands of 

small palace treasures within easy reach (Watt 

1996:549-553). More important, the world of miniature 

objects held within a treasure box could serve as a prop to 

indirectly support the emperor's claim to universal rule. 

When Qianlong presided over a treasure box containing 

both foreign and Chinese articles, he was figuratively the 

Lord of the World. Examples of foreign exotica found in 

some boxes include miniature binoculars, French agate, 


JAN STUART 

and ormolu toiletry bottles. Some treasure boxes contain a 

single category of Chinese object, such as j ade or bronze, 

but these collections typically embrace objects from the 

neolithic period to the 18th century, as if to underscore 

the emperor's command over time. 

Treasure boxes with cleverly d esigned shelves 

and secret drawers were first popular as decorations in 

the palace living quarters in the 18th century. Some of 

the boxes were old Ming lacque r chests, cut down and 

retrofitted with new interiors, but most were newly made. 

The invention of treasure boxes was indebted to Ming 

customs. The practice of Ming scholars to fill a tiered 

wooden box with a few favored jade objects and the "four 

treasures of the scholar's studio" was a model. The Ming 

scholars m igh t take the boxes whe n they trave led or 

place them on a desk. Concealed storage compartments 

in some Ming cabinets may have provided a source of 

inspiration for the hidden drawe rs in the Qing treasure 

boxes. A large lacquer box on a shelf in the court painting 

"Woman in a Room Filled with Antiques" may represent 

one of the earliest treasure boxes enjoyed at court. 

The majority of the boxes date to the Qianlong reign. 

More than thirty from that period are in the National 

Palace Museum, Taipei. 

Often Qianlong would collect a group of objects 

and then commission a box to house them, but sometimes 

the box was crafted first and objects found to fill it. For a 

hard-to-fill compartment, the emperor might order a 

court artist to paint a tiny scroll custom-sized to fit the 

space. One example is an 18th-century copy of a famous 

Song-dynasty dragon painting by Chen Rong (both original 

and copy are in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts). 

Qianlong's desire to have famous paintings and calligraphic 

works recopied in miniature to fill a treasure box 

reveals how important the act of collecting was to him. 

Some of the albums and scrolls are no bigger than a coin, 

an unnatural size limitation for a painter. The artistic compromise 

a painter had to endure was irrelevant to 

Qianlong, whose commissions were motivated not so 

much by artistic inspiration or aesthetic spirit as by a compulsion 

to own a universe of goods. By having miniature 

objects, h e could keep an index of his encyclopedic cultural 

wealth near at hand. 

A cylindrical box, which has a bamboo skin carved 

with lotus flowers, represents the concept of "treasure box 

as microcosm" (Fig. 14). The cylinder is divided into four 

pie-shaped wedges, which, when the box is opened, fold 

back on hinges. Their rounded edges meet at the center, 

leaving a small, hollow air shaft between them. In this configuration, 

the cylindrical box is transformed into a 

square, with the pointed ends of the pie wedges at the corners. 

By encompassing both a circular and a square fOl-m, 


the shape of the box symboli zes the unive rse. In traditional 

Chinese thought, a circle and square represent 

heave n and earth, respectively. The designe rs of the box 

may also have intended the transformation from circle to 

square as an allusion to the principle of yin and yang-the 

two bipolar opposites wh ose cyclical inte raction is the 

source of cosmic regeneration. 

Mter the box is opened into a square, its shape can 

b e m a nipulate d once aga in. The four wed ges can b e 

pulled out and extended in a straight line so that the box 

fo rms a table screen, a comm on object for u se on a 

scholar's d esk. In this position all the treasures on the 

shelves--:jades from the Han through Qing dynasties-are 

e xposed , and closed drawers at th e base promise the 

discovery of diminutive p aintings. The all-embracing 

chronological selection of jades alludes to the emperor's 

command over Chinese culture, past and present. 

A delightful feature of the box is the inclusion of 

semicircular shelves that rotate like revolving stages. v\Then 

spun around, they reveal reverse-painted glass screens that 

hide the jade obj ects from view. The glass sc reens are 

painted with European vi llage landscapes, and the rotating 

shelves are supported on turned wooden balusters that 

copy Western architectural members. In a box designed to 

house a collection of all Chinese obj ects, these foreign elements 

provide a symbolic reference to Qianlong's position 

as a universal monarch. 

Extraordinary time and skill went into the execution 

of each treasure box. One tiny lacquer box in the 

sha pe of a rooster opens to reveal a dragon boat carved 

from ivory. Although only six centimeters long, the doors 

and windows of the boat were cut with such precision that 

they open and close. This tour de force carving surprises 

and d elights the viewer, but it also reveals an excessive 

amount of labor devoted to impe rial "playthings." The 

investment of time and money in treasure boxes ensured 

them a place as symbols of the seeming infinitude of imperial 

resources. 

One unusual U'easure box contains five cards as its 

sole contents. The images on the cards are painted with a 

combination of Chinese pigments and Western oil paints. 

One card depicts a bald man dressed in a plain, informal 

Chinese robe, and the othe r four cards display elaborate 

h ats and costumes painted around a blank space left for 

the head . When the card with the face is placed beneath 

one of the others, the change of clothing provides a new 

ide ntity for the figure. The four possibilities are: a woman, 

a high-ranking court official, a retired scholar, and a warrior. 

It is uncertain whether the face represents Qianlong, 

but the facial characteristics are not dissimilar from him as 

a young man. In any case, the "game" (or political strategy) 

of assuming identity through "idealized facial features, 


IMPERIAL PASTIMES: DILETTANTISM AS STATECRAFT IN THE 18TH CENTURY 

costume, or setting .. . [ide ntified] with a specific role or 

archetype" was a popular conceit at the 18th-century court 

(Hearn 1987:108), as we have seen in the xingle tu. 

The Yongzheng and Qianlong emperors had fullsize 

portraits of the mse lves pain ted wearing costumes, 

including Buddhist, Daoist, and Western styles of dress. 

T his was not just a Western-style masquerade (Wu Hung 

1995). Rather, by presenting themselves in the dress associated 

with specia l groups in society, the rulers d e m o nstrated 

that in their role as emperor they embraced the full 

realm of human experie nce. T hey were truly world kings. 

FROM HUNTING TO LEISURE 

IN THE GARDEN 

Collecting and commissioning art were the greatest 

of the so-called pastimes for empe rors, but they also 

had less sedenta'1' activities, such as hunting and visiting 

the ir e laborate gardens to wh il e away the hot summe r 

d ays. Hunting had not been terribly important in the 

Ming d ynasty as an impe rial le isure activity, but this 

changed with the arrival of the Manchus, who prided their 

skill as archers and hunters . The Qing emperors went on 

m a ny hunting expeditions, but for the imperia l 

sovereigns, these were more serious ceremonial undertakings 

than pleasurable excursio ns. Shooting tige rs and 

bears was a vehicle to demonstrate martial vigor and claim 

allegiance to Manchu ethnic traditions. 

vVhereas hunting was rooted in Manchu tradition, 

Qing imperial patronage and e njoyment of garde ns followed 

established Chinese practice. The Qing empe rors' 

gardens were in some ways parallel to their treasure boxes. 

The best garden prope rties we re constructed as microcosms 

that could demonstrate impe rial power. One of the 

most famous imperial garde ns is the Palace of Perfect 

Brightness, Yuanming Yuan, which was an estate given by 

Kangxi to Yongzheng whe n he was still a prince in 1709. 

Subsequ e ntly it was be queathe d to Qianlong, whose 

e nthusiasm for the property led him to transform it into 

one of the world's grandest garde ns. It tragically was set 

ablaze and looted by French and British troops in 1860, 

and little is left of the magnificent property except for 

som e crumbled Western-style stone arches and pillars. 

These belonged to a compound of European-style buildings 

that occupied one-fiftieth of the total acreage. Other 

parts of the garden re-created styles of gardens from north 

and south China. The comprehensiveness of Qianlong's 

garden suggested a vast world under his command. 

A letter from Fathe r Attiret, a French Jesuit artist 

who served unde r Qianlong, d escribes one of the 

empe ror's le isure enjoyme nts in the garden: "Several 

times a year the eunuchs dressed and acted the parts of 


egular city people, from beggars to thieves to officials. 

Only the trading was real, the goods being provided by the 

Beijing merchants and sold by eunuchs playing their part" 

(Durand and Thiriez 1993:84). 

This activity probably described a palace entertainment 

centered on one of Qianlong's favorite scrolls in his 

collection , Zhang Zeduan ' s early 12th-century river 

panorama "Qingming shanghe tu" (Palace Museum, 

Beijing). The scroll depicts bustling commercial activities 

along a major waterway. Apparently possessing the scroll 

was not enough for Qianlong. He not only ordered court 

artists to create a brightly colored copy for him of Zhang's 

monochrome scroll (rather like Ted Turner's colorizing a 

movie), but he also mandated that the scroll be brought to 

life. Qianlong periodically ordered people in the court to 

re-enact some of the scenes of street life and mercantile 

activity in Zhang's scroll. Foreshadowing a modern "t11eme 

park," Qianlong had a section in Yuanming Yuan built for 

this purpose. The grandeur of Qianlong's response to 

Zhang Zeduan's scroll suggests that he was motivated by 

more than aesthetic enjoyment and lighthearted pleasure. 

His actions seem to express a megalomaniacal manifestation 

of imperial power. The busy commercial activity he 

had re-enacted suggested the health and wealth of the 

court-Qianlong's righteous rule promoted peace and 

prospedty throughout the empire. This garden "game" 

demonstrated that life unde r the Qianlong emperor was 

as prosperous as during the heyday of the Song dynasty. In 

the end analysis, the beautiful and enjoyable objects and 

imperial gardens that Qianlong and the other 18th-century 

emperors surrounded themselves with in their spare 

time seem to have been motivated by political strategy. 

The Qing emperors effectively used their dilettante interests 

in the arts, hunting, and garden design to craft an 

image as Supreme Sovereign. 

NOTES 

1. See Rawski (1996) for an insightful article about 

inspiring Han loyalty through use of ritual music in the 

rites of ascending to the t11rone. 

2. Yu Hui (1996:42- 50) differs from Wu Hung 

(1995) in his interpretation of "Spring' s Peaceful 

Message" and by implication accepts the activities in most 

xingle tu paintings at face value. Yu states there was 

"increasing latitude given artists to show scenes of imperial 

private lives, with the sovereigns engaged in non-political 

and non-ceremonial activities such as family gatherings, 

hunting expeditions and otl1er pastimes. In such portraits, 

clearly undertaken with imperial consent, court artists 

were able to portray their subjects with greater intimacy 

and naturalism" (p. 44). I emphatically disagree with Yu 's 


JAN STUART 

reading of xingle tu as documents of "normal, joyful family 

festival scene[sJ " (p. 45). 

Li ao Baoxiu (1995) also accepts xingle tu paintings 

as accurate depictions of court events and customs. I 

believe that while the material objects represented in a 

xingle tu are usually accurate, the events depicted are fictional 

and chosen for political value. 

3. The Qing emperors' grasp of art's political 

value has modern parallels. Chiang Kai-shek took the 

palace art collection to Taiwan with the relocation of the 

Nationalist Government. His action was promoted as 

safeguarding the collection, but his gesture also could be 

used to bolste r his status. As the possessor of China's cultural 

h eritage, Chiang was in a better position to b e 

accepted as the nation's political leader. At the very least, 

he would be seen as a cultured head of state, which was 

smart "image making." 

4. The set of eighteen desk ornaments has been 

studied by Berthold Laufer (1934) . Each piece originally 

came in its own wooden box with a label written in 

Chinese, Manchu, and Tibetan. The prominent use of 

turquoise and gold for each piece refl ects a Tibetan style; 

Laufe r proposes that the set was made in Tibet and presented 

by an official to Qianlong in 1783. The set was still 

together in the early 20th century but was sold as individual 

lots by Parish-Watson Company, New York, in 1937. The 

Freer purchased the ntyi scepter at that time. A pierced 

box or perfume r was sold at Spink's in London in 1987, 

and anotl1er two pieces are in a private collection in Texas. 

5.Jiang Pu was a painter and the son of Jiang 

Tingxi , o n e of the most famous artists in the court 

academy of painters. Jiang Pu wrote a preface for the 

"Sericulture" scroll before he presented it to the throne, 

but his text is undated. 

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the emperor and his women - Denver Museum of Nature & Science

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