In 1689, Kangxi, the emperor of China, embarked on a tour to inspect his southern provinces, undertaking a two-thousand-mile journey from Beijing to the cities and towns of the Yangzi Delta and back. Included in the emperor’s retinue were his mother, the dowager empress, as well as imperial wives, children, concubines, bureaucrats, and thousands of soldiers.
As part of the tour, Kangxi climbed to the top of Mount Tai, the “cosmic peak of the East” and a site sacred to all three Chinese religious and philosophical traditions—Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. For centuries, Chinese emperors had made pilgrimages to Mount Tai to worship earth (at the base) and heaven (at the summit) and affirm the legitimacy of their rule. An emperor only visited when he could provide a glowing account to the cosmos about the state on the empire. In Kangxi’s case, he could report on a new era of stability in the nascent Qing dynasty and increasing prosperity throughout the empire.
Kangxi’s visit to Mount Tai represented more than just the fulfillment of an age-old religious rite. Potent political symbolism was at work at well. As a Manchu, Kangxi was considered an outsider by the Han Chinese over whom he ruled. When the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) began to crumble in the early seventeenth century, the Manchus, who ruled the region to the northeast, began seizing territory. By 1662, the Manchus controlled Beijing, had disposed of claimants to the Ming throne and launched the Qing dynasty that would rule China until 1911. By visiting Mount Tai, the emperor sent a message to his subjects that he intended to rule not as a Manchu conqueror, but as a traditional Chinese monarch.
Given the importance of Kangxi’s visit to Mount Tai and of the inspection tour itself, it is not surprising that steps were taken to record it for posterity. Instead of a soaring obelisk or a towering arch, which would be the European choice, the tour was commemorated in a series of twelve handscrolls. The format was perfect for documenting a long journey, as it would allow the viewer to follow the progress of the emperor’s retinue. Each scroll measured twenty-seven inches from bottom to top and forty to eighty-five feet wide. Laid end to end, the scrolls spanned the length of three football fields.
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