Where Dragon Veins Meet

Where Dragon Veins Meet examines the construction and representations of the Mountain Estate to Escape the Heat (Bishu shanzhuang 避暑山莊) when it was first built under the rulership of the Kangxi emperor (r.1661-1722), exploring the ways that the Manchu court deployed landscapes to perform its authority and to envision a newly-consolidated empire in the early eighteenth century.The Mountain Estate, the largest imperial park-palace complex in the Qing dynasty, is located in Rehe 熱河 (modern-day Chengde 承德), a city in Hebei province that lies between the Qing capital of Beijing and Inner Mongolia.It was originally designed and constructed by the Kangxi emperor and was extensively renovated and developed by his grandson the Qianlong emperor (r.1735-1796).Since its construction, not only did Qing emperors regularly spend time at the Mountain Estate to manage political affairs and enjoy leisure activities, the park-palace also hosted many important events, including the famous Lord Macartney's meeting with the Qianlong emperor in the late eighteenth century.As one of the most important political centers in Qing China (1644-1912), the Mountain Estate has received scholarly attention on its design, architecture, and political importance.But as Whiteman rightly points out, most studies of Qing landscape focus on the Qianlong period, as the emperor was "the dynasty's most prolific garden builder" and left abundant textual and material evidence about his gardens (p.4).To view the Mountain Estate solely through Qianlong's lens, however, leads to "an act of historical erasure" that subsumes "the intensions of an earlier period under the actions of a later one" (p.4).To uncover the original intent of the creator, this book deliberately relies on sources from the Kangxi era to examine its physical sites and various representations.These sources included the emperor's own writing about the estate, officials' accounts about their visits to the park, court artists' hanging scrolls, and albums of park scenes in both woodblock prints and copperplates.Integrating all this textual and visual evidence, this book treats each form of the Mountain Estate "as an active medium" for ideological expression and examines how the court "constructed and conveyed different aspects of its ideology" to its diverse audiences (p. 6).It convincingly demonstrates the Kangxi emperor's deft deployments of multiple media to articulate his rulership as a cosmopolitan ruler who engaged with cultural elements from Chinese history, Inner Asia allies, and foreign countries, and who was committed to incorporate China proper and its periphery into the Qing empire

Ancient history · Archaeology · Beijing · Capital (architecture · China · Emperor · Empire · Estate · Political science · Politics · Real estate · Architecture · Chinese history and philosophy · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law