Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

The Qianlong Emperor, the sixth ruler of the Manchu Qing dynasty, ruled officially from 1735 to 1796, though he effectively reigned until 1799. He was noted for his brilliance as a child, anointed over his brothers for his sobriety of demeanor, his learning in literature and philosophy, and his ease in human relations. He was a man of towering ambition, China’s equivalent to Louis XIV, Catherine the Great, or Emperor Franz Josef. He expanded China’s borders and became the wealthiest man in the world; at the height of his rule, China held a positive balance of trade with the West. The author of more than forty thousand poems, he was an impeccable connoisseur with wit, elegance, and artistic talent on his side. But he also oversaw the burning of books and the torture and execution of writers whose work displeased him. Qianlong styled himself in later life as “the old man of the ten perfect victories”—and indeed he had consolidated Qing rule and increased the size of China by a third; at his death, his country’s population had grown more than 20 percent.

Qianlong was the grandson of the Kangxi Emperor, the longest-serving ruler in Chinese history. As a matter of respect, Qianlong was determined not to overshadow his grandfather’s reign, and with this in mind he envisioned retirement—the first emperor to contemplate such a step. For a meaningful disengagement from the machinery of state, he wanted a garden, which he envisioned as a marvelous landscape of sculpted rocks and pavilions. He undertook the project when he was in his early sixties, though he would not consider retirement until he reached eighty-five, one year short of his grandfather’s dominion. The design and construction of his own quarters there, the Juanqinzhai, occupied the emperor from 1771 to 1774; its decoration took another two years. During this period, he handed off most matters of state, allowing corruption to infiltrate his court. After Qianlong’s death, his son-in-law Hashen was forced to commit suicide because he had accumulated so much illicit wealth. Qianlong’s sixty-year rule was the most stable in the world, which allowed for great prosperity, but also engendered cultural stagnation. China was bypassed by modernity and the early glimmers of industrialization. In the period following Qianlong’s rule, foreigners came into China, and overspending on wars and putting down rebellions impoverished the court.

The Juanqinzhai project manifests Qianlong’s blend of finesse, brilliance, and decadent laxity; he built this precious sanctuary as an artistic diversion and never spent a night in it. Though he entered his so-called retirement in 1796, he effectively reigned until his death three years later, refusing to move out of the emperor’s quarters or relinquish his authority.

The retirement garden reproduces the basic imperial processional structure. Its main buildings evoke the primary edifices of the larger complex, with similar public courtyards preceding private ones. Its almost 2 acres were meant to encapsulate the overall structure of the 180-acre Forbidden City. It was also intended as an outsize version of a scholar’s garden, adapting subtle landscape principles from the southern gardens of Suzhou, Yangzhou, and Hangzhou for grand purposes. It would not be a classic scholar’s rockery, nor a locus of imperial magnificence; it would blend the contemplative poetry of one with the stately ambition of the other. For Europeans, mountains represent the terrifying sublime, but for the Chinese, they represent paradise, the geography of the enlightened. The garden evokes such a geography.

This is a winter garden, intended for use during the months when the emperor remained in the Forbidden City. The complex is divided into four courtyards on a north-south axis. This arrangement ensures that the visitor does not experience the space as long and narrow, but rather as a sequence of near squares. Narrow gates—the complex is entered via a curved path through a slit between two rockeries—provide a human scale. To its twenty-seven structures, the emperor gave names that signaled his hopes for the place: one enters through the Gate of Spreading Auspiciousness and passes through, among others, the Hall of Fulfilling Original Wishes (one of the tallest buildings in the Forbidden City), the Building of Extending Delight, the Belvedere of Viewing Achievements, and the Supreme Chamber of Cultivating Harmony. The emperor himself not only named such buildings, but also was the primary designer of the garden. The Lodge of Bamboo Fragrance is conceived as a book; its ornament is entirely calligraphy. Many of the original furnishings were made of rootwood, a costly technique valued by emperors but intended to show disregard for human refinement in favor of the Buddhist ideal of unalloyed nature.