Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

The Juanqinzhai is notable for its embrace of foreign influences. Qianlong imported enormous mirrors, which would have been an unspeakable conceit in eighteenth-century China. While the cabinets in the Juanqinzhai are ornately Chinese, their asymmetry shows Japanese influence. The exterior windows are glazed with European glass, and the use of glass in the throne has a kind of occidenterie parallel to the distorted version of China evident in Western chinoiserie. The four western bays of the Juanqinzhai, which contain the theater with its stage and throne, boast latticework that has been faux-painted on hardwood to resemble the more ephemeral, less durable speckled bamboo. The walls and ceiling are covered in spectacular trompe l’oeil paintings that make use of the foreshortening and single-point perspective developed in Renaissance Italy. They were heavily influenced by the work of Giuseppe Castiglione, a Jesuit painter, missionary, and imperial adviser who lived in China from 1715 until his death in 1766 and was known by the Chinese as Lang Shining. The murals may incorporate elements painted by Castiglione, though the Juanqinzhai project was undertaken after he died. The ceiling is particularly seductive, with its depiction of a bamboo trellis groaning under the weight of a spectacular wisteria in full bloom—a joyful symbol of many generations of offspring. The wall murals represent a garden, extending the outside aesthetic to the interior. Here, painted peonies would have continued to bloom, skies to remain summer blue through the long, cold Beijing winters. The murals were painted on silk, using Chinese pigment in a Western style applied in keeping with a Chinese aesthetic. The Chinese influence on Western art during this period has been much pondered, but this entangled reciprocity, though less frequent and perhaps less profound, also warrants notice.

Qianlong liked the fantasy of being a hermit in the mountains. The Juanqinzhai clearly reflects the ambivalent nature of such fantasies. He saw no discontinuity between being the richest man in the world and leading an ascetic life. He claimed to want to be known as “the man with nothing to do”—but he never pursued such leisure. It is a sign of imperial decadence at every level to pour enormous resources into keeping choice awake for the sake of choice itself, rather than because you want to make such choices. The pleasure of this garden of contemplation was its construction rather than its inhabitance; he built it to impress himself. Yet the content of the garden suggests a deep commitment to Buddhist precepts. Confucian thought suggests that in order to rule, an emperor had to be an enlightened being, and the garden complex expresses the aspiration to enlightenment, a place where Qianlong could seek the humbleness of his human consciousness, apart from his status as emperor. He appears to have felt that his Buddhist goals were his ultimate ones.

The Manchu Qing subscribed to Tibetan Buddhism rather than the Chan Buddhism that had been more popular in China. The Manchus were allies with the Mongolians in the seventeenth century, and the Dalai Lama conferred a living Buddha status on the Manchu rulers in the mid-1600s. Tibetan Buddhism is more orthodox, as far from Chan Buddhism as Catholicism is from Protestantism. It is focused on compassion toward others, rather than on an inward journey to find enlightenment within the self. Qianlong had been brought up alongside a living Buddha, a Mongolian named Rolpai Dorje, who came to live in the court and was educated with Qianlong. He became the Qianlong Emperor’s Buddhist mentor, teacher, and guide. Identified as a descendant of the bodhisattva Manjusri, Qianlong made extended visits throughout his life to the holy sites at Mount Wutai, where a lock of Manjusri’s hair was said to reside. Qianlong may have escalated into decadence in his later years, but he also aspired to mental cultivation, and the garden is full of spots for meditation and contemplation. The vision behind it, though expensive, is extremely spiritual. Qianlong meditated daily; he built many temples; he had many Buddhist images created. The notion of opulent Buddhism may sound oxymoronic to some Western ears, but it is the guiding principle here. The Tibetan aesthetic is evident in the garden.

Westerners have often perceived the decoration of the buildings and the structure of the garden as separate things, the natural and the man-made, the inner self of thought separated from outward action. These Cartesian dualities do not parse in Qianlong’s sensibility; the interiors of the Juanqinzhai are all made with views of what lies outside them, and there is no such thing as “house” or “garden”—only a single complex. Man, being made by nature, makes only a further show of nature.