The imperial hunt of the Qing dynasty was an annual rite of the emperors of China's Qing dynasty. It was first organized in 1681 by the Kangxi Emperor at the imperial hunting grounds at Mulan (modern-day Weichang Manchu and Mongol Autonomous County, near what would become the summer residence of the Qing emperors at Chengde). Starting in 1683 the event was held annually at Mulan during the autumn, lasting up to a month. The Qing dynasty hunt was a synthesis of earlier Han and Inner Asian hunting traditions, particularly those of the Manchus and Mongols. The emperor himself participated in the hunt, along with thousands of soldiers, imperial family members, and government officials.
The Manchu emperors of the Qing dynasty used the hunt as a military exercise to train their troops in the traditional martial skills of archery and horsemanship. The hunt was also a bonding ritual intended to emphasize the shared Inner Asian martial traditions of the Manchu and Mongol soldiers of the Eight Banners who were selected to participate; Han troops were excluded from the hunt.[2] The event provided an opportunity for Qing emperors to leave the confines of the Forbidden City in Beijing and return to the forests "north of the wall", closer to their ancestral homelands, where they could hunt and live as their ancestors did. As the Manchus grew accustomed to living in Chinese cities, Qing emperors expanded and ritualized the imperial hunt as a sort of invented tradition, using it to preserve the traditional Manchu way of life. The Qianlong Emperor made it a key element of his effort to halt the steady decline of military discipline within the Eight Banners during his reign.
Each year, for the duration of the hunt, Mulan served as a temporary capital and a venue for diplomatic activities. The Qianlong Emperor required the leaders of Inner Asian tributary states to join in the hunt on a rotating basis, and he frequently received foreign emissaries there rather than in the imperial palace at Beijing.[3] To facilitate the continued operation of the imperial government in the emperor's absence, many government officials accompanied the emperor to Mulan, where they lived and worked in a tent city replicating the layout of the Forbidden City, exchanging correspondence regularly with Beijing and Chengde.
Altogether, the Kangxi, Qianlong, and Jiaqing Emperors participated in 91 hunts during their reigns.[4] As an important element of Qing military culture, and an embodiment of Manchu identity, the Qing imperial hunt featured regularly in the official artwork and poetry of the Qing dynasty. It was the subject of several paintings by Giuseppe Castiglione, the Italian Jesuit who served as a court painter to Qianlong. Images of the hunt, much like images commemorating victories in battle and other military subjects, were regularly commissioned by the imperial court as a form of propaganda, portraying Qing emperors as exemplars of traditional martial (wu) values.
^Elliott 2001, pp. 183–184.
^Elliott 2001, p. 335.
^Waley-Cohen 2006, pp. 83–84.
^Elliott & Chia 2004, p. 72.
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