{"id":62,"date":"2021-02-14T22:20:05","date_gmt":"2021-02-15T05:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/buildingempire\/?p=62"},"modified":"2021-02-14T22:20:05","modified_gmt":"2021-02-15T05:20:05","slug":"yuanmingyuan-empire-and-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/buildingempire\/2021\/02\/14\/yuanmingyuan-empire-and-image\/","title":{"rendered":"Yuanmingyuan: Empire and Image"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Garden of Perfect Brightness<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much like the collections of colonial trophies in the Crystal Palace in London or the grounds of Versailles, the Yuanmingyuan in Beijing was a complex which housed an array of foreign objects, artwork, pleasure gardens and architecture expressing the Qianlong emperor\u2019s political power.\u00b9 <\/em>The resulting collection of foreign treasures were symptomatic of a common imperial desire to exercise power over a far-reaching global domain, summarized within the contents of a contained landscape. Yuanmingyuan was constructed following an imperial logic of control and heterotopia, exercised through the seen image. The image was the primary means of expressing and understanding imperial power, by illustrating the fantasy of collecting all exotic treasures of the world under one domain. The image of the Yuanmingyuan, therefore, became a source for European understandings of Chinese aesthetics and ultimately defined the cultural weight of its destruction by imperial Europe at the end of the Opium war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b9\u201cGarden of Perfect Brightness\u201d (Yuanmingyuan). Govt.Chinadaily.com.cn. August 16, 2019. <https:\/\/govt.chinadaily.com.cn\/s\/201908\/16\/WS5d562394498ebcb1905787cf\/garden-of-perfect-brightness-yuanming-yuan.html><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fig.1: Plan of the Yuanmingyuan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

All under heaven: The heterotopia of empire<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fig.2: Facade of the Haiyantang, in the Xiyanglou. Facade employs French nationalistic neoclassicism<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Yuanmingyuan complex, constructed from the 16th to 18th century,  held over a thousand structures and encompassed 860 acres: It served primarily as a summer resort for the Qinglong emperor, many of its spaces created for leisure.\u00b2 Inside the imperial gardens, the emperor collected buildings and trinkets from all over the world, including Europe, Asia and distant regions within China. Among these included Mongolian and Tibetan temples,  European palaces and neoclassical architecture, and gardens drawn from Hangzhou and Suzhou. \u00b3 <\/em>The Xiyanglou, literally translating into \u201cWestern-style building\u201d, were a collection of palaces, gardens and a maze in an area of the complex that incorporated European styles, most notably the le notre <\/em>style that was popular in Europe at the time. \u2074 One of these included the Haiyantang, a hall built in a highly decorated French neoclassical style: Its entry was embellished with a seashell-shaped fountain and two grand sweeping staircases, combined with the twin classical columns of the French nationalist style. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to collecting spectacles from foreign countries, the emperor aspired to collect aspects of the world that were inaccessible to nobility. Among the gardens was also an artificial market town, comparable to the busiest commercial street in Beijing at the time. The market town was a place of leisure where the emperor would visit with his entourage, browsing shops and stalls staffed by eunuchs acting as shopowners. Palace ladies acted the part of customers,, while others played even the roles of beggars, thieves, sightseers and minstrels. Another area was set aside as an acting farm, with fields, farm animals and equipment.\u2075 <\/em>Like the construction of the Xiyanglou, the emperor\u2019s mock market and farm were symptomatic of an imperial desire to symbolically collect all aspects of an empire under a single roof, or tianxia, <\/em>\u201call under heaven\u201d. \u2076 Haiyan Lee discusses this imperial desire in relation to Foucault\u2019s heterotopia: A heterotopia is one place that encapsulates all other real places within a culture and places them together, where they are simultaneously represented, altered and in conflict. The heterotopia exists in the institution of society, and lies outside of all of the places that it subsumes.\u2076 Yuanmingyuan and many similar imperial complexes such as the 1851 London exhibition\u2019s Crystal Palace collect culture in such a manner, striving to collect visual tokens of knowledge or conquest, to demonstrate the grand reach and authority of a body of power. Yuanmingyuan in particular aspired to attain a state of utopia, where all places in the Manchu empire and Western oceans were called together into a small microcosm of the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b2 \u201cGarden of Perfect Brightness\u201d (Yuanmingyuan). Govt.Chinadaily.com.cn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b3 Erik Ringmar. “Malice in Wonderland: Dreams of the Orient and the Destruction of the Palace of the Emperor of China.” Journal of World History<\/em> 22, no. 2 (2011): 273-98. Accessed February 15, 2021. http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/23011712<\/a>. 277<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2074 \u201cWestern-Style Palaces\u201d. Govt.Chinadaily.com.cn. August 16, 2019. <https:\/\/govt.chinadaily.com.cn\/s\/201912\/23\/WS5e007fb6498e1ed196a6b620\/western-style-palaces.html><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2075 Haiyan Lee. “The Ruins of Yuanmingyuan: Or, How to Enjoy a National Wound.” Modern China<\/em> 35, no. 2 (2009): 155-90. Accessed February 15, 2021. http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/27746912<\/a>. 173<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2076 ibid. 160<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2077 ibid. 159<\/p>\n\n\n\n