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. 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. 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. 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.

Origins

Chinese Hunting has been an important element of Chinese elite identity since at least the Zhou dynasty. Hunting, warfare, and animal sacrifice were intimately linked in the culture of the Zhou aristocracy. As Chinese society became progressively more agrarian, hunting was transformed into a ritual activity associated with the elite. Because the bow and arrow were used both for hunting and for waging war, the practice of archery became a defining trait of the proper gentleman of the Zhou period. A common theme throughout Chinese history is the juxtaposition of hunting and warfare. As one Zhou dynasty writer put it: Therefore one uses the spring hunt, the summer hunt, the autumn hunt, and the winter hunt, all in the intervals between agricultural labor, to practice the [great] services. Every three years there should be a review of the troops... The lord does not shoot any bird or beast whose flesh is not offered in the sacrificial pots or whose hide, teeth, bones, horns, fur, or feathers are not used on the sacrificial vessels.

In the classic 14th century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Chancellor Cao Cao of the Han dynasty states: "The kings and emperors of ancient times held four grand hunts yearly, riding forth from the capital each season to show the world their prowess." These four seasonal hunts were the spring hunt (), summer hunt (), autumn hunt, and winter hunt (). Such ritual hunts were regular events in the Tang dynasty, and were sometimes criticized for their extravagance. Emperors, however, saw hunting as an important military exercise. Emperor Taizong of Tang defended his frequent hunting, saying: "At present the empire is without trouble, but military preparations cannot be forgotten."

Inner Asian Although it was known by the same Chinese name (qiuxian) as the autumn hunts of Chinese antiquity, the autumn hunt of the Qing dynasty was more directly influenced by the hunting practices of the Inner Asian horse cultures. The Manchus who conquered the Ming dynasty and founded the Qing were themselves part of that tradition. The Qing empire encompassed not only Manchus but also Mongols, Turkic peoples, and other steppe nomads. Like the Mongols of the Yuan dynasty and the Khitans of the Liao dynasty, the Manchus of the Qing practiced a form of battue hunting, in which groups of soldiers would encircle a large area of forest and drive their prey into clearings where they could be shot. This style of hunting was called aba in Manchu.

As recorded by Marco Polo, Kublai Khan had a hunting preserve near his summer capital at Xanadu (Shangdu). The khan hunted there regularly during his reign. Mongol and Khitan khans considered hunting an important form of military training, and practiced it regularly. For steppe nomads like themselves, hunting was still an important part of daily life, and not just an idle pursuit of the upper classes as it had become among the Han Chinese. Emperor Taizong of the Khitan Liao dynasty echoed Emperor Taizong of Tang when he remarked, "Our hunting is not merely the pursuit of enjoyment, but a means of practicing warfare!"

The Jurchens of the Jin dynasty, ancestors of the Manchus, organized their military units along the same lines as their hunting parties. This practice was carried on by the Manchus. From these units emerged the companies, called niru ("arrow"), that formed the basic building blocks of the Eight Banners military system that went on to conquer China. The pre-conquest Manchus participated frequently in organized hunts. In 1630, before the capture of Beijing, Hong Taiji established a hunting ground near the old Qing capital of Mukden (Shenyang). However, it was his grandson the Kangxi Emperor who would start the tradition of regular annual hunts.

Mulan hunting preserve

Establishment The tradition of hunting at Mulan in the autumn came about as the result of Kangxi's 1681 hunting expedition in lands belonging to his Mongol allies, near the site of the former Yuan capital Shangdu. These lands were gifted to Kangxi at the end of his visit. In 1683, Kangxi returned to hunt again and the lands were established as an official hunting preserve, and bounded by a willow palisade.

Environment The hunting preserve was located in Rehe (Jehol) province, which has since been divided among the provinces of Hebei, Liaoning, and Inner Mongolia. It occupied a densely forested area where Mongols had hunted for generations. The area contained 67 clearings, called hoihan in Manchu, that animals could be driven into as part of the aba hunt. These clearings usually had Mongolian names, reflecting the area's history as a traditional Mongol hunting ground. For much of its history, it was known simply as "the hunting ground at Rehe". The Chinese name Mulan () is a phonetic translation of the Manchu term muran, which refers to a hunting method in which hunters would whistle for deer, using decoy deer heads as a lure. An 1807 inscription by the Jiaqing Emperor refers to the hunting preserve as Mulan/Muran, and today the area is called Mulan Weichang (). It is located in Weichang Manchu and Mongol Autonomous County in Hebei.

During the Kangxi era, plentiful game was to be found at Mulan. The emperor was able to hunt not only deer, but also tigers, bears, leopards, and wolves. Qing emperors enjoyed the beauty of the natural environment, and the escape it provided them from urban life in the capital. As Kangxi wrote: I am fine. Right now there is no business. At this cool place outside the passes, everyone, from soldiers down to errand-runners, has set up their tents. We've been living here eating game and fish from the mountains and rivers. At night I cover myself with just a cotton blanket. The rainfall has been just right. My mind and heart are tranquil.

Lord Macartney, who visited the Qianlong Emperor at Rehe in 1793 during the Macartney Embassy, gave the following account of the area: It is one of the finest forest scenes in the world, wild, woody, mountainous and rocky, abounding with stags and deer of different species, and most of the other beasts of chace, not dangerous to man... In many places immense woods, chiefly oaks, pines, and chestnuts, grow upon perpendicular steeps... These woods often clamber over the loftiest pinnacles of the stony hills or, gathering on the skirts of them, descend with a rapid sweep and bury themselves in the deepest vallies.

Within the preserve Macartney also found "palaces, banquetting houses, and monasteries," accessed by roads "hewn out of the living rock". From a hilltop pavilion, he saw around him "so rich, so various, so beautiful, so sublime a prospect [his] eyes had ever beheld". In the later years of the Qianlong era and in the Jiaqing era, however, illegal poaching and logging in the preserve became a serious issue. Jiaqing observed in the early 1800s that the damage to the local ecosystem had made it very difficult to hunt there.

Administration In 1705, the Kangxi Emperor created a hunting office within the Eight Banners to manage the preserve at Mulan. The headquarters of its Chief Controller was located in Chengde. All but one of the officials who held this position were Manchus, the one exception being a Mongol. In 1749, responsibility over Mulan was given over to the Lifan Yuan, which supervised the Qing dynasty's Mongolian dependencies. The Qianlong Emperor increased the number of officials at Mulan in 1753. During his reign, the number of hunting guards increased from 191 to 800. The number again increased to 950 under the Jiaqing Emperor. Hunting guards at Mulan were selected among bannermen from the capital, and were responsible for preventing poaching, squatting, and illegal logging, as well as for managing the wildlife in Mulan's sixty-seven (later seventy-two) hunting zones. With few exceptions, all permanent construction was banned in the preserve. In 1764, responsibility for Mulan was given back to the Eight Banners, under the lieutenant general of the Rehe garrison. Throughout its history, the administration of the Mulan preserve was staffed entirely with Manchus and Mongols.

History

Kangxi era