Qianlong 乾隆
Qianlong (乾隆) traveled to the south of the Qing empire six times. The silk scrolls commissioned to commemorate the first journey show both the emperor's arrival in Suzhou along the Grand Canal and his inspection of the dams at the confluence of the Huai and Yellow Rivers. On screen, these travels look different. In the Hong Kong picture The Emperor Goes South, the disguised sovereign meets street singers and finds himself in an awkward spot over money, and half a century later Adam Cheng Siu-Chow played just such a traveler and turned him into one of the most recognizable emperors on Chinese television.
Hongli was born in 1711, when the country was still ruled by his grandfather Kangxi. In 1727 he married a girl from the Manchu Fuca clan, who became Empress Xiaoxian after his accession to the throne. In 1735 Hongli inherited the throne from his father, the Yongzheng Emperor. 1736 became the first year of the reign under the era name Qianlong (乾隆). It was under this name that Hongli entered history.
Qianlong inherited an empire with strong central authority and significantly expanded its domains. In the 1750s the Qing troops crushed the Dzungar Khanate and then subjugated the oases south of the Tianshan. Later the emperor included these campaigns among the "Ten Great Victories," which he wrote about in 1792. The same list included the suppression of Lin Shuangwen's rebellion on Taiwan and the campaign in Burma, from which the Qing army withdrew under the terms of a truce after heavy losses.
In 1751 Qianlong, following Kangxi's example, set out on his first inspection tour to the south. In all, by 1784 he made six such journeys. Maintaining the court and its numerous retinue on the road cost the treasury dearly, but the trips also had quite practical purposes. The emperor inspected the structures on which it depended whether the river would flood the fields and whether navigation would be preserved. He ordered the first journey to be captured on twelve silk scrolls. The court painter Xu Yang and his assistants began the work only in 1764 and finished it six years later. On the fourth scroll, held in the Metropolitan Museum, the emperor inspects the dikes at the confluence of the Huai and the Yellow River.
Qianlong wrote poetry himself and practiced calligraphy. On old paintings from his collection one can still see imperial inscriptions and impressions of seals. Among his seals was a special one, with two intertwined dragons, carved from green jade for his eightieth birthday. Under Qianlong the Shiqu Baoji, a catalogue of the palace's painting and calligraphy, was compiled. The first part was completed in 1745, the second in 1793, and the third was prepared already under his son. The catalogue noted where a work was kept, to which era it was attributed, and how highly it was prized.
Toward the end of the reign, a special position at court was taken by Heshen. He oversaw the finances and at the same time held several of the highest offices. His eldest son married the emperor's daughter. In 1796, after sixty years of rule, Qianlong passed the throne to his son Jiaqing so as not to reign longer than his grandfather Kangxi. He took the title of retired emperor and continued to influence state affairs. Only after his father's death in 1799 was Jiaqing able to remove Heshen, confiscate his property and order him to take his own life.
The emperor in disguise, travelling without a retinue, was already shown in Hong Kong cinema in 1940. Qianlong was played by Lai Siu-Shan in The Emperor Goes South. In the 1970s the Shaw Brothers studio took up the subject. In The Adventures of Emperor Chien Lung (1977) by Li Han-Hsiang, the sovereign first matches wits with his courtiers and then sets off for the south. Xi Shuo Qian Long with Adam Cheng appeared in Taiwan in 1991. In 1993 the first series was shown in Hong Kong, while Taiwan released a sequel with the same actor. Audiences saw the sovereign on the road, among people who knew him only under an assumed name.
In palace dramas Qianlong was portrayed in different ways. Zhang Tie-Lin played him in My Fair Princess (1998), where the appearance of a supposed imperial daughter turns court life upside down, and then returned to the role in The Bronze Teeth (2001), a comedy about the court scholar Ji Xiaolan and Heshen. In 2018 two melodramas about his court came out at once. In Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace the emperor is played by Wallace Huo, and the story centers on the gradual disintegration of his marriage. In Story of Yanxi Palace with Nie Yuan, the foreground belongs to Wei Yingluo, who enters the palace as a maid and learns court ways from the very bottom.
