1796 Alexander View of the Putuo Zongcheng Temple, Rehe (Chengde), China

An impressive view of the Putuo Zongcheng Temple drawn by William Alexander based on a sketch by Henry William Parish and engraved by Benjamin Pouncy for inclusion in George Leonard Staunton's An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China. It depicts the Putuo Zongcheng Temple (普陀宗乘之庙) at Rehe (here as Zhe-hol, now Chengde), the Qing summer palace where the British Macartney embassy met with the Qianlong Emperor in 1793.

A Closer Look

The view depicts one edge of the Mountain Resort complex at Rehe and is divided by a low wall (like all imperial palaces, access was tightly restricted to high-level officials, many of them eunuchs, and members of the imperial household). On either side of the wall, Buddhist monks mill about engaged in discussions. The Putuo Zongcheng Temple, modeled on the Potala Palace in Lhasa, the winter palace of the Dalai Lamas, stands prominently at left. At right is the complex's famous pagoda, standing seventy meters tall, one of the tallest in China. Parish's choice of perspective was curious as the temple is most often drawn or photographed from the front, from the bottom of the hill sloping to the right, but he likely chose this angle to include the pagoda.

The Putuo Zongcheng Temple, completed in 1771, was a pet project of Qianlong and one of the more recent structures at Rehe at the time of the Macartney Embassy. As the name indicates, it was a functioning Buddhist temple, but its various halls and wings were used for other purposes as well, including receiving missions from frontier and foreign peoples. The verso (engraved by Joseph Baker) includes a schematic of the temple complex, though as Parish could not view the interior, some of the drawing is based on speculation.

Of all the palaces and gardens built during the Qing Dynasty (1644 - 1911), the complex at Rehe is perhaps the most elaborate and impressive, leading to its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. Chosen by the Kangxi Emperor as the site for a summer residence beyond the Great Wall and the mountains to the north of Beijing that render it steamy in the summer months, the Mountain Resort at Rehe was elaborated throughout the 18th century. The complex at Rehe is noted both for its clever integration of gardens and structures with the natural landscape and the incorporation of architectural styles from throughout the Qing realm, including buildings resembling the Forbidden City in Beijing and the Potala Palace (as seen here).

As the Qing emperors oversaw a vast empire that included not only the territory of their predecessors, the Ming, but also large portions of the nomadic steppe (Mongolia), Central Asia (Xinjiang), Tibet, and Manchuria (homeland of the Qing's Manchu elite), they deliberately cultivated relations with non-Chinese frontier peoples by inviting them to Rehe, exchanging gifts, distributing patronage, and, as mentioned, building temples and palaces in their local style. In fact, the Putuo Zongcheng Temple was one of eight 'outlying temples' (外八廟) at Rehe that were specifically designed with these ends in mind and were overseen by the Lifanyuan (理藩院), the Qing office tasked with managing relations with such frontier peoples.

When Macartney's group arrived in Beijing in late August 1793, the Qianlong Emperor was undertaking a hunting expedition north of the Great Wall, as was customary for that time of year (Qianlong spent nearly every summer at Rehe). Thus, the embassy proceeded to Rehe and on September 14, 1793, after considerable debate over whether Macartney would kowtow to the emperor, the embassy met Qianlong, exchanged gifts, delivered a letter from King George III, enjoyed an opulent banquet, and had a relatively pleasant meeting, though they failed to gain the main concessions desired from the Qing. The kowtow issue has been greatly exaggerated in importance by later commentators but was nevertheless revealing of a fundamental problem with the Macartney mission. To their annoyance, the British delegation was treated like a tribute mission from a vassal state rather than a representative of a sovereign country on equal terms with another sovereign country. But from the Qing perspective, as indicated in Qianlong's lengthy reply to George III's letter, the British, coming from halfway around the world, wanted to suddenly reorder the long-established East Asian system of international relations to suit their particular interests. In fact, Macartney's embassy was only one of several foreign missions present in Rehe at the time, though it was accorded some special recognition and attention by Qianlong and his officials.

The Macartney Mission

The Macartney Embassy was a diplomatic mission by Great Britain to the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty meant to expand British trading rights in China and establish a permanent embassy in Beijing. Thirty-five years earlier, British traders of the East India Company (EIC) were confined to trading with an officially sanctioned set of Chinese traders in Canton (Guangzhou). Although the Canton System was profitable, the EIC found it too cumbersome and restrictive, while also feeling that a direct line to Beijing was necessary to resolve disputes, rather than working through several layers of intermediaries and bureaucrats. A mission led by Charles Cathcart had been sent to Beijing in 1787, but Cathcart died before reaching China and the embassy was abandoned.

George Macartney's mission left Britain in September 1792 with a retinue of translators, painters, secretaries, scholars, and scientists. The embassy traveled via Madeira, Tenerife, Rio de Janeiro, the Cape of Good Hope, Indonesia, and Macau, before moving up the Chinese coast and reaching Beijing on August 21, 1793. Macartney's second in command was George Leonard Staunton who served as the expedition's secretary and chronicler. Staunton's eleven-year-old son, George Thomas Staunton, nominally the ambassador's page, learned Chinese during the voyage, became very adept at the language, and served as a translator for the mission alongside the Catholic priests Paolo Zhou (周保羅) and Jacobus Li Zibiao (李自標). The younger Staunton later became chief of the East India Company's factory at Canton, translated works between Chinese and English, and helped found the Royal Asiatic Society.

The embassy was poorly managed from the beginning and, despite considerable pomp from the English perspective, appeared poor and rag-tag to the Qianlong Emperor. Partly through lack of preparation, partly through arrogance, and partly due to the emperor's distaste for the British, the embassy failed in all its primary objectives. This disappointing result was compounded by a now famous letter from Qianlong to King George III that chided the British monarch for his audacity in making demands of the Qing and his ignorance of the Chinese system, ending with a reminder not to treat Chinese laws and regulations lightly, punctuated with the memorable phrase 'Tremblingly obey and show no negligence!' (a common phrase used by the emperor in communications to his own subjects).

Macartney's Mission highlighted cultural misunderstandings between China and the West, and has often been taken as a turning point in Chinese history. Qianlong's dismissal of foreign objects as mere toys and his insistence of the centrality of China in the world's hierarchy of kingdoms have been seen as sign of Chinese intransigence and a harbinger of China's awful course in the 19th century. At the time the embassy visited, Qianlong had been in power for nearly sixty years and had increasingly turned over management of the empire to a small group of self-serving officials, particularly Heshen, remembered as the most corrupt official in Chinese history. In the countryside, overpopulation and famine provoked millenarian religious movements and uprisings. On the southern coast, the EIC began importing opium in larger and larger quantities, eventually causing a severe social and economic crisis throughout southern China. In retrospect, both Chinese and foreign historians of every ideological bent have seen the Macartney Mission as a missed opportunity for the Qing to recognize the tremendous changes taking place in Europe and address the underlying problems that would eventually sink the empire.

Publication History and Census

This view was drawn by William Alexander based on a sketch by Henry William Parish and was engraved by Benjamin Pouncy for inclusion in the first edition of George Leonard Staunton's An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China, published in London by George Nicol in 1797. It is independently cataloged in the holdings of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Getty Research Institute, and the U.K. Government Art Collection, while the full Authentic Account is well-represented in institutional collections.