Page 60 - Ming_China_Courts_and_Contacts_1400_1450 Craig lunas

Plate 5.4 Wang Fu 王绂 (1362–1416), Eight Views of Beijing (Beijing bajing tu 北京八景圖), dated 1414. Views four, ‘Rainbow over Jade
Spring’ and two, ‘Clear Ripples at Taiye Lake’. Handscroll, ink on paper, height 42.1cm, length 2006.5cm. National Museum of China

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inside the city of Dadu. But by the beginning of the 15th Canal. The policy worked increasingly well up through the
century, the lake was no longer available as a port and the early 1430s. Subsequently, however, between the drying up
canals from Beijing to Tianjin were silted up and in of water sources and the breaching of dykes after heavy
disrepair. Between 1409 and 1413, one of those canals, rains, canal access to Beijing became undependable and had
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starting from the southeast corner of Beijing, was opened up to be combined with overland transportation.
again by dint of a massive campaign of hydraulic The architectural symbol of the importance of water in
intervention, and a gateway port was created at Beijing c. 1450 was the makara waterspout, which animated
Zhangjiawan 張家灣. This project was part of a larger Ming the marble platforms of palace halls, ritual altars, temples
policy of shifting the transportation of tax grain away from and bridges (Pl. 5.5). The makara (jing 鯨 or yu long 魚龍) is
the ocean, where it was vulnerable to pirates, to the Grand a sea monster, so it makes sense that it was already
omnipresent in Yuan-dynasty Dadu, when there was a
Plate 5.5 Makara water spout, Temple of Heaven, Beijing particularly active connection to the sea. Under the Yongle
emperor the Ming court was also very involved with
maritime trade (see Chapters 3, 12, 22 and 27 by Tansen Sen,
Zhao Zhongnan, Sally Church and Craig Clunas in this
volume), so it is no surprise that the makara remained
omnipresent in the new capital of Beijing. But by 1450 the
Ming court had turned away from the ocean, and the
makara began its gradual transformation in popular
consciousness into a type of dragon.

Flows: legitimacy
The flow of water ensured the city’s demographic and
economic health. But the political health of the new capital
depended on the flow of something much more intangible, a

50 | Ming China: Courts and Contacts 1400–1450