Page 246 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

could not resist the temptation to write indifferent poems all over
his most treasured paintings and stamp them with large and con-
spicuous seals. His abdication in 1796 (because he considered it
unfilial to occupy the throne longer than his illustrious grand-
father) marks the end of the great days of the Ch'ing Dynasty. To
the familiar story of internal dissolution was added the aggressive
advance of the European powers, whose original admiration had
now given way to hostility, provoked by impatience at irksome
trade restrictions. We need not linger over the tragic history of the
nineteenth century, the shameful Opium Wars, the failure of the
Taiping rebels to regenerate China, and her final abasement after
1900. This was not a time for greatness either in politics or in the
arts. Though a few of the literati maintained a certain indepen-
dence of spirit, the educated class as a whole took its lead more and
more from the reactionary attitude of the Manchus.
ARCHITECTURE The architecture of the Ch'ing Dynasty was, in the main, a tame
and cautious continuation of the style of the Ming—with one no-
table exception. To the northwest of the capital, the K'ang-hsi em-
peror laid out an extensive summer palace, in emulation of the
great hunting parks of the Han and Liang emperors. It was en-
larged by Yung-chcng, who gave it the name Yuan-ming-yiian,
and again by Ch'ien-lung, who added to the many palaces already
built in it an assembly of pleasure pavilions designed by the Italian
Jesuit missionary and court painter Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-
1766) in a somewhat Chinesified version of Italian eighteenth-
century Baroque. These extraordinary buildings were set about
with fountains and waterworks devised by Father Benoit, a
French Jesuit who had familiarized himself with the fountains at
Versailles and Saint-Cloud. Every detail down to the furniture
was specially designed (much of" it copied from French engrav-
ings) and the walls hung with mirrors and Gobelins tapestries sent
out by the French court in 1 767. The total effect must have been bi-
zarre in the extreme.
The heyday of the Yuan-ming-yiian was brief. Before the end
of the eighteenth century the fountains had long ceased to play,
and Ch'ien-lung's successors so neglected their transplanted Ver-
sailles that by the time the Western allies destroyed the foreign-
style buildings and looted their treasures in 1 860, the Yuan-ming-
yiian had already fallen into a sad autumnal state of disrepair. But
we can obtain some idea of what it looked like in its prime from
the engravings made by Castiglione's Chinese assistants in 1 786.
The last great architectural achievement—if indeed it deserves the
name—of the Manchus was the Summer Palace built by the dow-
ager empress Tz'u-hsi on the shore of the Po-hai to the west of the
Forbidden City with funds raised by public subscription to con-
struct a navy. Although she was condemned at the time for her ex-
travagance, it has since been observed that had she built a fleet it
would certainly have been sunk by theJapanese in the war of 1 895,
while the Summer Palace will endure for centuries. Less preten-
tious and far more appealing among the late Ch'ing ceremonial
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