The Emperor Ch’ien Lung 1735-1799
During the European “Age of Reason,” a philosopher Emperor guided Chinese destinies.
It was easy enough for a great monarch to leave his impress on a Versailles or a Potsdam, little towns that were moulded by a royal whim. It is quite another matter to permeate a city that for centuries had counted over a million inhabitants.
Neither London nor Paris puts us in mind of any single monarch; the influence of a George IV or a Napoleon III hardly extends beyond the confines of one or two particular quarters.
But the influence of the Emperor Ch’ien Lung (1711-1799), who ruled over China for most of the last three-quarters of the eighteenth century, reaches far beyond the walled rectangles of Peking, out across the salty pastures and the canals to the long curve of the Western Hills; so that he seems to have become the genius not merely of a city but of a whole carefully stylized countryside.
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