sources, mainly meat or grass, could sustain only one side or the other and
were, consequently, not staples interconnecting this relation in the way
that milk was. Moreover, milk ensured endurance through the cold
seasons endemic to the pastures and to producing the armed power that
maintained domination over them. From this perspective, any order
aspiring to control Inner Mongolia, whether engaged in breeding live-
stock, mediating social inequality, or alleviating interspecies competition,
had to be sustained by milk.
Given milk’s significance it is not surprising that dairy products also
took on considerable symbolic significance within the Qing regional
order. The Qianlong emperor provides a rich expression of milk as
synecdoche for Mongols as a distinct people who were also Qing subjects
in his poem “Passing through the Mongol Tribes” (“Guo Menggu
zhubu”), composed in 1741 :
...the road above the passes is long and in full wintery frost
Through the cold forests of mountain persimmons.
Smoke blows through the downy hide tents
The livestock scent of milk and cheese...
The feast ends with a joyful shout...
Then, food and clothing, regional tribute offered as in the old canons.
The milk of livestock andrubing(kūru) all express sincere submission.^86
After moving through an unpopulated late autumn landscape north of the
Great Wall, the emperor encounters Mongol culture immediately and
primarily in its intimate proximity to herd animals as producers of dairy
products. These products, however, are not simply for human or animal
consumption, since they are representative of a region and, by extension
in a classical imperial Chinese idiom, regional sovereignty. Qianlong’s
allusion to these products as tribute calls attention to continuities between
past and present imperial practices in the immediate context of Inner
Mongolia, which presented certain dairy products from certain banners
as tribute by statute.^87
Thefluidity of Mongol identity is clearly observable in many of the
previous examples of agrarian Mongols and commercial Mongols as well
as pastoral Mongols. Yet the Qing state is likewise clear in its express
preference to keep the majority of its Mongol subjects pastoral, if not
nomadic, inhoshuuorgūsabanners. One primary motive for this prefer-
ence was to maintain appropriate levels of manpower and livestock able
to cope with steppe conditions and exigencies. A“natural” pastoral
lifestyle, under dynastic sponsorship, was the best way to construct a
sustainable Qing borderland, but such a lifestyle could not be imposed
The Nature of Imperial Pastoralism in Southern Inner Mongolia 143
