ann
(Ann)
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incursion that caused deforestation and declines in game. The Jiaqing
emperor complained that game was almost nowhere to be found in
Muran for four years from 1802 to 1805 , despite the fact that no
imperial hunts had been conducted for ten years. The emperor held that
only a reimposition of discipline on lax preserve guards had stopped
timber and game poaching to restore hunting conditions in 1806 .By
1810 , however, quarry was again scarce, and the emperor renewed his
condemnation of guards whose carelessness had permitted both Han
and Mongols to poach animals and wood. Problems with guards may
have been related to a corresponding decline in human resources. The
emperor had voiced complaints in 1808 about the poor battue eques-
trianship of Mongol hunters, who were unable to understand the
Manchu and Mongol commands of their lords and officers. His order
to employ only hunters who could perform mounted archery and
“understand Mongol and Manchu well”is indicative of the intimate
and fraying ties between culture and nature so critical for sustainable
venery.^11
The breaking of these bonds is even visible in the interchanges between
the emperor and his Manchu subjects. There is little evidence of the
Qianlong emperor’s poetic references to the“close relations”and“intim-
acy”between Manchu and Mongol hunters in the Jiaqing emperor’s own
1807 public declaration of the enduring value of the preserve. His
“Muran i ejebun”(Mu-lan ji; Record of Muran), carved in stone on one
of the preserve’s steles, displays hisfilial adherence to the onerous duty of
conducting the annual autumn hunt for purposes of Mongol pacification.
Further indications of alienation come from Belin’s memorial of gratitude
for the emperor’s gift of a copy of theMuran i Ejebun. Belin laments that
his patron must hunt in Muran to“carry out the pacification of distant
tribes each year, thus willingly abstaining from ease and bearing woes.”
He makes no reference to the ritual’s value for military training.^12 At this
time, thirteen years before its termination, Manchu and Han discourses
seem to be converging on the“Sinified”consensus that the hunt is simply
an unpleasant task mainly to keep the Mongols in line. It is possible that
the emperor’s disenchantment peaked around the same time game became
too hard to track down in 1810.
Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, 1810 was also the year that
Han trading posts were found operating along the hunting reserve’s north-
ern perimeter to commodify deer antlers and other foragefilched from
Muran. Ginseng, used as a sort of currency to pay off banner guards for
illicit access as early as 1726 , was the key resource for these transactions.
Borderland Hanspace in the Nineteenth Century 223
