ann
(Ann)
#1
Marchmount geography, which had plotted only four, for example,
during the Warring States period. Marchmounts by tradition expanded
“in direct relation with the expansion of the imperium”and so allowed
enough space to accommodate a Qing imperial relandscaping.^47
The result was a contradiction in Han-barbarian discursive terms, a
Qing Hanspace. Behind the Yongzheng emperor’s assertion that Man-
churia was like a Chinese province towered thefifth sacred peak of
Changbai. Beyond it lay his successor the Qianlong emperor’s future
assertion in his rereading of Ming versions of Jin and Yuan history that
“the easternYi, the westernRong, the southernMan, and the northern
Diall are names derived from places, no different from...Jiangnan or
Hebei.”The emperor even made a historic break with the past to distin-
guish between“the China [Zhongxia] of the Han, Tang, Song and Ming
dynasties”and“the China [Zhongxia] of our imperial dynasty”when
dealing with Inner Asian peoples such as the Zunghars.^48
Reinforced through exploration, interrogation, and correction, Qing
Hanspace was intended to encompass a less reductive, less apprehensive
group of ethnic identities to embody the diversified hierarchy of a larger
empire. The Han-barbarian discourse was much narrower in all these
respects. The Qing read this discourse as a symptom of dynastic weak-
ness, not a cure for it, as the Yongzheng emperor informed the Han
public. He said that the Han-barbarian discourse had persisted in subse-
quent times of partial unification (pian’an), such as the Jin, Song, and Six
Dynasties periods, when“there were many states, all equal in size and
virtue, none being able to dominate the others.”Consequently“northern
people slandered the southerners as‘island tribals,’and southerners
referred to the northerners as‘captives with queues.’”People of these
times were unconcerned“with cultivation of virtue or acts of benevo-
lence.”They“merely adhered to quarrels and mutual slander.”So the
Han-barbarian discourse had long been discredited as “an extremely low
and narrow doctrine.”^49
Evenqi, the common currency of both Han dissident and accommoda-
tionist identities was subjected to revision. Like Wang Fuzhi, Zeng con-
tended China proper’syinandyangaspects ofqiwere balanced enough
to form virtuous people, whereasqi’s imbalance outside rendered non-
Han animals. The emperor rejected the notion that regionally differentqi
determined the creation of humans or animals, because Confucianism
clearly considered awareness of social ethics as the primary difference.^50
Qi, however, was not irrelevant for interpreting historical change, but
the dynastic watershed for the Manchu throne was the Ming, not the
38 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
