Tang of Han convention. The emperor asserted that from the Jiajing reign
( 1522 – 66 ) on, there was a blockage ofqicirculating in the cosmos that
manifested as a deterioration in Ming human relations resulting in polit-
ical and social chaos. He attributed subsequent stabilization to the cos-
mically appropriate assumption of Qing rule.^51 In the process the Qing
had effectively reoriented Hanspace, rendering the Han-barbarian dis-
course obsolete:
Since antiquity, during ages when China was unified, the unassimilated dwelling
in the midst of lands of inconsiderable expanse, like theMiaoor the state of Chu,
were denounced as barbarians; lands now known as Hunan, Hubei, and Shanxi.
Who in these places can now be considered barbarians? At the height of the Han,
Tang, and Song, the northernDiand the westernRongwere traditionally con-
sidered the scourges of the frontier whose territory had never been subjected, and
this distinction constituted the basis of the frontier between here [China] and there
[barbarian territory]. Since our dynasty entered into the lordship of the central
lands to rule over the empire, Mongol tribes of the farthest frontiers have all
become subjects on our map. The frontiers of China having been extended so far
to the great good fortune of all China’s subjects, how can there still persist the
principle of division between Han and barbarian, or center and periphery!^52
This was a radical rejection of many basic categories informing Hanspace
used throughout Chinese history to reinforce an ethnic hierarchy of Han
over non-Han. So influential were these categories that the Manchu state
itself had to adapt.
In its imperial practice, however, the Qing continued to operate along
more traditional, if certainly less metaphysical, lines. The Manchu banner
system from boreal forests, the beg system from Xinjiang oases, the native
chieftainship system from the empire’s southwestern mountainous
jungles, the Mongoljasagsystem from the steppe, as well as thejunxian
system from thefields of China proper–all attest to elaborate adminis-
trative mechanisms to spatially order ethnic diversity as determined by a
combination of history, culture, and human interaction with the sur-
rounding ecology. One basic justification for distinct state-supported
ethnic spaces, for example, was the concern to maintain an ethnically
pure Manchuria by restricting Han immigration. The most environmen-
tally critical justification, however, concerned the mutual incompatibil-
ities between Han agriculture and alternative practices, such as Mongol
pastoralism, more suited to borderland ecologies.^53
Consequently, Hanspace of some sort required delineation for the
preservation of Han and other ethnic identities. This Han identity was
not simply rooted, however, in what many scholars past and present have
often nebulously called“Chinese culture.”For Han elites, the essence of
Qing Fields in Theory and Practice 39
