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(Ann)
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The Nature of Imperial Foraging in the SAH Basin
The Changbai Mountain Nature Reserve was established in 1960 ,
but the region’s special status long predated the PRC. The reserve
is centered on the original homeland of Jurchen, later Manchu, peoples
who established the Qing dynasty. Some of its historical continuities
appear in an ecological form that recalls the dynasty’srestricted
resource enclaves like“ginseng mountains”and“pearl rivers.”Legit-
imate and illegal resource extraction by humans from the area’s
considerable biodiversity also persists.^1 In contrast, however, the
dynasty intervened to culture thisenclaved nature to ensure a vital
supply of resources, both human and otherwise. State-managed
foraging became a primary and often conflicted strategy for the sus-
tainable exploitation of these unique, interdependent northeastern
resources.
Northeastern ecological biodiversity was not the passive back-
ground for the play of human agencies, but instead interacted with
humans in vital, and sometimes unanticipated, ways. Manchu identity
and space were products of northeastern nature and culture, not simply
of Qingfiat or compromises with indigenous peoples and outside
invaders. Broadly speaking, variation in environmental interaction
is how and why“Manchus”in China proper became different from
northeastern peoples left behind in the wake of the 1644 conquest.
Moving south of the Great Wall altered cultural and natural, or
“environmental,”contexts. A borderland Manchu identity was accord-
ingly formed north of both the Great Wall and the Willow Palisade
(Liutiaobian) separating southern Manchuria from Jilin and
Heilongjiang.
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