ann
(Ann)
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in 1712 when he asserted that“Manchu troops can go dig ginseng, Han
cannot.”Consequently, all banner personnel, regardless of their ostensible
ethnicity, were pursuing a“Manchu”lifestyle, defined by venery practices
that distinguished them from the Han of arablist China proper.^127
This lifestyle was profoundly affected by the demands of state foraging
within the larger regional ecology, as exemplified in a fox-hunter group’s
1668 application for transfer from a Shengjing banner company. The
hunters had ended up in Shengjing after a series of state-mandated trans-
fers had split them off from their original group. The hunters’petition
described the“intolerable”conditions requiring them to spend the entire
fall and part of the winter, about four months, hunting foxes. An add-
itional two months was needed to convey the tribute pelts to Shengjing
and return to their homes. Monthly musters in Shengjing for mandatory
inspection consumed the rest of the year for the hunters. These time-
consuming obligations compelled them to traverse an area too large to
leave them enough time to fulfill their other tribute duty, grain cultivation.
Their main complaint was that Shengjing-imposed obligations both to
hunt foxes and to grow grain constituted an“unbearable”double tax.^128
Tribute demands imposed on fox hunters may have upset a balance
that depended on limited cultivation as a supplement to foraging.
A similar dynamic is visible among Solon-Ewenki and Dagur hunters in
Heilongjiang, who successfully petitioned in 1743 to resume hunting for
subsistence and pelt tribute precluded by their previous reassignment to
cultivation of statefields. It had already been decided in 1732 that cavalry
units stationed in Qiqihar and other major towns in Heilongjiang could
not be expected to engage in battue hunting operations and grow their
own grain, so recruits less proficient with the bow were demobilized to
free them for cultivation. Hunter-gatherers did not normally have to
spend months each year relaying their tribute and assembling at distant
administrative centers for inspection to supervise additions or reductions
in personnel. Furthermore, if the experiences of a group of Tümed tribu-
tary fox hunters in 1718 is indicative, a petition to the throne was even
required for permission to shift hunting grounds to trap south of the
Willow Palisade.^129
The sheer scale of imperial foraging, in terms of expanse, quantity, and
administrative complexity, rendered northeastern hunting and gathering
difficult to sustain. There is no better admission of this in dynastic records
than the 1744 assertion that“thefengshuiof Changbaishan is not condu-
cive to the implementation of foraging, so it will be strictly prohibited”
in response to the exhaustion of local ginsengfields.^130 Although it is
The Nature of Imperial Foraging in the SAH Basin 101
