18 CultureShock! China
were levelled at any envoy of a foreign power that visited
the early Qing imperial court, limiting China’s friends, but
creating the beautiful collection of treasures currently housed
in the Forbidden City.
Nonetheless, until the 1840s, the arts flourished and
culture boomed, particularly during the reigns of the two
most famous emperors of the Qing dynasty, Emperor Kangxi
(r. 1661–1772) and Emperor Qianlong (r. 1735–1796). The
best example of literature at this time is the classic Chinese
novel A Dream of the Red Chamber, a tale of the activities and
intrigue, and then slow decline of a prosperous aristocratic
family of the time.
The ‘times of prosperity’ under these two emperors
eventually dwindled and by the late 19th century, the dynasty
was plagued by the typical maladies—rampant corruption, a
steady decentralisation of power and the loss of control on
too many fronts at the same time, including an important
new one, an influx of Europeans in large numbers. Internal
rebellions—the Tai’ping and Boxer Rebellions being the
most well known—coupled by ongoing and increasingly
significant challenges, both militarily and culturally, by foreign
parties eventually led to a challenging state of constantly
changing battlegrounds.
A stark example of the clashing of wills common between
China and the West at the time are the two Opium Wars
fought from 1839 to 1842 between China and Britain, and
then from 1856 to 1860 (also known as the Arrow War)
involving China, Britain and France. While linked to opium,
the foreigners were actually fighting for free trading rights
in Canton and ports all along the coast of China. With the
conclusion of this conflict came the Treaty of Nanjing in
1842, the first in a series of what came to be known as the
‘Unequal Treaties’.
These treaties created a China segmented by the presence
of numerous foreign concessions; without the authority to deal
with foreigners who broke Chinese law (‘extraterritoriality’
allowed them to be tried by their own country’s China-based
courts); and beset by foreign navies sailing unobstructed up
and down her rivers and waterways.