SuperbPhotography of British Photographers in 1926
World premiere issue of all 122 photos of the manuscriptof The Kangxi Emperor’s SouthernInspection Tour
Evidence of the development of world photography andimaging technology
A perfect rendezvous across time and space betweenancient Chinese culture 300 years ago and contemporary world technology 100years ago.
At present, there are only two sets of photossurviving: one was a collection of Puyi, the last Emperor of China, and another one was the collectionof Shunan Wang, Governor of Xinjiang in the late Qing Dynasty.
After succeeding thecollection in 2011, a descendent residing in Japan of Wang started a three-yearinvestigation to validate the background and history of these photos. Recognizingthe importance of these photos, she decided to publish them for the public toknow their existence and enable the permanent continuation of these images.
●Introduction to theofficial version and manuscript of
The Kangxi Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour
As the longestpainting scroll in China, The Kangxi Emperor’sSouthern Inspection Tour was made in 1691 by a number of famous artists forsix years, with Hui Wang as the lead artist. A great documentary painting initself, the work depicted the episodes of Emperor Kangxi’s inspection tour toeastern and southern China in the Qing Dynasty.
The work has two versions: the manuscript and the officialversion. Although each version has 12 scrolls, as the former was completedbefore the latter, techniques, layouts, and scenes are not exactly identical inboth versions. Nonetheless, the size of both versions remains the same: 67.8cmwide and 1555-2612.5cm long.
The official version was lost in wars, some scrolls wereplundered by invaders. Nowadays, five of them are collected by The PalaceMuseum in Beijing, two are held by a museum in Paris, one is held by TheMetropolitan Museum of Art in New York, one is held by a museum in Canada. Itis reported that the two pictures sold at €1.89 million at an auction held in Bordeaux, France, on 8 March 2014were the sixth scroll of the official version. And two of them are lost.
However, this famous magnum opus of ancient Chinesepaintings was less familiar to Japanese people. At the “Two Hundred SelectedMasterpieces from the Palace Museum Beijing” exhibition held to mark the 40thanniversary of the normalization of relations between China and Japanand commemorate the 140thanniversary of the Tokyo National Museum inJanuary 2012, two scrolls of the official version was presented to Japaneseviewers for the first time.
Only a few scrollsof the manuscript survive. According to historical documents, four scrolls wentto the Prince Yi of the Blood (the 13th son of Emperor Kangxi) in1698. They were then collected by the Xins. Later on they were lost and theirwhereabouts unknown. Shunan Wang leaved an important message for his descendants:the manuscript has two features. First, Emperor Kangxi must not be drawn in themanuscript; therefore, a canopy (the emperor’s umbrella) was drawn in place ofthe emperor. One canopy is found in each of the scrolls. Second, in the lastscene on the emperor’s return in scroll 12, the whole scene was misty and onlya tip of the palace’s root can be seen, as the scene in the palace must not bedepicted.
At present, threeand a half scrolls of the manuscript are collected by The Palace Museum, and ahalf scroll is held by a private collector.
Whether or not thefour scrolls held by the Xins and the three and a half scrolls collected by ThePalace Museum are from the same manuscript remain uncertain by the deadline ofpublishing.
●Introduction to the Photos of the Manuscript
In 1698 a few scrolls of the manuscript went to thePrince Yi of the Blood and later on to the Xins. As the manuscript deterioratedbadly, in 1926 General Qin Xin hired British photographers to take pictures onthem and print a few sets of them. One of them was bought by the last EmperorPuyi, one was bought by Shunan Wang, Governor of Xinjiang in late Qing Dynasty,and the whereabouts of the rest of them remain unknown. As Puyi carried his setwith him everywhere, when he fled to northeastern China in 1931, he left it ina hotel in Tanggangzi. Fortunately, the set was recovered and collected byAnshan City Archive after Chinese liberalization. This set contains a total of124 photos, and Wang’s set has a total of 122 photos. Probably the Wangs losttwo of them.
Both sets are the photos of scrolls 9-12 of themanuscript. They depict the scene when ten thousand people welcomed theiremperor sailing across the Qiantang River, the tour to south, and the return.All photos together can form a complete scroll. The scene begins with the “QiantangRiver” in scroll 9 to return to the palace in scroll 12.
As it was impossible for civilians to possess theofficial version, if we want to understand the itinerary of Emperor Kangxi’stour to the south, see the scenes on this tour, and understand the wisdom ofmaster artists, the manuscript is the only way. Therefore, the manuscript andeven its photos later on were exceptionally valuable to people in that time.According to documents, the re-sales price ofboth the manuscript and its photos was very high at the time. It is a regretthat none of these actions were known to the public. As a result, informationwas spread distortedly, and the manuscript and its photos were blocked from theoutside world.
The 122 photos publishedin this album were preserved by the Wangs family.
●Profile of ShunanWang (1851-1936)
Wang was born in Baoding, Hebei Province. A grandson of the classicistZhengang Wang.
Zhengang Wang wasrecruited by Guofan Zeng as the principal of Lianchi Academy in Baoding.Lianchi Academy (1733-1903) was called the holy land of the Yanzhao Culturewell known all over the country.
Wang was finally promoted to the governor of Xinjiang.In his administration, he treated people in Xinjiang with benevolence and virtue.After investigations he realized that Uyghur people choked with silent fury asthey were deceived and bullied by Han officials due to the language barrier. Inresponse, Wang requested local officials to study Uyghur and initiated thebilingual (Chinese and Uyghur) government announcement system.
Wang devoted his life to academics. As a member of theeditorial panel of Draft History of Qing(清史稿), he maintained nobility to pursue aquiet life in a time of chaos and disorder. As a student of Lianchi Academy, hewas famous for his literary works. When he was young he was hired as the deanof Xindu Academy. As a local official, he founded Gannan Secondary School andLongdong Government Secondary School to spread the knowledge of modern scienceand culture upon Sinology. As a knowledgeable, dedicated scholar, Wang visitedlocal areas privately in his horse after arriving in Xinjiang. After anextensive survey of local Uyghur living, he clearly recognized that the Qing government’spolicy to force Uyghur people to study brought much hardship to their life. So he stood up against the Qinggovernment and criticized that they did not know the real situation in Xinjiangbefore implementing the education policy. As a result, education officials andschools became seriously corrupt. This is the problem of the college system ofthe Qing Dynasty. Although Wang implemented various policies to protect therights and interests of Uyghur people, he was impeached by corrupted officialsas he stood in their way to pursue unjust benefits. Eventually, he leftXinjiang with a broken heart. Wang wrote a total of 685 works in 53 genres. In academichistory, his Records of XinjiangGoverning (新疆図志) is considered as thefirst encyclopedia of Xinjiang. The work was proposed by Wang and approved bythe Qing court when he was the governor of Xinjiang. It was a major academicwork completed under his supervision.
Wang was the teacherof late General Xueliang Zhang and was highly respected by Zhang. When Zhangdecided to revitalize Sinology in northeastern China after he became themarshal of the northeastern army in 1928, he invited Wang to be his aid.Disregarding his age and poor health and the coldness of northeastern China,Wang travelled to the northwest to take up his assignment to express his educationenthusiasm.
Today, the works of Wang from different periods arewidely collected by Ivy League schools in the USA and leading universities andlibraries in Japan and Australia.
In late Qing Dynasty, Wang was recognized as a leadingphilologist for this academic status and achievements in Sinology. He alsomaintained extensive exchange with Japanese scholars. When Tetsuji Morohashi (諸橋轍次), an important figure in the field of Japanese language studies and Sinology, visited him, Wangreceived him and wrote him a poem at Morohashi’s request. This shows Wang’skindness to the Japanese scholars.
Wang was invited to Japan to give lectures many times.In 1925 Wang was vice president to the Cultural Affairs Committee of China andJapan(東方文化事業). When Wang took adelegation of ten to Japan in 1926, Emperor Taisho, a fan of Chinese poetry,treated this as an exceptional event. Disregarding his serious illness, theMikado sent court officials to invite the delegation to a tea party at theimperial garden. When the Jinan Incident broke out on 3 May 1928, Wang andother Chinese committee members resigned out of great fury to express their patriotism.
Wang has written apoem for Japanese scholar Sanjiro Ichimura (市村瓉次郎) out of his admiration for the academic achievements of this Japanesesinologist who was also the Chinese teacher of Princess Nobuko Asaka andPrincess Yasu, daughters of Emperor Meiji. Chinese culture has long beenprofoundly and extensively promoted by Japan. Wang loved the culturalatmosphere of Japan for Japanese sinologists’ respect and enthusiasm forChinese culture. Unfortunately, war broke up his cultural exchange activitieswith Japan.
Wang had a Japanese disciple. There was a deep affectionbetween them. He was Kenjiro Hayashide(林出賢次郎) who was honored to be the interpreter of the last Emperor Puyi, afterreceiving the knowledge and court etiquette education from Wang. To defendagainst Russia and accelerate the military modernization of Xinjiang, Wanghired Hayashide as an instructor of the Army Officer Academy of Urumuqi. In theconservative late Qing Dynasty, Wang’s decision was a bold and courageous undertaking. In Seichi Nakata’s book Memoire of Imperial Secrets (満州國皇帝の秘録 ラストエンペラーと「厳秘會見録」の謎), it recorded Hayashide’s unchanged loyalty to the last Emperor. Toprotect the fame of Puyi, Hayashide never disclosed any secret, even though bythen Wang had already died a long time ago. To Wang who was devoted his wholelife to the Qing court, he must surely have been very proud of Hayashide if hehad known this.
Instinctually, Wanghas an avant-garde mind. To extend his ideal, he voluntarily requested to go toXinjiang to become China’s pioneer to cultivate the west. Wang was alsoconservative in other ways. When Puyi was forced to leave the Forbidden City,Wang in his old age and other late Qing officials stood up and protested,regardless of negative criticism from society.
In addition to a scholarly official, Wang was a famousbook collector.
In 1928 Walter Tennyson Swingle (1871-1952), expert ofthe US Library of Congress, and Arthur William Hummel (1884-1975), founder andfirst chief of the Oriental Department, purchased a total of 22,100 volumes ofrare books collected by Wang from his family. These books became thecornerstone of the Asia Department of the US Library of Congress. From anotherpoint of view, this important cultural heritage was fortunate enough to escapedamage caused by the Cultural Revolution.
The Dunhuang manuscripts (敦煌寫経) sold at a Sothebyauction on 21 March 2013 contain the comments by Wang.
At that time Wang was an authority in collectingintellectual artifacts.
This set of 122photos was bought by Wang as a present for his Chinese painting artist son (theauthor’s grandfather).
●Notes for Publication
I am the great granddaughter of Shunan Wang.
During the “CulturalRevolution” where books were burnt and scholars were persecuted, my family’shouse was confiscated by the country overnight. Revolutionaries ordered myparents to destroy all antique objects in the family to make a clean break withthe past. If you don’t comply, your life will be in danger. Countless oldfamilies were destroyed, and the link with Chinese culture with severalthousand years was discontinued suddenly. Under such a circumstance, althoughmy father managed to hide this set of photos whose size is rather smaller, hewas forced to destroy thousands of books passed down from my great grandfather.This has become his unforgettable spiritual pain.
I inherited this set of photos when I was 43. Topreserve these photos, my father showed me only three to four times, and only afew of them each time. The responsibility to preserve them fell onto me when myfather passed away in 2011. Although my father told me of the features of these photos since I was small, I never knew their history.Even though I travelled to Beijing to ask help from artifact experts, no onecould tell me what they were. Then, I started a three-year investigation, andfinally I found some basic clues. Although I did urge relevant departments ofChina, Taiwan, Japan, and the UK to consider the importance of these photos, noresponse to my request was received. As the print in these photos will fadeaway gradually in room temperature, in order not to waste the value of themanuscript of The Kangxi Emperor’sSouthern Inspection Tour and these photos, I decided to publish this bookto pass down these valuable images.
This book is also published in memory of my father. Hegraduated from Harbin Institute of Military Engineering, the first militaryacademy founded after Chinese liberalization. Then, he served at the FourthField Army in Guangdong Military Region. He was also the first group ofengineers participating in the Dujiangyan Irrigation System Automation Projectin Sichuan. Like my great grandfather, my father made contributions to theirrigation system of Sichuan. Unfortunately, at a time when right and wrongturned upside down, these became the source of his miserable life. I have hatedhim for being a scholar, and I feel sorry about that. By contrast, I am proudof my father. Thanks to his visionary insight and courage, these photossurvive. Now, it is my turn to preserve and pass down these photos containingclassical Chinese culture, and his soul will be soothed.
I have chosen the Sanseido Bookstore to publish thisbook. It is the publisher which published books for my great grandfather 108 years ago. This cooperation spanningover 100 years witnesses a historic Sino-Japanese cultural exchange. My greatgrandfather cultivated a Japanese student called Kenjiro Hayashide and equippedhim with great literacy in classical Chinese literature. Whatever job he took, Hayashidemanaged to maintain full respect for Chinese culture and good faith for Chinesepeople, wholeheartedly. Today, my children also receive selfless care andeducation from Japanese teachers who turn them into peace-loving and caringchildren growing happily in Japan. I am deeply touched. During theinvestigation, I have made acquaintance with many friendly Chinese scholarsover the internet. Through their assistance, I finally realized for the firsttime in my life the great contributions of my great grandfather. I also understandthe truth behind the friendship of my grandfather and Japanese scholars. Thankyou all. Like my great grandfather Shunan Wang, I firmly believe the need andimportance of Sino-Japanese cultural exchange. Cultural exchange is a noblecommunication in the spiritual world, any human disasters hindering it willfinally become a stupid act that will surely be justified impartially by history.
These photos are published in four albums. Readersinterested in seeing the whole picture can cut the photos down and link them upaccording to their number. To re-represent the original print of these photosand for professionals to study them more easily, no adjustment has been made tothe images and their size. Some may think that they look uneven. Some of themeven have errors of a few millimeters. These errors were made during thephotographic process at the time. In fact, each photo was a great work 88 yearsago. The achievements of those British photographers were amazing with suchtechnology. It is a pity that I could never find their names, I would like to paytribute to those British photographers.
I saw theofficial version for the first time at the Two Hundred Selected Masterpiecesfrom the Palace Museum Beijing exhibition in 2012, Tokyo. In my opinion, bothversions (manuscript and official version) are excellent from a different pointof view, though they are not identical in genre. The elegance and perfection ofthe official version is astonishing, while the natural and unrestrained styleof the manuscript is impressive. In scroll 12 of the manuscript, I notice thatsome horsemen handle the chair and some items of Emperor Kangxi. In the samescroll, the scene of officials and their servants moving freely in the welcomeparade is presented. Both scenes bring a sharp contrast to the solemnatmosphere of the official version. If we say that the official version is a true print of Emperor Kangxi’sinspection tour to the south, some scenes in the manuscript are surely the truerecords of daily life.
Why did only thelast four scrolls of the manuscript go to the public and why is there not atrace of the first eight scrolls? Does this suggest that three and a halfscrolls of the four scrolls kept by General Qin Xin are in the collection of ThePalace Museum? In the papers and works on the manuscript published byresearchers of The Palace Museum, I never found anything about the two majorfeatures of the manuscript. There are two possibilities: first, the collectordid not tell The Palace Museum of these features when they turned the three anda half scrolls to the museum; second, the image of Emperor Kangxi in themanuscript collected by The Palace Museum may have been added. If this is true, there are two versions of themanuscript, and these photos may help to solve some unanswered questions.
One thing isworth-mentioning: Emperor Kangxi appears in different positions in the officialversion and the manuscript. For example, in scroll 9 of this manuscript, thecanopy representing Emperor Kangxi appears on a ship, and many people are welcominghim on their knees in the background to express the dignity and supremacy ofthe emperor. In the official version scroll, however, Emperor Kangxi appearsnext to a temple at the mountain foot and walks through the parade chattingwith them to express friendliness. Is it possible that Emperor Kangxi orderedartists to modify this part to change his image? By comparing the details ofboth versions, we can understand that artists must have gone through a longexploration process to understand and present Emperor Kangxi’s intent fromdrafting through the manuscript to the official version.
In feudal ancient China, artists were recommended to thecourt to make paintings for the emperor at risk of decapitation. The free andhappy brush became the straw that saves their lives. Modern people will neverunderstand how much pressure they suffered. In a corner on the manuscript,artist personified a stone lion statue in front of the palace to turn it into acute and vivid creature for viewers to understand the optimism of artistsmaking fun out of pressure. They were admirable and miserable at the same time.By publishing the photos of the manuscript, we can soothe the soul of Hui Wangand other artists for their efforts, their devotion, and their greatachievements that were passed down from one generation to another.
●Introduction of Book Cover Text Printing
On the cover four characters “Remembrance of the Past”are printed red to express the idea that respect and admiration for people andobjects in the past will bring so much fun.
Yueban (Shufeng)Sun, the seal script artist of the imperial stone tables of Emperor Kangxi some300 years ago, was the owner of this seal. My great grandfather was one of thelucky collectors of this seal.
Although I inherited this seal, I did not know who ownerwas. Out of coincidence, a friend of mine interested in seal collection told methat it was a treasure after seeing it. An unbelievable coincidence thus began.This is because the lead artist, Hui Wang, of The Kangxi Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour and the owner of thisseal were two officials serving the same emperor. Three centuries later, twoobjects related to them are all in my hands. Therefore, I guess they may havebeen good friends in that time. Maybe Sun left this seal as congratulations to HuiWang for the publishing of the photos of this manuscript.
I print the seal onthe cover to express our admiration for the people of the past.
●Epilogue
In ancient times people could record scenes in reality bypainting or sculpture, and The KangxiEmperor’s Southern Inspection Tour is typical evidence left by ancientChinese people. The first photo was developed in the laboratory in summer 1826by French photography and platemaking inventor Nicephore Niepce(1765-1833). Thanksto him, British photographers shot the manuscript of The Kangxi Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour with the sametechnology 100 years later in 1926 to bring a new life to the work. Where wasthe equipment used by these British photographers made? With rapid technologyadvancement, we have absolute reasons to believe that we can re-present theoriginal print of the manuscript after restoring these photos and linking themseamlessly. Past, present, and future, the rendezvous of the materialcivilization and spiritual civilization shared by humankind at these three pointswill surely bring unprecedented thankfulness.
At the end of thisarticle, my eyes are filled with tears. It was so lonely and pressurized overthe past three years. I believe that antique objects are spiritual. A valueobject can stand the rest of time, it may have enjoyed its heyday or may havebeen at risk of destruction, if it survives today, isn’t it something thatcould be termed as spiritual? When it appears in front of us one day, it mustbe chance. If you really respect and admire it, it will lead you to explore itspast. It is like a winding stream which murmurs its ups and downs, quietly andslowly. Listen hard and you will hear how it weeps for its miserable past.Maybe my tears are what it wants……
For readers to better understand the details of theimages in the photos, I selected nearly 300 photos for simple restoration topublish The Album of the Manuscript of TheKangxi Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour (康煕南巡図稿本畫譜) for yourreference. In the preparation process, I was pretty anxious due to languagebarrier and the insufficiency of professional knowledge. With the support andassistance of my family and friends in China and in Japan, I finally overcameanxiety. Such thankfulness affirmed by determination to finish this publicationproject. Regardless of the ups and downs of the Sino-Japanese relations,friendly people from both countries are making their best efforts to maintainthis friendly cultural bonding. I have felt it. Please accept my greatestgratitude, dear friends from China and Japan!
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