Qīndìng Nánxún Shèngdiǎn 欽定南巡盛典
Imperially Authorized Grand Records of the Southern Tours by 高晉 (初編), 薩載 (續編), 阿桂 (合編), 傅恒 (合編)
About the work
A comprehensive documentary record of Qiánlóng’s first four southern tours (nánxún)—1751, 1757, 1762, and 1765 (the xīnwèi, dīngchǒu, rényǔ, and yǐyǒu progresses). Compiled in 1770 (Qiánlóng 35) by Grand Secretary and Liǎngjiāng Governor-General Gāo Jìn 高晉; revised by his successors Sàzài 薩載 and the Cabinet ministers Águì 阿桂 and Fùhéng 傅恒. 100 juǎn (catalog meta) / 120 juǎn (Sìkù tíyào) organized topically: imperial poetry; route diagrams; xíngqìng shīhuì (festive proclamations of grace); agricultural-and-sericultural admonitions; frugality directives; sacrificial ceremonies; eldering rites; judicial pardons; official and military disciplines; literary-cultural promotion; and—most substantively—the seawall-and-river engineering directives that became permanent practice under the southern progress. Imperial preface by Qiánlóng. The work is the model for later southern-progress chronicles.
Tiyao
By Grand Secretary and Liǎngjiāng Governor-General Gāo Jìn et al., respectfully composed and presented in Qiánlóng 35 (1770). Reverently regarding our August Emperor’s “modeling on the ancestors and laboring for the people,” he made yearly progresses to the regional sacred mountains. JiāngZhè (Jiāngsū and Zhèjiāng) being the great metropolitan region of the southeast, with its dense population and pressing administrative affairs, the inspection of customs and the surveying of regions has been the emperor’s special concern. Hence the imperial team has been driven yearly, the imperial route often traversed.
[The tíyào enumerates the kinds of action documented:] festive proclamation, granting grace, exhortation to plowing and silkworm-raising, encouragement of frugality, elevation of rituals, support of the elderly, judicial pardons, encouragement of officials, promotion of literature, regulation of military preparation. Above all, sea-wall construction and reinforcement, lake-and-river dredging—each discussed and decided on the spot, becoming permanent regulations. As to famous places and beauty-spots, the imperial brush has personally inscribed each; not only the people receive grace, the mountains and rivers themselves long for an imperial visit.
Gāo Jìn and his colleagues took the four tours from xīnwèi (1751) to yǐyǒu (1765) and arranged the great records by category and section into this compilation, then received the imperial preface and proceeded to print. One opening of the volumes, and our August Emperor’s earnest inquiry, vigorous instruction, and outpoured grace are as if seen in the present moment—giving each prefectural officer principles to follow, each cultivator something to be moved by. This is more than mere eulogy and ritual record.
The book was completed in the winter of gēngyín (1770); the cutoff is yǐyǒu (1765). Recently the imperial procession has visited a sixth time, with all rituals as before, and the Southeast scholars and people, again receiving abundant grace, look on with even greater fervor. We humbly await yet further such progresses, and continued compilation, to satisfy the eager anticipation of all readers.
Abstract
The Nánxún Shèngdiǎn is the principal documentary source for Qiánlóng’s first four southern tours (1751, 1757, 1762, 1765). Compilation began under Gāo Jìn 高晉 (then Liǎngjiāng Governor-General) in 1770; the work was further revised by Sàzài, Águì, and Fùhéng. Published in 1771. The dating bracket reflects this. The work’s coverage stops at 1765; Qiánlóng made two further southern tours in 1780 and 1784, recorded in supplementary volumes outside this work.
The work is a cornerstone of mid-Qiánlóng imperial-cult and infrastructure documentation; the seawall and river-dredging directives recorded here are, as the Sìkù tíyào emphasizes, the basis of permanent administrative regulation.
Translations and research
Standard editions: Wényuāngé Sìkù. Modern reference: Nánxún Shèngdiǎn (Shàng-hǎi gǔjí 1995 reprint of the 1771 edition). Foundational Western scholarship: Michael Chang, A Court on Horseback: Imperial Touring and the Construction of Qing Rule, 1680–1785 (Harvard, 2007), the principal monograph on the Qing southern tour and its documentary apparatus. Maxwell Hearn, “Document and Portrait: The Southern Tour Paintings of Kangxi and Qianlong,” in Phoebus 6.1 (1988), treats the parallel pictorial record. Chinese: Lǐ Hú-shí 李虎石, Qīng Gāo-zōng Nán-xún yán-jiū 清高宗南巡研究 (Zhōng-yāng mín-zú dà-xué chū-bǎn-shè, 2010).
Other points of interest
The mid-Qiánlóng southern tours were one of the largest and most expensive court ceremonial productions of imperial China; the Sìkù tíyào’s framing of them as “modeling on the ancestors and laboring for the people” reflects Qiánlóng’s own justification for the cost (Kāngxī had also made six southern tours), but the tours’ fiscal and administrative impact would later become a target of post-Qiánlóng reformist criticism.