The Emperor Ch’ien Lung 1735-1799

It was easy enough for a great monarch to leave his impress on a Versailles or a Potsdam, little towns that were moulded by a royal whim. It is quite another matter to permeate a city that for centuries had counted over a million inhabitants.

Neither London nor Paris puts us in mind of any single monarch; the influence of a George IV or a Napoleon III hardly extends beyond the confines of one or two particular quarters.

But the influence of the Emperor Ch’ien Lung (1711-1799), who ruled over China for most of the last three-quarters of the eighteenth century, reaches far beyond the walled rectangles of Peking, out across the salty pastures and the canals to the long curve of the Western Hills; so that he seems to have become the genius not merely of a city but of a whole carefully stylized countryside.