became an important symbolic assertion. Like all dynastic rulers, the Manchus sought to use clothing as an implement of power and control, and like all non-Han rulers, they sought to construct a clothing system that would simultaneously assert their right to the throne as Chinese emperors and still preserve their ethnic identity and culture. The lessons of their Liao (907–1125), Jin (1115–1234), and Yuan (1271–1368) predecessors—whom they viewed as having miscalculated the balance between sinicization and cultural preservation—evidently weighed heavily. As the Qianlong emperor cautioned, “one must not speak lightly of changing dress and headwear”—to do so was to forget the ancestors, endanger the sacrifices, and weaken the dynasty.30 From Hong Taiji (1626–1643) through to the Jiaqing emperor (r. 1796–1820), imperial edicts alerted the Manchu people not to “abandon our ancestors’ traditions!”31 But while they aimed to control through sumptuary regulation, these same texts reveal the tension of sustaining Manchu identity, a tension particularly central to women’s dress—a touchstone of political stability and moral wellbeing.
FIGURE 1.3. Six beauties adopt various leisurely poses as they recline, stretch, and play musical instruments in a wellfurnished set of rooms. Women in a Brothel, seventeenth or eighteenth century. Painting on paper. Emil Preetorius Collection, Museum Fünf Kontinente (77-11-23).
Over the course of the Qing dynasty, the Manchu court developed detailed regulatory frameworks of hierarchically organized, sartorial rights for the imperial family, nobility, officials, and commoners, as defined by color, material, motif and pattern. These texts focus on clothing worn on official and court occasions; ostensibly they express little interest in controlling the dress of either Han or Manchu women outside those arenas.32 But studying these sumptuary regulations alongside objects and images reveals their limited reach, and hence the necessary supplementation in the form of imperial edicts and moralistic discourse, which we will examine shortly.
The tomb of Kangxi’s third daughter, Princess Rongxian (1673–1728), excavated in 1966, provides some of the earliest surviving women’s garments of the Qing period (contemporaneous with the Prince Guo robe). Rongxian was married to the Mongolian prince Wu Ergun (d. 1721), who gained Kangxi’s gratitude during the 1690 Battle of Wulan Butong, and was sent to Inner Mongolia at the age of nineteen. Her tomb contained hundreds of objects, including multiple garments: ten were worn upon her body, but only three survived, the outermost layer, a pearl-embroidered yellow dragon roundel robe probably worn for summer court dress; the second layer—a butterfly-embroidered informal robe; and the innermost layer, an antique motif–embroidered informal robe (fig. 1.4; see also chap. 5). All three robes show early Qing imperial styles: a round neck, right overlapping lapel, straight narrow sleeves (ping xiu) that covered the wrist, and a slit-less skirt.33
FIGURE 1.4. An antique motif–embroidered silk informal robe, tomb of Princess Rongxian. L 147 cm, W 161 cm. Chifeng Museum. Reprinted from Qin Bo, “Chifeng bowuguan cang san jian gongzhu paofu,” with permission from the author.
When Rongxian married in 1691, she was titled a second-rank princess (heshuo gongzhu); in 1709, she was promoted to first-rank princess (gulun gongzhu). The following regulation specifies the auspicious court dress (ji fu) to which she was entitled:
Dragon robes. Princesses of the first rank, princesses of the second rank, the wives of the princes of the first rank, the wives of the princes of the second rank, the princesses of a commandery, and the princesses of a county should be incense color, embroidered throughout with nine long dragons. The wives of the beile lords, beizi lords, defender generals, bulwark generals, and the ladies of a commandery, ladies of a county, and ladies of a village should wear blue or slate blue, according to use, and embroidered throughout with nine mang dragons. Wives of commoner dukes, down to the third-ranking titled ladies, wives of the supporter generals should wear [robes] embroidered throughout with nine four-clawed mang dragons.34
Such sumptuary rules effectively laid down status bands—groupings of material entitlement: first-rank princesses wore the same dress designs as the second-rank princesses, and so on. But they also left considerable room for manipulation, something evident in Rongxian’s yellow dragon roundel robe (long pao), which overstepped the regulated colors for her rank. Furthermore, her sleeves and sleeve-cuffs both featured a design of longevity roundels, also against the regulations.35 Rongxian’s excess might be explained by her favored status, but the object-text comparison highlights how individuals manipulated the gaps created, in part, by the regulatory reliance on textual description. Here fashion flouted regulation in a formal dress genre, but the opportunities to deviate were greater in the informal genres, in which women possessed, arguably, more autonomy.
The two informal garments in Rongxian’s tomb bear close resemblance to an informal garment called chenyi. Then just coming into currency (the earliest dated example is from the Qianlong period), it would become the most popular informal style for nineteenth-century Manchu women.36 Both garments also feature southern influence: embroidered in the Suzhou style, they feature patterns and motifs found in southern pattern books of this period.37 Other tomb finds corroborate this. When the Qianlong period tomb of Imperial Consort Rong (Rong Fei) was excavated in 1979, it contained several garments and fabric lengths with southern loom-marks: a blue damask dragon robe fabric with the loom-mark “Jiangning [Nanjing] imperial workshop [supervised by] official Cheng Shan”; a dark brown (sauce-colored) “inch mang-dragon-patterned” damask robe fabric with the same Jiangning mark, and also “Weaver Wang Qi”; and a camelcolored dragon roundel and antique motif–patterned satin with the loom-mark “Suzhou imperial workshop [supervised by] official Si De.” Imperial workshop archives record the employment of Cheng Shan and Si De in the Suzhou and Jiangning (Nanjing) workshops during the Qianlong period.38 The tomb also contained several embroidered garments and accessories, all of which came from Suzhou.39
The garments from Princess Rongxian’s and Consort Rong’s tombs demonstrate the way material culture itself disseminated fashion: silk robes traveled through the empire, bringing Suzhou design to Beijing and even on again to Inner Mongolia. They also underline the influence of southern Han style on the Manchu imperial court. This was not something that the Manchu emperors appeared to appreciate. Rather, edict after edict sought to limit the degree of Han influence upon Manchu women. For example, in 1759, after inspecting the elegant ladies (xiu nü) to be selected as imperial consorts, the Qianlong emperor (r. 1735–96) was apparently shocked to discover that:
Some banner women have been imitating Han people’s clothing and adornment. This is certainly not the Manchu custom. If in front of the Emperor you esteem such things, then what kind of willful clothing is being worn at home? This may be a trifling matter, but if I do not admonish it, then it will inevitably become common practice, and this would be of great concern for traditional Manchu culture. Therefore, I am explicitly charging the senior officials of the Eight Banners to clearly communicate to each of the bannermen: from now on they must attach importance to being simple and frugal, and cease in this willful costume!40
The main mechanism for this influence was the triennial selection through which all eligible daughters of officials in the Manchu banners (administrative military divisions) were inspected and selected to become imperial concubines. Beginning in the eighteenth century, the imperial consorts were also chosen from Mongol and Han banners. Expanding the ethnic scope became problematic: many of the elegant ladies might have had Han Chinese mothers or relatives, and were hence raised in the Chinese way; later, the Qing court narrowed the selection by reducing the numbers of eligible Han banners.41 But the problem of controlling cultural interaction remained, despite repeated
