Talk:Imperial hunt of the Qing dynasty

Comments on draft

Thanks, Difference engine, for the flattering request for an opinion -- I'm glad to give my thoughts as someone who is very impressed with how interesting this article is, tho not as any sort of expert in the area. You mentioned:

I have been considering Autumn Hunt (the current name in the draft, translated from the Chinese name), Qiuxian (the Chinese name), Imperial hunt of the Qing dynasty (a descriptive name), Imperial hunt (Qing dynasty) (a variant of the previous name), just Imperial hunt (since the name is not currently being used), and Mulan hunt (after the name of the hunting site).

It strikes me that Wikipedia policy is right in asking that article titles be understandable by looking at them, which is why English is preferable. So my suggestion would be Imperial Hunt of the Qing dynsty. Capitalize "Imperial Hunt" because it's a proper name? Cheers ch (talk) 05:46, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

• I would stick with "Autumn Hunt". It's a direct translation of the Chinese name and satisifies WP:CONCISE.  Philg88 ^♦talk 07:16, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
• I concur with Philg88. A direct translation also avoids the possibility of adding in additional implications that may not necessarily be there. (Thanks for bringing it to my attention, Zanhe.) --Nlu (talk) 15:54, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
• "Autumn hunt" has advantages, as Philg88 and Nlu rightly point out, but now that I look through the recent scholarly sources (which we should once again thank Difference engine for pulling together so effectively), it is not clear that Qiuxian is "the" Chinese name (I may well have missed it, however, as I only searched for "fall" (or "autumn") "hunt" in Elliott, Rawski, & New Qing History). The sources I looked at talked about "the autumn hunt" or "the imperial hunt" as if they were just something the emperors did, not a longtime practice. There may well be sources I didn't see, however, which reference Qing official sources.

Elliot Manchu Way says that "While qiu xian means 'fall hunt,' muran-i aba means 'the battue at Muran." p. 444 n. 41. So I wonder if there is "the" Chinese name.

Another strong point of the article is that it covers the history of hunting, mostly imperial, not just the Qing autumn hunts, so that 'Imperial Hunt of the Qing dynasty is broader.

One change I would strongly suggest be added to the lead is Elliott's point that the whatever-you-call-it was an Invented tradition, that is, that "the hunt"or "the Qing hunt" (Elliott doesn't call it "autumn hunt" here) was "may be thought of of an instance of what Eric Hobsbawm has called "invented tradition" which "represented an adaptation of an older practice for newer purposes..." If this is so, then the article (correctly) covers more than what Kangxi instituted as the "Autumn hunt."

An interesting question in any case.ch (talk) 22:01, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it doesn't seem as if there was truly an official name for this practice, or the sources wouldn't be referring to it in so many different ways. You're right to doubt that the Chinese name was "the" name, per se. It seems the Chinese had set names for the four seasonal hunts (which each use a different character for "hunting" for whatever reason), but none of the sources I've seen specify when those specific two-character names came into use. Elliott listed them only in a note. He only uses "qiuxian" once in The Manchu Way to introduce the topic, then promptly dispenses with it. I wonder if the Jiaqing Emperor used the Manchu name that Elliott gave, in the Manchu version of his inscription ("hunting at Mulan in the autumn")... I'm starting to lean toward Imperial hunt of the Qing dynasty (without capitalizing the 'h') as a purely descriptive name (a capital 'H' to me would imply it was the official proper name).

Good point about the "invented tradition" angle. I'm planning to have some of that in the yet-unwritten final section on the hunt's significance as symbol/political event/propaganda (particularly in the Qianlong era). I'll be sure to work it into the lead as well. --Difference engine (talk) 00:40, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Nomads overemphasized

The Manchus themselves were not nomads in any form. They were sedentary farmers who also happened to practice mounted archery and hunting. Their "Inner Asian" subjects were also not all nomadic. The Qing Emperors received Tibetans and sedentary farming Turkic Muslims (Uyghurs) at Chengde. The part about nomadic should be deleted when describing visitors at Chengde. Also it should be said that people from the Manchu and Mongol Banners participated in the hunt instead of just saying Manchu and Mongol, because there were (non-nomadic) people of other ethnicities in the Manchu and Mongol Banners who participated in this. There was a company of (sedentary farming) Turkic Muslims under Emin Khoja of Turfan attached to the Mongol Banners who participated in the Autumn Hunt. The only steppe nomadic Turkic peoples in the Qing were Kazakhs and Kyrgyz and they merely sent a few tributary delegations to the Qing Emperor out of fear after the Qing conquered the Dzungars and were not of much importance. The sedentary farming Turkic peoples (Uyghurs) outnumbered them and were much more important than them in Qing history. And in Chinese history, hunting by elites goes back to the Shang dynasty.Rajmaan (talk) 14:30, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, Rajmaan. I agree that the Inner Asian aspect is overemphasized, but it reflects the sources. If anything, I was worried about adding so much content about Chinese imperial hunts from previous dynasties because none of my main sources talked about them much at all (I had to go to more general sources for that info). I want to avoid drawing any conclusions that are not drawn by the sources themselves. I did not mention Shang dynasty hunting because classical Chinese culture really crystallized in the Zhou, so that was a better period to focus on -- I'm not interested in chronological dick-waving about whose hunting tradition goes back further, which is also why I don't say anything about pre-Yuan Mongol hunting even though it obviously existed. It's also true that the Manchus were (mostly) sedentary, and the article does not claim otherwise, but they shared their hunting tradition (which is what the article is about) with the steppe nomads -- a fact that they went to some lengths to emphasize. The hunting grounds being on Mongol lands and using Mongol names and being near the old Yuan dynasty hunting grounds are not accidents. As far as the distinction between being a member of a Manchu or Mongol banner vs being an actual Manchu or Mongol, I suspect you are correct. However, Elliott specifically phrases it as "Manchus and Mongols only" (Elliott 2001, p. 184) and "in which only Manchu and Mongol bannermen were included" (Elliott 2001, p. 335). If you have a source for your example of Turkic participants, I'll be happy to incorporate that into the article. Thanks again. --Difference engine (talk) 19:43, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I said that Inner Asians were not all nomadic, not that Inner Asians were overemphasized. The sedentary Turkic Muslim farmers of Turfan, Hami and Altishahr are Inner Asian and so are Tibetans. It is incorrect to use nomad and Inner asian as synonyms.Rajmaan (talk) 22:35, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I should be specific, I was talking about the use of nomadic in this section - User:Difference_engine/Autumn_Hunt#Qianlong_era. Central Asian Turkic peoples living in the Fergana valley and in cities like Tashkent in what is now modern day Uzbekistan were sedentary farmers. Look at Sarts. When they sent delegations to visit the Emperor at Chengde they should not be described as nomadic. Rajmaan (talk) 22:43, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

That section does not claim that all emissaries from Central Asia were nomadic, nor does the article claim that all Inner Asians were nomadic. --Difference engine (talk) 22:53, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

As a venue for such visits, Chengde's location north of the wall and its proximity to the hunting grounds emphasized the Inner Asian heritage of the Manchus and made it the ideal location to receive emissaries from the nomadic societies of Central Asia. This should just be changed to societies from central asia. [https://books.google.com/books?id=_qtgoTIAiKUC&pg=PA184#v=onepage&q&f=false It says in the source "including.... Tibetan prelates".Rajmaan (talk) 00:30, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me; I'll make that change. --Difference engine (talk) 00:38, 12 January 2015 (UTC)