| Summary: | 博士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 美術學系 === 106 === This study aims to investigate the cultural and political meanings of Chengde Bishu Shanzhuang (“Mountain Estate for Escaping the Heat”) as a summer resort of the imperial family of High Qing Dynasty. It adopts the concepts of the “landscape” study as a research method, analyzing how the resort was constructed and how the garden was designed was introduced. Chengde Bishu Shanzhuang reflects the important cultural meanings of the Qing Dynasty during its heyday. The process of building the garden itself is a layout representation of language and symbols, and can be read as a text of landscape perception. This study focuses on the Summer Resort and the surrounding Waiba Miao (“Eight Outer Temples”), as well as Mulan Weichang (“Mulan Paddock”), mainly to explore the imperial images represented by them and how they were gradually formed and displayed in the political programme of the regime of the High Qing Dynasty.
This study includes a total of seven chapters. Chapter 1 defines the geographic scope of Chengde to be discussed, and explores the regional landscape formed by the Summer Resort, Waiba Miao, and Mulan Weichang, and its various associations with political acts of the Qing Empire, from which the issues and research directions of this study were developed. Chapter 2 probes into the geographic and social states of Chengde to discuss the reasons why the Summer Resort and Waiba Miao were constructed at these specific sites. This chapter seeks to uncover the political role Chengde played as a foreign affairs administrative area by decoding the unique spatial pattern applied in the landscape design. Chapter 3 discusses how the policies of the Northern Tour, paddock hunting, Khalkha strategies, the support of the Gelug, treating the living Buddha with courtesy, were implemented in Chengde. Chapter 4 investigates Kangxi’s Imperial Poems on Mountain Estate for Escaping the Heat. Its creation background, expressions of intention, division of the themes and graphics demonstrate the status of this graphic collection as the representative resort publication, reflecting the glory of Kangxi’s regime in his late period. Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 respectively investigate how the philosophical ideas of traditional “divinity” and “sacredness” were specifically embodied in the planning of the Summer Resort. Chapter 7 is the conclusions.
In recent years, scholars of this field of study on Chengde Bishu Shanzhuang have focused on various topics, mainly in contextual research, aesthetics, and the research of Manchurian culture from the historical perspective of “New Qing History.” This study focuses on analyzing “landscape” theory to explore characters of the overall culture diversity of Chengde Bishu Shanzhuang and Waiba Miao. It analyzes in depth the research materials and methodologies to claim a possibility that the design of this resort as a whole had applied an adroit skills and compounds of literature, mythology, as well as astronomy to construct the multiple cultural and philosophical ideas of landscape in Chengde. Bishu Shanzhuang reveals the geographical logic of the Empire and the geopolitical strategies. The resort constructed, the Qing Emperors demonstrated their mastery of the concepts of religion, cosmology, and ceremonies through the amusement park they formed. This study also verifies the aggressive and active political potential of Bishu Shanzhuang as the imperial family’s resort, instead of merely a site of court life full of passive and negative indulgence.
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