ENGLISH

Mapping Chengde: The Qing Landscape Enterprise

Book information

Year
2000
ISBN
0824819802, 9780824819804, 9780585481920
Open Library ID
OL9310075M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
3 MB (2659856 bytes)
Edition
illustrated edition
Pages
209\233
Time added
2011-06-04 13:46:07

Description

The imperial residence of Chengde was built by two powerful and ambitious Manchu emperors between 1703 and 1780 in the mountains of Jehol. The site, which is on UNESCOs World Heritage List, combines the largest classical gardens in China with a unique series of grand monasteries in the Sino-Tibetan style. Mapping Chengde, the first scholarly publication in English on the Manchu summer capital, reveals how this unlikely architectural and landscape enterprise came to help forge a dynastys multicultural identity and concretize its claims of political legitimacy. Using both visual and textual materials, the author explores the hidden dimensions of landscape, showing how geographical imagination shaped the aesthetics of Qing court culture while proposing a new interpretation of the mental universe that conceived one of the worlds most remarkable examples of imperial architecture.

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