7 Growing and Organizing Lotus in Qing Imperial Spaces

7 Growing and Organizing Lotus in Qing Imperial Spaces Interlocking Cycles of Money and Nature Martina Siebert Abstract The chapter explores the growing of lotus in water spaces under the control of the Imperial Household Department in and around Beijing. This seemingly minor organizational task with meagre financial returns was nevertheless regulated to the detail and established dependencies of tenants and officials, of working tools and paper trails, as well as between the flows of money and an unpredictable nature. Together they built a functional sub-part of the court’s ideological project of presenting itself as economically efficient. The chapter argues that the undertaking was an ideologically efficacious spectacle visible in the bureaucratic process and in the lakes and moats around the Forbidden City which were beautifully covered with lotus plants. Keywords: Qing Beijing, Westpark garden, lotus, bureaucracy, interconnectedness Introduction Lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) grows in lakes and rivers with its roots and rhizomes anchored horizontally in the mud and its huge leaves and flowers rising above water level. It is pleasing to the eye when in flower, and its edible seeds and roots, which are harvested in autumn, are a renowned Chinese delicacy. But lotus is even more than that: the beauty of its flowers and the splendid green of its leaves have inspired poets and painters, every part of the plant has its acknowledged efficacy in Chinese medicine, Siebert, Martina, Kai Jun Chen, and Dorothy Ko (eds), Making the Palace Machine Work: Mobilizing People, Objects, and Nature in the Qing Empire. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463720359_ch07 226 MARTINA SIEBERT Figure 7.1 View in northerly direction over the lotus-covered Middle Lake (Zhonghai 中海) with Beihai Bridge and White Stupa (Baita 白塔) O gawa Kazuma, Shinkoku Pekin kōjō shashinchō 清國北京皇城寫眞帖 (Tōkyō, 1906), vol. 2, plate 123. Courtesy of the Frances Loeb Library, Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the imperturbable cleanliness of its petals and leaves has made it an emblem for the Buddhist enlightened mind. All of this literary, medical, and religious significance surely played a role when lotus became an oc- cupant of water spaces under the administration of the Imperial Household Department (Neiwufu 內務府) during the Qing. This chapter examines the more worldly affairs of managing these lotus ponds and the sale of lotus roots (ou 藕) – or more correctly rhizomes – grown within the highly- controlled space of the imperial city itself (see Figure 7.1) and explores the workflows and knowledge that an array of people established around and in co-production with this plant. The various aspects connected with the plant and its designated spaces were codified into specific administrative regulations and the profits translated into ‘lotus rent money’. Lotus plants, water spaces, officials and tenants, regulations, and the flow of silver and materials thus together constituted a small but clearly distinguishable, functional part of the Qing dynasty ‘palace machine’ and contributed to several of the pivotal aims of the larger machine, namely the production of money, prestige, and ‘things’. GO R WING AND ORGANIZING LOTUS IN QING ImpERIAL SpACES 227 As a plant, lotus was a ‘thing’ that needed planting, care, and looking after. Lotus was one of the agricultural products grown in the luxurious, water- dominated space of the Westpark (Xiyuan 西苑) enclosure in the middle of imperial Beijing. After labourers had delivered all the roots requested by the Imperial Kitchens (Shangshanjian 尚膳監) from the Westpark lakes, the regulation demanded that superfluous lotus roots were sold for money; some more money came from renting out water areas dedicated to growing lotus under the administration of the Imperial Household Department in and around Beijing. The lotus from the Westpark moreover added a poetic atmosphere and religious meaning to the water spaces when in flower and demonstrated the court’s air of austerity and economic zeal when the roots were sold for money, served to guests at festivities, or given as presents to honourable officials.1 In short, lotus moved between different meanings, states, and functions while following its tracks defined on the one hand by its natural cycle of growth and decay and on the other hand by the rules and financial interests of the palace machine.2 The lotuses and the water bodies they grew in were administered by the Bureau of Imperial Gardens and Parks (Fengchenyuan 奉宸苑, hereafter Garden Bureau), one of the ‘Seven Departments and Three Bureaus’ (Qisi Sanyuan 七司三院) of the Imperial Household Department. Similar to other activities of the department and its subsections, responsibilities and workflows were codified in ‘Regulations and Precedents’ (zeli 則例), however, for lotus as a plant, the rhythm of actions such as collecting lotus rent money from tenants and selling lotus from Westpark were tied to the yearly routines of plant care and harvest. The lotus rent money in turn instigated further movements of the machine: small repairs in the Westpark area were financed with the money; it paid for replanting, digging waterways, and repairing sluices to stabilize the water level in the Westpark, for sharpening sickles, caulking boots, and to pay for the day labourers who swept the pathways, did seasonal weeding, cut the leaves and harvested the roots of the Westpark 1 See Qing shilu 清實錄 for the renyin 壬寅 day in the 7th month, year 20 of Kangxi’s reign (3 September 1681), which mentions the empress’ invitation to officials to attend a feast in Westpark, where they were served lotus and fish grown in the Taiye Lakes 太液池, i.e. the Westpark lakes. Qing shilu, juan 96, 26b (rep. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986). 2 Victoria Cha-Tsu Siu mentions lotus only once, as flourishing near the imperial apartments [of Changchun yuan 長春園], in her view ‘appropriately enough, as this region contains major Buddhist temples’ (see her Gardens of a Chinese emperor: imperial creations of the Qianlong Era, 1736-1796 (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 2013), 59). Siu focuses on the aesthetic and emblematic aspects of Qianlong’s ‘Three Mountains and Five Gardens’ project, rarely considering the web of shared duties that connected the gardens with each other and with their organizational heart, the Imperial Household Department. 228 MARTINA SIEBERT lotus. To fulfil some of these tasks the Garden Bureau had to interlink with other departments or ‘machine parts’ of the Imperial Household Department, such as the Imperial Workshops (Zaobanchu 造辦處), Imperial Armoury (Wubeiyuan 武備院) and the Grand Storage Office (Guangchusi 廣儲司) or, for larger construction projects, with state agencies beyond the Department such as the Board of Work (Gongbu 工部). Viewed from the financial side, lotus rent money evolved into a tool that granted the Garden Bureau some self-sufficiency and managerial independency from the Department’s central agencies. From 1681 on the Garden Bureau was no longer required to hand this rent money over to the Bureau of Grand Storage, but was allowed to keep it to handle smaller issues and acquire diverse items; in the mid-19th century the Garden Bureau was encouraged to lend out leftover lotus rent money and charge interest (shengxi 生息) on it.3 Thus, the example of growing and organizing lotus, a seemingly marginal part of the palace machine, reveals the complexity, interdependency, and adaptability of workflows and expertise in the machine. Furthermore, this telling case study foregrounds the situated processes by which knowledge is produced, codified, and controlled in the highly-regulated and seemingly self-contained organization of the Qing court. Waters and Spaces The space in focus in this chapter is the Three Lakes (Sanhai 三海) of the Westpark directly adjacent to the West of the Forbidden City (Zijincheng 紫禁城) in Qing-era Beijing. They are part of a man-made system of connected water reservoirs, lakes, and rivers that has evolved since the Yuan dynasty, with their source in the mountains to the northwest of Beijing.4 The waters stretch like a chain of pearls from the Yuquan Mountains 玉泉山 in the northwest of Beijing right into the heart of the city. Beginning with the water reservoir of the Kunming Lake at the summer palace Yiheyuan 頤和園, the Gaoliang river 高粱河 brought the water to the lakes of the Zizhu Garden (Zizhuyuan 紫竹院, today south of the Beijing National Library), then further on to the Jishuitan 積水潭 water reservoir right inside the 3 See below for an account of the usage of ‘lotus rent money’; for an archival find concerning the interest earned on lotus money and who the money was lent to, see footnote 25. 4 On the development of the Three Lakes’ water space from the Yuan to the Ming and Qing times, see Shichahai zhi 什剎海志, ed. Shichahai yanjiuhui 什剎海研究会 (Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 2003), 5-7. GO R WING AND ORGANIZING LOTUS IN QING ImpERIAL SpACES 229 northern wall of Beijing’s Inner City (Neicheng 內城). Passing Shichahai 什剎海 – an exclusive living quarter for noblemen in the Qing dynasty – the water entered the Imperial City (Huangcheng 皇城) and finally reached its end in the form of the Three Lakes, i.e. the North, Middle, and South Lake, within the Westpark’s imperial enclosure adjacent to the Forbidden City. To secure the water level in the Three Lakes, in the mid-Ming a canal was dug to directly connect Jishuitan with the Three Lakes, turning Shichahai into a dead-end sidearm of this water system that could be disconnected from the wider network in times of water shortage (see Map 2 at the beginning of this volume). This chain of water areas connected quite differently-defined spaces. There was first the open, agricultural area northwest of Beijing which had imperial rice fields at the foot of the Yuquan Mountains but also fields tended by ordinary peasants.

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