Chinese Rules: Five Timeless Lessons for Succeeding in China. Tim Clissold
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supervised the imperial examination system, which had first been conceived by the Han as a way of selecting and promoting civil servants. Introduced properly by the Sui in the sixth century, the exam system had been perfected four hundred years later under the Song and it had been in use for centuries by the time it was abolished by the Qing in 1905. The tribunal also controlled the movements of envoys and receipt of tribute.
Macartney, however, knew little of this as he haggled about the kow-tow. After several rounds of unsuccessful negotiations, he noticed that the old mandarin who had refused to board the ship at Zhoushan had vanished. Apparently he’d been replaced by another official. Macartney was delighted with the change, as he had heard that the new official was a cousin of the emperor and so assumed that he had more power at court. But there were hundreds of ‘cousins’; all it meant was that he was related to one of the emperor’s numerous concubines. In fact, the old mandarin had been a salt tax commissioner and his replacement had at one time been in charge of the Ming Tombs. Both were quite junior and hopelessly out of their depth. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the vermillion brushstrokes moved across the pages – silently, alone, in secret – directing every move.
Finally, the embassy was allowed to travel to Jehol, where the emperor spent the summer, some hundred miles northeast of Beijing. They travelled through hills and patches of dense farmland, finally passing under the Great Wall and out into a fallow, wilder landscape. In places, the road was so steep that extra horses were needed to pull up the carts. The smooth imperial roadway was off-limits to the British; for eight days the horses limped and stumbled along the rocky pathways.
During an overnight stop, one of the mandarin officials asked to see the ‘admirable rarities brought for the Emperor’, explaining that he’d heard they were carrying fowl that ate coal, an elephant the size of a cat, and a ‘magic pillow’. All this, said the mandarin, was ‘surely true’ because ‘he had read about it in the newspapers’. Macartney noted in his diary a few days later that the interpreter ‘had amused us’ with a newspaper report of similar idiocies, including a ‘horse the size of a mouse’.
By the time that the embassy reached Jehol, many of the saddles had lost stirrups, but the atmosphere was jovial. Perhaps it was the clear mountain air, the almost Alpine scenery, or just the thrill of finally seeing the glazed yellow tiles and vermillion walls of the imperial palaces lying in the valley below. The British marched in a procession through the gates of Jehol to the strains of ‘God Save the King’ from a military band. While the aristocrats may have been smartly dressed, one of the lower members of the party recorded that ‘the rest of the company exhibited a very awkward appearance: some wore round hats, some cocked hats, and others straw hats: some were in whole boots, some in half boots, and others in shoes with coloured stockings. In second-hand coats and waistcoats, [we] did not enjoy even the appearance of shabby uniformity.’
The embassy was to remain in Jehol for nearly two weeks, from 8 to 21 September, during which time the British, still refusing to kow-tow, felt the atmosphere become hostile. Macartney had presented a copy of George III’s letter, but there was no response; a cold silence reigned. There was no word from the mandarins and nothing to do but wait.
On the day appointed for the imperial audience, Macartney was woken up at three in the morning. The emperor was to receive him in a large tent about three miles from their lodgings. No lamps were sent and they stumbled around in the dark, at one point finding themselves ‘intermingled with a cohort of pigs, asses and dogs, which broke our ranks and put us into irrecoverable confusion’. They arrived at four o’clock and were kept waiting for nearly three hours. A huge throng of people had assembled there – Tatar princes, viceroys, governors of cities and districts, mandarins of all types and ranks, soldiers, acrobats and musicians – several thousand people all waiting for the simultaneous appearance of the emperor and the morning sun. Eventually Emperor Qianlong arrived, preceded by ministers in yellow robes, and carried on an immense open chair by sixteen men. According to the ambassador, all but the British threw themselves to the ground. Qianlong was dressed in brown silk and wore a velvet cap with a single large pearl. Although he was more than eighty and hard of hearing, the British gained the brief impression of a man much younger in years before he quickly disappeared into the tent. Some time later, Macartney, his deputy and the boy translator were ushered inside.
It’s not clear exactly what happened next, and scholars still argue about it. Macartney insisted that instead of performing the kow-tow, he only went down on one knee before the emperor. But the boy noted that as the emperor passed the crowd on the way to the tent, ‘[we] bowed our heads to the ground’. One of the other members noted that ‘we paid our respect in the usual form of the country, by kneeling nine times to the ground’ – all of which sound suspiciously like a kow-tow. The boy Staunton records that, inside the tent, they went up to the emperor’s platform and ‘made the same ceremony as before’. Whatever really happened, Macartney presented the emperor with the letter and there was a short exchange of pleasantries before the emperor enquired whether anyone in the embassy could speak Mandarin. The boy was brought forward and spoke a few words, to the obvious delight of the emperor, who took a small purse off his belt and gave it to him. Next they were taken to an enormous banquet and returned to their residences before nightfall, having eaten too much and accomplished precisely nothing.
Following the audience, there was no response to George III’s letter. Whenever Macartney attempted to raise it with the mandarins, he was parried with a new round of gifts or treated to unwanted entertainments, including on one occasion a four-hour theatre performance. At the end of the play, the stage was filled with imitation dolphins, sea monsters, rocks and sponges before an enormous whale appeared and disgorged several tons of water from its mouth, which drained away through perforations in the floor. As soon as the play was finished, a circus appeared with jugglers on their backs using their feet to throw ceramic urns high into the air with children inside. Next there was an enormous firework display, which concluded ‘with a volcano or general discharge of suns and stars, squibs, bouncers, crackers, rockets, and grenadoes, which involved the gardens for above an hour after in a cloud of intolerable smoke’. Finally Qianlong personally sent yet more food, consisting of ‘a variety of refreshments, all of which, as coming from him, the etiquette of the court required us to partake of, although we had dined but a short time before’.
Several days later, the embassy was again woken well before dawn and escorted to a pavilion, where they were kept waiting for the usual three hours. This time the emperor never even appeared but instead sat behind an enormous screen. Muffled drums and bells were heard in the distance, before silence fell once more. Suddenly the whole court fell flat on their faces and a concealed orchestra erupted with the wails of strange stringed instruments and the deafening hammering of gongs. An immense red cloth was spread on the ground. At each of its four corners stood a man with a whip and, at the moment that the emperor was supposed to have mounted his throne, the cloth was whipped nine times in sets of three strokes each. Before they knew what was happening, the ceremony was over and everyone left. The embassy went back to the lodgings having no idea of what they had witnessed and it was never mentioned again.
On 21 September, still waiting for a response to the letter, the embassy took the same stony route back to Beijing. Just before leaving, the atmosphere darkened after a minor diplomatic incident when one of the men from the Royal Artillery died, ‘having eaten no less than forty apples at breakfast’. The mandarins were indignant; it was against regulations to die in one of the emperor’s palaces.
Macartney’s final meeting took place in the Forbidden City. Summoned once more without warning and crippled with rheumatism, he hauled himself out of bed and donned the required ceremonial dress, only to be kept waiting yet again for the customary three hours. Almost fainting with fatigue, he was finally asked to kow-tow to a letter addressed to George III that had been placed on a yellow chair in the gateway of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. He wasn’t allowed to read it for several days. When it was translated, it was heavily edited to avoid offending the king’s sensibilities. In fact, it was to be years before a full translation revealed the extent of the embassy’s failure. Every one of George III’s requests had been refused. Qianlong’s letter began:
We, by the Grace of Heaven, Emperor, instruct the King