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IN APRIL OF 1748 the Xiaoxian empress, first wife of Qianlong, died of a malarial fever. In the months that followed, a scandal erupted that shook the bureaucracy and left several officials dead. Their crime was shaving themselves before the expiration of the hundred days of declared state mourning. The case was an important moment in Qing rule, showing a very saddened and still-learning emperor grappling with different methods and models of governing, questioning his role as a specifically Manchu leader, and struggling with the place that law would occupy in his reign. He emerges from mourning his wife, and from the scandals that ensued, with a changed sense of how to govern that would have long-term consequences for the Qing government. Before turning to our story, it is best to begin with a context for the issues.
The events described here took place during the reign of the Qianlong emperor, which is justifiably considered the most important of China's Qing dynasty. During the sixty years that Qianlong sat on the throne, from 1736 to 1796, China experienced a period of unparalleled growth and prosperity. Peace was brought throughout the empire, the borders of which encompassed the greatest territory they had in almost all of Chinese history. And yet many Qing scholars have, in recent years, come to see the Qianlong reign as important for another reason. They suggest that within the vastness of its prosperity lay the beginnings of its decline. And the decline of the Qing was integral to the demise of China itself. In this view, China's shaming in the nineteenth century cannot be blamed solely on imperialist Western powers, but on a Chinese government that was unable or unwilling to respond to new challenges. The origins of that stultified posture are traced by some to the Qianlong reign, when many Qing ruling institutions reached maturity.
The man at the center of the Qianlong reign, Qianlong himself, has been the subject of intense interest. To most historians, he has appeared as a much more complex man than the Qing emperors who preceded him. Like them he was a Manchu, and one to whom his Manchu roots mattered tremendously. But he was also the first Qing emperor to be steeped in Han Chinese...