Yongzheng & Qianlong Era
1722 - 1796
Emperor Yongzheng succeeded his father in 1722. Nevertheless, his succession was being questioned at the time as some people believed Emperor Kangxi left his will to appoint his 14th son, Yingzhen, as the king but it never proved and remained a mystery until the modern day. Under the kingship of Yongzheng, he promoted Confucian's teaching and completely banned the preaching of Christian as well as the missionaries. Later on, Emperor Yongzheng made up the Grand Council who acted as his cabinets to give advice on running the country. Furthermore, the king was more brutally on tax as he would send his officials to investigate on elites' property for obtaining accurate assets that could be taxed. However, it was highly opposed by the elites by tricks and even violence. In 1735, Emperor Yongzheng died and his son, Qianlong, took over the kingship of Qing. This period of Qing was harsh due to the rapid increasing of the population from 100 million to 300 millions in the 18th century. The population was so great that there wasn't enough farmland to produce sufficient food. Therefore, the king had to lift the ban of Han people from entering Manchuria homeland, Heilongyang, and enabled the Han people to start cultivation. As a result, Han population in Manchuria homeland increased significantly. Near the end of Emperor Qianlong's reign, White Lotus Society began to rebel against the Qing and marked the turning point of the dynasty into a chaos period.
Legacy
Siku Quanshu
During Qianlong's reign, he ordered his scholars to collect many literature works to combine into an encyclopedia called Siku Quanshu. It was composed of about 36,000 volumes and approximated 2,300,000 pages. However, they destroyed about 3,000 titles whom they considered as anti-Manchus. Many copies of Siku Quanshu was destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion and Opium Wars. Therefore, there are only 4 copies left at the national museums of China.
Xiyang Lou
Xiyang Lou, a 7 hectares garden, was that first European imperial construction that was built in the Summer Palace in Beijing. The building was designed and supervised by Ignaz Sichelbarth with the help of Chinese architecture experts. In the second Opium war, the Anglo-French destroyed the building due to the imprisonment of their ambassadors who they sent to China for negotiating for a peaceful treaty.
