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3 SIGHTING THE WHITE MOUNTAIN

Locating Mount Paektu/Changbai in a Sacred Landscape
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Knowing Manchuria
This chapter is in the book Knowing Manchuria
SIGHTING THE WHITE MOUNTAINLocating Mount Paektu/Changbai in a Sacred LandscapeThe peak on the horizon is highly visible.YI FU TUAN, Space and PlaceIn the spring of 1677, the twenty- three- year- old Kangxi emperor uncovered a troubling geographical problem. Only a generation aft er the Manchus had left their northeastern homeland and conquered China, no one seemed to know the location of the Manchu’s sacred origins, the Long White Mountain (in Manchu, Golmin Šanggiyan Alin). Th is was the mountain where a seed dropped by a divine magpie impregnated the heavenly maiden Fekulen, who then gave birth to the hero Bukuri Yongson, the progenitor of the imperial Aisin Gioro clan.1 For Kangxi, the Manchu’s power to vanquish enemies and sustain a dynasty was directly born of the special relationship between his family and Golmin Šanggiyan Alin. How could it be that no one at court had ever seen it? To remedy this problem, the emperor dispatched an expedition from the capital to journey northeast in search of the mountain.2Kangxi’s expedition sought to gather empirical evidence of the mountain through seeing. However, the closer the expedition got to the mountain, the more the mountain stubbornly evaded sight. Ultimately, the only way the Qing expedition could see the mountain was by praying to the mountain’s spirit. Other northeast Asian elites who traveled to the mountain throughout the seventeenth and into the eighteenth centuries, including those who ap-proached from the Chosŏn kingdom to the south, also had to resort to prayer and ritual to see it. Visual knowledge of the Long White Mountain relied on mastering knowledge of the unseen world.
© 2022 University of Chicago Press

SIGHTING THE WHITE MOUNTAINLocating Mount Paektu/Changbai in a Sacred LandscapeThe peak on the horizon is highly visible.YI FU TUAN, Space and PlaceIn the spring of 1677, the twenty- three- year- old Kangxi emperor uncovered a troubling geographical problem. Only a generation aft er the Manchus had left their northeastern homeland and conquered China, no one seemed to know the location of the Manchu’s sacred origins, the Long White Mountain (in Manchu, Golmin Šanggiyan Alin). Th is was the mountain where a seed dropped by a divine magpie impregnated the heavenly maiden Fekulen, who then gave birth to the hero Bukuri Yongson, the progenitor of the imperial Aisin Gioro clan.1 For Kangxi, the Manchu’s power to vanquish enemies and sustain a dynasty was directly born of the special relationship between his family and Golmin Šanggiyan Alin. How could it be that no one at court had ever seen it? To remedy this problem, the emperor dispatched an expedition from the capital to journey northeast in search of the mountain.2Kangxi’s expedition sought to gather empirical evidence of the mountain through seeing. However, the closer the expedition got to the mountain, the more the mountain stubbornly evaded sight. Ultimately, the only way the Qing expedition could see the mountain was by praying to the mountain’s spirit. Other northeast Asian elites who traveled to the mountain throughout the seventeenth and into the eighteenth centuries, including those who ap-proached from the Chosŏn kingdom to the south, also had to resort to prayer and ritual to see it. Visual knowledge of the Long White Mountain relied on mastering knowledge of the unseen world.
© 2022 University of Chicago Press

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. CONTENTS v
  3. ILLUSTRATIONS vii
  4. INTRODUCTION: THE FLYING VOLES OF GANNAN AND THE CHALLENGE OF KNOWING MANCHURIA’S NATURES 1
  5. 1 LANDSCAPES OF EXILE 20
  6. 2 WHERE THE DRAGON AROSE 61
  7. 3 SIGHTING THE WHITE MOUNTAIN 105
  8. 4 FLOWERS ALONG THE AMUR 150
  9. 5 FOSSILS OF EMPIRE 193
  10. 6 PLAGUELAND 231
  11. 7 SCIENTIFIC REDEMPTION SCIENTIFIC REDEMPTION 282
  12. 8 RECLAIMED 295
  13. CONCLUSION: A VIEW FROM THE MOUNTAIN 337
  14. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 347
  15. GLOSSARY 349
  16. NOTES 357
  17. BIBLIOGRAPHY 399
  18. INDEX 437
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https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226818801-005

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. CONTENTS v
  3. ILLUSTRATIONS vii
  4. INTRODUCTION: THE FLYING VOLES OF GANNAN AND THE CHALLENGE OF KNOWING MANCHURIA’S NATURES 1
  5. 1 LANDSCAPES OF EXILE 20
  6. 2 WHERE THE DRAGON AROSE 61
  7. 3 SIGHTING THE WHITE MOUNTAIN 105
  8. 4 FLOWERS ALONG THE AMUR 150
  9. 5 FOSSILS OF EMPIRE 193
  10. 6 PLAGUELAND 231
  11. 7 SCIENTIFIC REDEMPTION SCIENTIFIC REDEMPTION 282
  12. 8 RECLAIMED 295
  13. CONCLUSION: A VIEW FROM THE MOUNTAIN 337
  14. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 347
  15. GLOSSARY 349
  16. NOTES 357
  17. BIBLIOGRAPHY 399
  18. INDEX 437
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