After the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, in the process of unifying China, every time a province was conquered, an army would be sent to garrison the town. During the Shunzhi period of the Qing Dynasty, after the Qing soldiers conquered Yungui, due to the complex society, harsh natural environment and harsh living conditions in the area, the Eight Banners of Manchuria and Mongolia were not suitable for garrison. Therefore, it was decided to set up a green camp army in Yungui, which was under the command of the viceroy of Yungui.
In 1659, Zhao Tingchen, then the governor of Guizhou, was appointed as the first governor of Yungui. Originally, the Governor's Palace of Yungui was located in Guiyang. Later, after Wu Sangui was stripped of his domain, the Qing Dynasty decided to move the Governor's Mansion from Guiyang Prefecture to Yunnan Prefecture in order to strengthen its rule in Yunnan. During the Yongzheng period, the governor of Yungui, Ortai, was credited with quelling the rebellion in Guangxi. At one point, the Qing court appointed the viceroy of Yungui to concurrently control Guangxi, but it did not last long and was cancelled within a few years.
Viceroy Yungui was one of the nine viceroys appointed by the Qing court. He ruled over the territory of one side and was in charge of the military affairs, grain and food and inspector duties of Guizhou and Yunnan provinces, which was highly valued by the imperial court.
The group of photographs we see today is the honor guard of the last Governor of Yungui, Li Jingxi, when he went on a tour in 1909. From the photos, we can see that as the most powerful feudal official of the Qing Dynasty, Li Jingxi not only had a huge battle when he went out on patrol, but also guarded the roads he passed, and attached great importance to safety and security.
As the last governor of Yungui, Li Jingxi was the son of Li Hezhang, the younger brother of Li Hongzhang, a powerful minister in the late Qing Dynasty, who called himself "Virtuous" during his reign. However, during the Chongjiu Uprising in Yunnan during the Xinhai Revolution, Li Jingxi hid in the people after claiming to have attempted suicide, and after the situation stabilized, he appeared again, and after refusing to serve as the governor of the Yunnan military government, he was sent out of the country by Cai Yili.
Li Jingxi's performance in the Chongjiu Uprising in Yunnan was not only unacceptable to the Qing government, believing that he was born into a famous family, and as a feudal official, since he could not defend the territory, he should kill himself and repay the imperial court with his death, so the Qing Dynasty called him "deserved to be dismissed from his post and investigated." The revolutionaries even exposed that he had taken bribes and made a lot of money during his term of office, found a large amount of opium and gold bars in his bedroom, and had tens of thousands of taels of silver in his silver trumpet.
In this group of photos, Li Jingxi dispatched such a large honor guard, pulled the tiger's skin and beat a big drum, and his self-assertion was obviously not to observe the people's feelings, was it a local inspection? The answer is not, it turns out that the purpose of Li Jingxi's trip is to meet the "foreign lords" in Yunnan.