Among the many emperors of the Qing Dynasty, only Qianlong was the most arrogant, and Qianlong called himself a "perfect old man" in his later years, but he did not know that the world at that time was undergoing unprecedented great development, and Qianlong also self-righteously called himself "the king of the kingdom of heaven", and later formulated the policy of closing the country to the outside world, so that the Qing Dynasty completely lagged behind the pace of the world. However, at the beginning of his succession, Qianlong was also a diligent emperor, but at that time, Qianlong was always arrogant, coupled with the Tradition of the Manchurian Nation advocating cold weapons, which led Qianlong to embark on a wrong path.
At the beginning of Qianlong's ascension to the throne, he had placed 36 straw sticks on his own table in the Yangxin Hall, and by the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Eight-Nation Alliance army had invaded the imperial palace, and did not understand the meaning of these straw sticks.
Qianlong ascended the throne at the age of 25, when it was the most prosperous period of the Qing Dynasty, the Kangxi Emperor repaired politics internally, resisted strong enemies externally, the Yongzheng Emperor worked hard to govern, reformed the shortcomings of the times, and the two predecessors left Qianlong with a stable river and mountains and a rich treasury. Compared with the Kangxi Emperor who ascended the throne at the age of 8, the Yongzheng Emperor ascended the throne at the age of 45, one was young and one was old, and Qianlong ascended the throne at the age of 25, which was in the prime of his life, which was an age of wealth and great achievement.
Qianlong's personality is very delicate, not only has the extremely delicate feelings for Empress Fucha, but also has the "heart of the emperor" who completely controls the ministers, and Qianlong has controlled the imperial power to the "extreme". From the moment he ascended the throne, Qianlong constantly stressed that the royal land under the whole world, not only every piece of land under his feet, but also every piece of sky and every trace of air above the palace wall, belonged to the royal family.
According to Emperor Xuantong's memoirs, Puyi said: Listening to my ancestors, when Qianlong educated the princes, he once said: Everything under the heavens, including every grass and tree in the palace, is royal! In order to prove this, Qianlong specially put a straw stick on the imperial table of the Yangxin Hall and checked it in a few days to see if it would become less. In order to educate his descendants, Qianlong simply used this incident as material, took 36 straw sticks, about an inch long, and placed them in a small jar of cloisonné on the imperial table, calling it "inch grass as the standard.". When Puyi was young, after hearing this story from the mouths of his elders, he was full of reverence for the Qianlong Emperor.
However, Qianlong's idea that "not a single grass or tree can be lost" was quickly shattered. Qianlong's descendants not only lost every plant and tree, but also lost a large amount of land and gold and silver. When the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded China, Cixi fled west with the Guangxu Emperor, the Yuanmingyuan was burned, and a large number of treasures were looted in the Qing Dynasty Palace, but when the Eight-Nation Alliance saw the straw stick on the emperor's desk, it was very incomprehensible, of course, no one would put this straw stick in their own pocket and take it abroad.
Puyi once mentioned in "The First Half of My Life" that when he was a child, he also received various imperial educations, including yellow glazed tiles that only emperors can use, and the height of a certain building can only be possessed by emperors. In Puyi's words, Qianlong Ye put 36 straw sticks, nothing more than to prove one thing: everything under the world is the emperor's, without the emperor's permission, can not move, can not be less!
With the signing of various unequal treaties at the end of the Qing Dynasty that lost power and humiliated the country, Qianlong's "inch of grass as the standard" changed from inspiration to a kind of humiliation, and the education of "inch grass as the standard" that Puyi received was already very helpless in the memoirs.