The diary of Italian priest Ma Guoxian reveals the true side of the Kangxi Emperor's evil and absurdity
Ma Guoxian, an Italian, was born on 29 May 1692 in the small town of Epori, south of Naples, the son of a physician of the wealthy middle class in the Salerno region.
At the age of 18, he made up his mind to preach the gospel, hoping to be given the task of preaching in the East. On 8 October 1707, he received a blessing before the Pope and was granted two privileges, one for pardon before death for sin, and the other for sending Jesus a blessing cross rosary.
On 13 October 1707 he embarked on a missionary journey to the East, from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, first to London via the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, and finally to Macau, China.
Ma Guoxian set out for Beijing in 1710. Ma Guoxian quickly adjusted to life in China, and in 1711 the Kangxi Emperor decided that he no longer needed a special translator. The Kangxi Emperor had a fanatical love of literature and art, and the missionaries praised him as King Louis XIV of France, and he settled Chinese and foreign artists in the Taiji Hall, most of whom were Jesuits.
Ma Guoxian was proficient in carving, painting and sculpture, which was deeply valued by Kangxi. He likes figure painting the most, believing that the figure is more evocative and elegant than the landscape. At the same time, he also actively trained a group of Chinese clergy practitioners.
Ma Guoxian, a painter in the Qing court, often had the opportunity to follow the emperor to Rehe to watch his hunting. At that time, the Kangxi Emperor built a palace in Chengde, called "Rehe Summer Resort", which was full of mountains and waters. Therefore, he wanted to give poetry to the picture, so he first instructed the Chinese painters to paint the palace into 36 figures, and then Ma Guoxian carved a copper plate, which is the world-famous "Imperial Summer Resort Tu Yong".
This set of copperplate engravings is so valuable that it is now available only in the world's most famous library, except for one in the collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei.
From 1708 to 1719, Kangxi sent missionaries to survey and map all over the country, and finally, Ma Guoxian drew the Imperial Public Opinion Overview Map (published in 1721) based on these sketches, which was also the first map in the history of Chinese geography to have longitude and latitude lines.
Kangxi, who liked to be vassal and elegant, after seeing Ma Guoxian's paintings on the spot, Kangxi praised him one after another and left him in the palace as a full-time painter. As he came and went, Ma Guoxian became more and more favored, and many of Kangxi's entertainment activities would take him with him.
Western missionaries in China have a habit of writing diaries to record what they have seen, and most of them will eventually go back, which is a good record of "foreign land". The same was true of Ma Guoxian when he was in China, and his memoirs recorded many details of Kangxi's life.
During the Kangxi and Qianlong dynasties, the Manchu Qing regime created an unprecedented bloody prison of words, when the sentence "Qingfeng is illiterate, why do you turn over books" will be killed. Foreign regimes controlled historians and propaganda institutions, and many of the Qing histories we see today have been revised and deleted, and the authenticity of many places is in doubt.
With the memoirs of the missionaries, we can know from the side what the emperors of the Qing Dynasty were like at that time. Unfortunately, in Ma Guoxian's memoirs, Kangxi is not the image of "Wei Guangzheng" in Qing history and modern TV dramas.
Ma Guoxian, who had accompanied Kangxi on a tour of the Rehe Summer Resort, had the audacity to break through the window paper and witness an absurd court game: "At the Rehe Summer Resort, I lived in a lakeside house with a small garden, and on the other side of the lake was a villa, where the Tatar monarch was often accompanied by some women, where they played a game.
Through the openings of the paper window, I saw the Tatar monarchs having fun... Sometimes, the Tatar monarch sat high on a throne-like seat and watched his favorite game.
Several eunuchs stood on the side, and on the carpet in front of the throne, a group of concubines gathered. Suddenly, the Tatar monarch threw fake snakes, toads, and other abominable little animals into the middle of the concubines, and they ran with their little feet to escape, and the Tatar monarch laughed.
Sometimes, the Tatar monarch pretended to want the fruit that grew on the tree, so he asked the concubines to pick it on a nearby hill, and at his urging, the poor cripples scrambled and ran toward the mountain, so that some fell to the ground, causing him to laugh. Tatar monarchs continually created such games, especially on cool summer evenings. ......”
Kangxi is still wandering when he is old, and the Tatar monarch here refers to Kangxi. It is worth noting that in this memoir, the objects of Kangxi's teasing are all crippled women.
According to the historical situation at that time, the women of the Eight Banners of Manchuria and the Eight Banners of the Traitors did not wrap their feet, and naturally there were no small feet. The women who played with Kangxi should all be Han Chinese women. However, according to the rules of the Manchu Qing dynasty at that time, the Manchurian chiefs would never marry women other than the Eight Banners, and these so-called concubines were actually Han folk women for Kangxi to play with.
According to research, in kangxi's later years, there was a sudden strong interest in gentle and intellectual Jiangnan women, and Places such as Rehe and Changchun Garden became excellent locations for Kangxi's golden houses to hide their delicacies.
Ma Guoxian's memoirs not only describe the colorful and rich court life, but also let us understand that in the strange and vast China, In the first year of Yongzheng, Ma Guoxian took 4 Chinese students back to Italy, and the emperor personally sent horses, tribute satin, porcelain, etc.
Ma Guoxian, who died in 1745, was a special figure in the Italian missionary mission to China.