PREFACE

Cotton is not a crop native to China. Prior to its introduction, Chinese people mainly relied on clothing made of silk and linen fabrics to keep warm. It was introduced to the country during the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420-589) period but was only grown in the border regions at this time, and it was not until the late Song Dynasty (960-1279) and early Yuan Dynasty (1206-1368) that cotton began to be widely planted throughout the country’s interior. Thanks to its warmth retention properties, cotton products provided strong insulation against the cold at an affordable price. As a result, they gradually began to replace silk and linen fabrics as the dominant clothing material by the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1616-1911) dynasties.

The Qing court attached great importance to the cultivation of cotton. Emperor Kangxi wrote the prose poem On Cotton (Mu Mian Fu), in which he praised the plant as “not inferior to the main crops”. During the reign of Emperor Qianlong, cotton cultivation was promoted in the Hutuo River basin of Hebei Province, and cotton cultivation gradually flourished across northern China. In the 30th year of his reign (1765), Emperor Qianlong went on a southern inspection tour and stayed at the Baoding Temporary Palace. Fang Guancheng, the governor-general of Zhili, led the project, and offered a set of 16 cotton illustrations, accompanied by Emperor Kangxi’s prose poem On Cotton and a preface, which were compiled into a book and presented to the emperor, who was so delighted that he wrote 16 poems on the subject, each with four lines and seven characters to a line. Emperor Qianlong allowed Fang Guancheng to engrave the 16 poems, Fang’s own poems, annotations, two statements to the emperor, and one postscript into stone, and named it Imperially Inscribed Cotton Prints (Yu Ti Mian Hua Tu).

Fang Guancheng was born in the 37th year of Emperor Kangxi’s reign (1698) and passed away in the 33rd year of Emperor Qianlong’s reign (1768). Born in Tongcheng City, Anhui Province, he went on to hold many important positions, including provincial governor of Zhejiang and governor-general of Zhili. In his early years, Fang experienced many hardships, providing him with a deep understanding of the toil of the common people. Upon attaining office, he focused on civil affairs and made great efforts to develop irrigated fields, dredge rivers and canals, and build bridges. His efforts won the hearts of the people and were regarded as noteworthy political achievements.

This book is an exquisitely engraved block painting edition dating back to Emperor Qianlong’s reign. The illustrations are replicas of the original drawings now housed in the Taipei Palace Museum and are engraved on woodblocks. The poems are also engraved in woodblocks using the intaglio technique, with the ink and style of the characters being different from those of stone rubbings. This book consists of 16 paintings, each accompanied by an explanatory page. The explanatory pages introduce the cotton planting or spinning process depicted in the paintings shown to their right, with the emperor’s poems in the center and Fang’s poems on the left-hand side.

During the Qing Dynasty, emperors Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong all emphasized and encouraged agriculture, with Emperor Qianlong’s reign producing the most abundant works on farming and weaving. The Imperially Inscribed Cotton Prints, which focuses on cotton cultivation and spinning, realistically depicts the production and living scenes of cotton farmers and textile craftsmen in Hebei at the time. It is an excellent popular science work that actively advocated for and promoted cotton planting and cotton spinning technology at the time it was published, and it remains a valuable resource for studying the history of agricultural science and technology in China, particularly the history of cotton planting, cotton spinning, and the agricultural economy of the early Qing Dynasty in central Hebei.

Chen Hongyan

Director of the Ancient Books Department at the National Library of China