Mapping Chengde: The Qing Landscape Enterprise [Paperback]

Philippe Foret (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2000

The imperial residence of Chengde was built by two powerful and ambitious Manchu emperors between 1703 and 1780 in the mountains of Jehol. The site, which is on UNESCOs World Heritage List, combines the largest classical gardens in China with a unique series of grand monasteries in the Sino-Tibetan style. Mapping Chengde, the first scholarly publication in English on the Manchu summer capital, reveals how this unlikely architectural and landscape enterprise came to help forge a dynastys multicultural identity and concretize its claims of political legitimacy. Using both visual and textual materials, the author explores the hidden dimensions of landscape, showing how geographical imagination shaped the aesthetics of Qing court culture while proposing a new interpretation of the mental universe that conceived one of the worlds most remarkable examples of imperial architecture.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Mapping Chengde is a pathbreaking effort. While much has been written concerning Chinese monuments and natural landscapes, Phillippe Foret has broken new ground in re-creating the spatial and temporal dimensions of imperial landscape creation and transition. His argument is so novel that it should provoke others to examine Chinese imperial and vernacular landscapes in fresh ways.

--Ronald G. Knapp, Distinguished Professor of Geography, State University of New York at New Paltz

About the Author

PHILLIPPE FORET is assistant professor in the Department of Geography and International Academic Programs, University of Oklahoma.

Product Details

• Paperback: 204 pages
• Publisher: University of Hawaii Press (August 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0824822935
• ISBN-13: 978-0824822934
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 8.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,876,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing book, but more maps would have been helpful, October 28, 2008

By 

Tim (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mapping Chengde: The Qing Landscape Enterprise (Paperback)

This is a groundbreaking book that looks in detail at the Chinese treatment of landscape in its ability to effect an acculturation of a place. The author makes a compelling argument, but I feel that the book is seriously handicapped by its paucity of illustrations. After all, with a title like "Mapping Chengde" I would have expected, well, maps. There aren't any except for a very simple sketch at the beginning and an outline drawing of Chengde prefecture.

I wish that Foret had included plans of the various temples and landscape enterprises, along with topographic maps or drawings showing the relationships between the various built elements and the natural setting. The reader is left to do this in his imagination. I can only hope that a future edition will correct these defects, as "Mapping Chengde" remains the only lengthy study on Chengde in the English language.