Hüttner's report of the Macartney embassy through China and 'a part of Tartary' (1797)
A German tutor with the British embassy of 1792 to 1794 describes the road beyond the Great Wall to the Qing emperor's summer court at Jehol and the 'Tartars' who ruled China.
Full title J. C. Hüttner’s Report of the British Embassy’s Journey through China and a Part of Tartary (Berlin 1797)
Johann Christian Hüttner, a German classical scholar, sailed with Lord Macartney's embassy to China as tutor to the young George Thomas Staunton. His short report, edited from his letters (by Karl August Böttiger) and published at Berlin in 1797, ahead of the official English account, follows the embassy to Beijing and then north through the Great Wall to Jehol (Chengde), the summer residence where the Qianlong emperor received the embassy in September 1793. For Hüttner 'the Tartary' is the land beyond the Wall and 'Tartars' are the Manchu ruling people; he describes their felt tents, the lama temples, their character and their fears of losing China. Corpus copy: Bavarian State Library scan, whose Fraktur OCR is badly damaged in places.
How they knew
Eyewitness
Who “Tartar” means here
The Manchus, the ruling people of Qing China, and the Mongols of their court, as distinct from the Chinese; 'Tartarei' is the country north of the Great Wall, including Jehol and Manchuria (Mukden).
Why read it
A lively outsider's view of the 'Tartar' Qing court at the very moment Europeans first saw Jehol: felt tents with a Manchu name, a gilded Tibetan-style temple, a shabby town beside splendid palaces, and the mutual dislike of Tartars and Chinese.
Watch out
Many pages are nearly unreadable in the OCR, so only clean passages are quoted. Hüttner's judgements of 'Tartar' and Chinese character are sweeping, and some items are, as he says, popular rumour.
Editorial contextHüttner contrasts the emperor's summer seat with the town that served it: apart from the palaces, the magnificent park and the rich lama temples, the town offered only miserable huts, crooked streets and great dirt. He praises the fertile valley ringed by mountains, which he thought could carry vineyards and orchards. A useful corrective to any idea of Jehol as a grand 'Tartar' city: the splendour was the court's, not the town's.
one finds nothing in the town but wretched huts, crooked streets and great filth. The imperial palaces, the magnificent park and the rich lama temples make a great contrast with it!
Working translation
Original wording
findet man in der Stadt nichts, als elende Hütten, krumme Strassen und grosse Unsauberkeit. Die Kaiserlichen Palläste, der prächtige Park und die reichen Lama-Tempel machen damit einen grossen Abstich!
The emperor's felt tent and its 'Tartar' name, Mungkubo
Editorial contextBefore dawn on the day of the audience, the embassy waited in the imperial park, where 'Tartar tents' stood on the south side. They needed no supporting poles: a framework of split bamboo skilfully woven together, with thick coarse felt stretched over it. The largest, hung with yellow and furnished with carpets, painted lanterns and a throne, was called by the Chinese only by its Tartar name, Mungkubo, which the interpreter could not explain. Most of the courtiers who crowded in were Tartars.
They consist of splints of bamboo cane skilfully woven into one another, over which a kind of thick coarse felt is stretched. One was far higher and broader than the others, hung with yellow … The Chinese gave this tent exclusively the Tartar name Mungkubo, whose real meaning our interpreter could not tell me.
Working translation
Original wording
Sie bestehen aus geschickt in einander geflochtenen Bambusrohr-Splitzen, worüber eine Art von dickem grobem Filze gespannt ist. Eins war weit höher und breiter als die andern, gelb überhängt … Die Chinesen gaben diesem Zelte ausschliesslich den Tartarischen Nahmen: Mungkubo, dessen eigentliche Bedeutung unser Dolmetscher mir nicht zu sagen wusste.
Editorial contextThe most remarkable of Jehol's seven lama and bonze temples was the 'Putalah', the temple with the golden roof, said to have more than eight hundred lamas, set on a hill commanding the valley. Hüttner climbed two long stairways into a wide court paved with dressed stone, with a square temple about 100 feet high in the middle and the lamas' rooms along the inner sides of the outer building. He found it overloaded with gilding and glaring colours; many lamas sat on the ground singing what he calls Tartar chants. It is the Putuo Zongcheng temple, built by the Qianlong emperor as a copy of the Potala at Lhasa.
One climbs by two long stairways into a wide courtyard paved with dressed stone, in the middle of which stands the temple. It forms a regular square and is about 100 feet high. Along the four inner sides of the outer building are the rooms of the lama priests. The eye is offended here in every direction by gilding and glaring colours; everything is overloaded.
Working translation
Original wording
Man steigt auf zwei langen Treppen in einen weiten, mit Quadersteinen gepflasterten Hof, auf dessen Mitte der Tempel steht. Er bildet ein regelmässiges Viereck, und ist etwa 100 Fuss hoch. An den vier innern Seiten des Aussengebäudes sind die Zimmer der Lamapriester. Das Auge wird hier in jeder Richtung von Vergoldungen und grellen Farben beleidigt; alles ist überladen.
Manchu grandees carry their ancestors' bones home to Tartary
Editorial contextHüttner reports that viceroys and the highest ministers were mostly chosen from Tartar grandees, a measure he thought 'probably very necessary': according to a Chinese popular rumour, the emperor so feared losing the Chinese throne that he was having metal cast and heaped up in wide vaults under a riverbed near Mukden in Tartary (the scan is damaged at this point). And he calls it certain that Tartar nobles often moved the long-buried bodies of their forefathers from China to Tartary, fearing they would one day have to leave the country and unable to bear abandoning their ancestors' ashes to the enemy.
It is also certain that the Tartar nobles often carry the long-buried bodies of their forefathers from China to Tartary, because they fear that sooner or later they will have to leave this beautiful country
Working translation
Original wording
Es ist auch zuverlässig, dass die vornehmen Tartaren die längst beerdigten Leichname ihrer Voreltern häufig aus China nach der Tartarei führen; weil sie fürchten, über kurz oder lang dieses schöne Land verlassen zu müssen
About Manchu ('Tartar') nobility of the Qing empire
Keep in mind
The treasure-vault story is explicitly a popular rumour, and the OCR of that sentence is badly damaged; the reburial claim is stated as fact but is also hearsay.
Where China ends and 'Tartary' begins: the Wall at Gubeikou
Editorial contextOn the road north the embassy slept every night in the emperor's own travel palaces, so Hüttner skips the small places, but not the little town on the famous Great Wall 'which forms the border between China and Tartary', called Chu-pa-ku, 'between or at the wall' (Gubeikou). For him the Wall is the line where Tartary starts. He adds that the old Wall had fallen in many places and its towers had no garrisons, and the embassy took away pieces of its stone and mortar as curiosities.
since we slept every night in the imperial palaces in which the emperor himself is accustomed to stay … One small town, however, is too remarkable for me not to mention it. It lies on the famous Chinese Wall, which forms the border between China and Tartary, and is called Chu-pa-ku, that is, between or at the wall.
Working translation
Original wording
da wir alle Nächte in den Kaiserlichen Pallästen schliefen, in welchen der Kaiser selbst zu übernachten pflegt … Eine kleine Stadt ist indess zu merkwürdig, als dass ich sie nicht erwähnen sollte. Sie liegt an der berühmten Chinesischen Mauer, welche die Gränze zwischen China und der Tartarei macht, und heisst: Chu-pa-ku, d. i. zwischen oder an der Mauer.
Tartars and Chinese: one government, one language, two characters
Editorial contextIn a section headed 'Character of the Tartars', Hüttner says mixed marriages, a single government and a common language had made Tartars and Chinese hard to tell apart in their customs. Yet he found the Tartar, as travellers described him, rough, hard and blunt: sturdier in build, clumsier in manners and less clean in his dwellings than the Chinese, but without the deceitful double-dealing he attributes to his Chinese neighbour. On the next page the two mandarins conducting the embassy blamed the stubbornness and pride of the Tartars for trouble getting supplies in Tartary.
Mixed marriages of Tartars and Chinese, one and the same government, one and the same language naturally produce the same customs. But since a people can never wholly deny its own character, here too some traits shine through that clearly distinguish the Tartar from the Chinese. Travellers describe the former as rough, hard and blunt; and so we really found him.
Working translation
Original wording
Vermischte Ehen der Tartarn und Chinesen, einerlei Regierung, einerlei Sprache bringen natürlicher Weise dieselben Sitten hervor. Da aber ein Volk seinen eigenthümlichen Charakter nie gänzlich verläugnen kann, so leuchten auch hier einige Züge hervor, die den Tartarn merklich von dem Chinesen unterscheiden. Reisende beschreiben den erstern als roh, hart und gerade; und so fanden wir ihn wirklich.
National-character stereotypes, partly borrowed from earlier travellers, as Hüttner admits.
The fine print
How we know
firsthand The author saw the places or people described.
firsthand observation: Hüttner accompanied the Macartney embassy 1792-1794 as tutor to the younger Staunton and visited Jehol (Rehe) in Inner Mongolia; published before Staunton's official account
Research notes
Published anonymously by Böttiger from Hüttner's letters; Hüttner later assisted Staunton. Short work.
Why it matters
An independent German eyewitness of the Macartney embassy alongside the English accounts (W057-W059, W067); the title uses Tartarei for the Jehol region beyond the Wall, an example of the late-eighteenth-century sense of Chinese Tartary.