External Force Resulting Prosperity:Political And Economic Factors In The Rise And Fall Of Yangzhou’s Landscape In The Qing Dynasty

"Landscape" is a system composed of physical scenery and abstract group cognition.Correspondingly,the process of landscape shaping includes physical development and subjective cultural construction,which is affected by multiple factors such as politics and economy.As a new perspective to investigate the development of the Ming and Qing cities,landscape research has attracted the attention of academic circles.In the related research,the "landscape politics" paradigm,which analyzes the power operation through the process of landscape shaping has been widely used.Most researchers took the development and change of a single landscape as a case to analyze the "state-local" relationship reflected in it,whose conclusion can be basically divided into three categories: national dominant,local advantages or cooperation.Among them,the landscape studies in the Qing Dynasty paid more attention to the development of local landscapes led by national power,so discussions that emphasized the imperial power’s participation in the development of local landscapes during the South Tour often appeared.How microcosmic landscape study serves the Study of Urban History,still needs further reflection and exploration.On the one hand,due to researchers choose to examine the making process of a single landscape,the conclusions were quite different,which were not persuasiveness to macroscopic problems,so a comparative perspective is needed.On the other hand,the widely used "state-local" binary opposition model in relevant studies is also worth reflection.In the field of Urban History study,more and more discussions have been made on the "symbiotic relationship" between cities and state.Landscape Study also needs to keep pace with the times.It’s necessary to analyze the complex relationship between the state and city,such as conflict,cooperation and the interaction,in the specific urban social context,rather than simply applying the analytical model.The landscape of Yangzhou in the Qing Dynasty completely experienced the process of rise,development,and decline.During the period,emperors,officials,salt merchants,and local literati all participated in the construction of the landscape,clearly reflected how the power of various groups affects landscape changes.Although the research results of Yangzhou in the Qing Dynasty have been quite fruitful,there are few researchers who deeply investigate the rise and fall of the landscape and its influencing factors.Compared with previous researches,this article no longer takes a single landscape as the research object,but focuses on the overall landscape of Yangzhou,comprehensively analyze the leading factors of the landscape culture shaping of Yangzhou during the Qing Dynasty.In addition,Yangzhou research was more concentrated on the reign of Kangxi to Qianlong period.This paper pays more attention to the period after Jiaqing,when the landscape and the city began to decline,to answer macro questions such as whether the influence of external factors such as the Southern Tour can continue in the long-term.This paper is divided into three parts.The first part traces back the process of Yangzhou landscape construction and changes.Focused on the development of the two landscape belts,the North Lake and Guarantee Lake.The North Lake landscape was built entirely by local literati.It emerged from the Shunzhi era and declined after decades.The development of the Guarantee Lake was relatively late,but it gradually became a representative of Yangzhou landscape under the impetus of officials and Southern Tour.The different destinies of the two landscapes actually reflect the differences in the influence of local literati between officials and imperial power in the shaping of the landscape.The second part focuses on the literature and image representation of the urban landscape.Literary writing was gradually out of the single "Wucheng nostalgia" tradition,and appeared celebrity narratives,valued literati while avoided dynasty change,as well as Southern Tour description.After Qianlong’s Southern Tour,Yangzhou landscape image style changed from literati painting to palace painting.However,the landscape poets of Yangzhou written by Pu Songling,Zhao Yi and others was slightly negative,demonstrating that the mainstream landscape image is just a cultural construction.The lack of general recognition of Yangzhou’s landscape,actually was one of the reasons for the decline.The third part discusses the relationship between landscape and urban society.After the southern tour,the actual management of official gardens is similar to private gardens.People generally regarded the garden as a private property for enjoyment.The owner does not want to engage in production and operation activities,and the local community does not encourage the opening of gardens.There is no consensus to cherish and care for the gardens,not to mention institutionalized rule to maintain them.Eventually,the garden was quickly abandoned.The decline of Yangzhou’s gardens reflects that the southern tour’s influence on local culture did not last long.The changes in landscape reflect the rise and fall of the city.The prosperity of the Yangzhou in Qing dynasty was also based on the privileges of salt government and salt merchants,which lacked "endogenous power".After the fall of the landscape,with the reform of the salt policy in the late Qing Dynasty,Yangzhou lost its stimulation from the outside,eventually declined rapidly.In terms of historical materials,in addition to conventional local historical materials,this paper attempts to use art history methods to analyze landscape cultural changes from the transformation of landscape image composition style.At the same time,this paper attaches great importance to the detailed interpretation of literary materials such as travel notes with similar contents,and mentions some slightly negative landscape literature to examine the limitations of the development and decline of landscape.