Cixi’s diversion of huge naval funds to build the Summer Palace for herself and construct the “Three Seas Project” (Beihai, Zhonghai, Nanhai) was one of the clearest signs of how utterly rotten late-Qing politics had become. With internal and external troubles unceasing, finances on the verge of collapse, and the regime precarious to the point of being in danger of not surviving the next day, she was still able to use vast military funds to satisfy her own desire for “nourishment” and pleasure by launching major construction and building luxurious gardens, and no one dared to dissuade her. One cannot but say that the “mandate” of the Qing dynasty was nearly exhausted. However, given Cixi’s exclusive grip on power and her supreme position, where even the emperor could be toyed with in the palm of her hand, she had always treated “I am the state” and viewed the entire country as her private property. She could have drawn money from all sorts of places to build gardens and seas for herself, so why did she single out the navy, just at the beginning of its establishment, and specifically decide to use naval funds? The reason behind this is quite thought-provoking.
Cixi loved pleasure and several times wanted to rebuild the Old Summer Palace, which had just been burned by the Anglo-French allied forces, but in the end the cost was simply too huge, and under the open or tacit joint opposition of Prince Gong Yixin, Prince Chun Yixuan, Li Hongzhang and a group of princes and ministers, the matter was dropped. After that, “building a garden” remained one of her obsessions. By the winter of 1877, after several rounds of suppression by Cixi, Yixin had already lost power, while Yixuan was increasingly in favor. Perhaps to make up for the “fault” of once opposing the rebuilding of the Old Summer Palace and to gain greater favor with Cixi, Yixuan wanted, under the pretext of setting up a machinery bureau by Kunming Lake, to rebuild for Cixi the Qingyi Garden, originally built in the Qianlong era and burned together with the Old Summer Palace, but he was blocked and failed to do so. Even so, Yixuan kept thinking about currying favor by “building a garden” for the Empress Dowager. He held onto that thought for nearly ten years. In 1886, Cixi, on the pretext that she was about to end her rule from behind the curtain and wanted to build a garden in which to “enjoy her later years,” had Yixuan—who by then was already presiding over military and state affairs and had been put in charge of the newly established Naval Yamen—inspect the Beiyang coastal defenses by her order. It was then that a thought occurred to him, and he found the best possible excuse for building a garden for Cixi, so he quickly submitted the memorial “Petition to Restore the Old Water Drill System at Kunming Lake.” In the Western Han, there had been a Kunming state at Dianchi in Yunnan. In order to campaign against it, Emperor Wu of Han had a great lake excavated near the capital Chang’an, named Kunming Pool, to train the navy. Emperor Qianlong, under the names of celebrating his mother’s birthday, promoting water conservancy, and drilling the naval forces, expanded Wengshan Lake in the northwest of the capital based on the allusion of Emperor Wu’s Kunming Lake and renamed it “Kunming Lake.” The Jianrui Camp and the Outer Firearms Camp had once held water drills there. Of course, drilling a navy on Kunming Lake had more “form” than “substance,” and had a distinctly royal viewing and entertainment character, so the practice was later abolished. On that basis, Yixuan proposed in his memorial: “The Jianrui Camp and the Outer Firearms Camp formerly had the precedent of water drills at Kunming Lake, later abolished. I respectfully request that the old system now be restored, placed under the Shenji Camp, and jointly managed by the Naval Yamen.” On the same day he received Cixi’s rescript of “Approved as proposed.” In this way, the Naval Yamen, established only a year earlier, took charge of restoring the old system of “water drills” and “troop training” at Kunming Lake. It was called “water drills,” but in reality it was building a garden for the Empress Dowager. Cixi of course understood this intent, which is why she approved it the very same day. Since the emperor and the empress dowager would naturally “personally attend” the water drills at Kunming Lake, all kinds of facilities naturally could not be shabby. So in another memorial, Yixuan wrote, quite “logically”: “Seeing that along the lakeshore the halls, pavilions, and terraces are half ruined, if they are not somewhat repaired, I truly fear that when preparations are respectfully made for the imperial review of the drills, proper reverence cannot be shown.” Therefore he proposed “to give measured protection and repair to the old halls, terraces, and pavilions of Longevity Hill and the Guangrun Lingyu Shrine, as well as the bridges and archways along the lake, for imperial use.” Thus the garden-building formally began under the high-sounding pretexts of restoring the old water drill system and preparing a naval academy at Kunming Lake, and the funds naturally came from the navy. Everyone understood this was “hanging up a sheep’s head while selling dog meat.” Weng Tonghe mocked it in his diary: “This is using Kunming Lake in place of the Bohai, and Longevity Hill in place of Luanyang.” “Bohai” referred to the main defense zone of the Beiyang Fleet; “Luanyang” was another name for Chengde, meaning that what was really being built was an imperial residence and retreat like the Mountain Resort.
At the end of January 1887, the opening ceremony of the Kunming Lake Naval Academy was held, quite shamelessly, on the same day as the beam-raising ceremony of the magnificent and splendid Paiyun Hall, built specially for Cixi’s birthday celebration and receiving congratulations. In mid-March, the Qing court issued an imperial edict in Guangxu’s name renaming Qingyi Garden as the Summer Palace, and before long both the inner and outer schools of the naval academy were completed, even equipped with “modern” facilities such as electric lights and a boiler room. Building a garden for the “Old Buddha” was of course a matter of first importance, and the relevant officials naturally dared not show the slightest slackness. For example, the purchase and installation of electric lighting from abroad was mostly handled by Li Hongzhang, while the Naval Yamen also concurrently managed railways at the time. So in 1891, in a letter urging the Naval Yamen for funds for the strategically important Guandong Railway, Li had no choice but to first report in detail on the purchase of lamps for the Summer Palace: “The entire lot of electric-light machinery for the Summer Palace has already been shipped to the capital in batches, and Zhizhou Chenglin has been dispatched to accompany it and attend to the arrangements.” He emphasized that these electric lamps had been ordered from German factories by taking advantage of the German torpedo instructor at the Guangdong Naval Academy going home on leave, “with especially fine workmanship; they are the newest Western style, never before seen in China.” Li “personally examined them one by one, and they are truly exceptionally fine,” with “ingenious mechanisms and many parts.” Although “Chenglin was originally skilled in installing electric lights, these are of a new style and unlike the ordinary kind,” so this German instructor had to personally install them at the Summer Palace. As for the nearby Xiyuan, the “replacement of electric lights, boilers, and related items” was being handled by a foreign firm and would soon be transported to Tianjin. “I hear the materials are still quite exquisite, and as soon as all arrive, reliable personnel will be dispatched to escort them to the capital for replacement.” In modern undertakings of major importance to the country and people—building steamships and artillery, setting up telegraph wires, laying railways—resistance was enormous, dismissed as “ingenious but useless tricks” or “using the barbarians to transform China.” Yet when it came to “foreign devices” for her own direct enjoyment, such as the electric lights and boilers of the Summer Palace, Cixi demanded the most advanced and had no scruples at all.
Here, Li Hongzhang first reported on the Summer Palace streetlights and only then asked for railway funds, which shows how difficult it was to get the money. Even so, the funds still were not allocated in full. In 1893, the Board of Revenue, in order to celebrate the “Old Buddha’s” birthday, still wanted to “borrow” 2 million taels from the navy’s Guandong Railway funds, because the annual earmarked railway allocation was exactly 2 million taels. Li Hongzhang had no choice but to comply. As a result, the Guandong Railway—already built as far as Shanhaiguan, with land already purchased as far as Jinzhou, and of great military importance—had to halt construction at the critical moment before the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War.
In 1889, the court ordered Li Hongzhang to transfer more than three thousand men, including some officers and sailors from the Beiyang Fleet and newly graduated students from the naval academy, to Kunming Lake. They treated the “shallow waters” of Kunming Lake as the “vast ocean,” using small steam launches as “warships” to sail back and forth over the lake. The sailors gave all kinds of performances, and together with the army on shore waved flags, shouted, cheered, and saluted Cixi, who sat on the “reviewing platform” at Lancui Jian on South Lake Island. This “military review” both displayed Cixi’s concern for the navy and her absolute authority as supreme commander of the nation’s armed forces, satisfying her vanity once again, and at the same time had a strong entertainment element that made the pleasure-loving Cixi extremely excited. It also attempted to show the world that “building the garden” was not for her own enjoyment, but truly for the construction of the Great Qing navy! One stroke, many birds indeed.
From 1886 to 1894, construction at the Summer Palace never stopped. Exactly how much naval funding was used is difficult to verify now, because the rulers themselves had “a guilty conscience,” fearing that the world and the people would find out. So long ago the Naval Yamen had already memorialized for permission not to make itemized records of these miscellaneous expenditures for Board of Revenue auditing. The exact figures will remain a secret forever. According to estimates based on relevant historical materials, most researchers believe the cost was as high as twenty to thirty million taels. In short, when the Beiyang Navy was formally established in 1888, its strength greatly surpassed that of the Japanese navy. Yet in the six years from then until the First Sino-Japanese War, because of financial strain, not a single new ship was added, nor was a single new artillery piece updated. In April 1891, the Board of Revenue simply made it explicit: stop purchasing naval guns and reduce naval personnel. After that, even normal maintenance could not be guaranteed. In contrast, during those same six years Japan added an average of two new ships per year, and the Japanese emperor even cut palace expenses and allocated funds from his “inner treasury” for shipbuilding and ship purchases. Comparing the two, what more is there to say! It was also in these very years that the world’s naval shipbuilding standards and shipboard artillery technology advanced by leaps and bounds, with both ship speed and rate of fire greatly improved. By the time of the First Sino-Japanese naval battle, the speed and firepower of the Japanese fleet far surpassed the Beiyang Fleet. In fact, the outcome of the war at sea between China and Japan had already been decided by then.
Of course Cixi and the others knew that such garden-building would provoke strong public dissatisfaction, so in an imperial edict issued in Guangxu’s name they specially emphasized: “This matter concerns the emperor’s filial support; within the deep palace one could not bear to oppose it too harshly. Moreover, the funds required for the works all come from savings and surplus, and the regular funds of the treasury have not been touched, so there is no harm to the national economy.” The so-called “surplus” referred to miscellaneous extra taxes outside the regular tax quota; “treasury” was originally a Han-era office in charge of money and grain, and in the Qing here referred to the regular funds under the Board of Revenue. The Naval Yamen of course also had to emphasize that no funds earmarked for ship purchases had been used, and that “the places on Longevity Hill respectfully prepared today for the Empress Dowager to review the water drills will, in the year of the great celebration, also be the place where the emperor personally leads ministers and people in offering congratulations and rejoicing. The statutes of the former reigns all exist, and this differs from ordinary places used merely for imperial visits and amusement.” “The regular funds were not touched,” “there is no harm to the national economy,” “it differs from ordinary places used merely for amusement”—these very claims only made the truth all the more obvious, a pure case of “there is no silver buried here.”
Clearly, only under the name of the navy could the garden be built “legitimately,” and only in this way could one cleverly have the reality of building a garden without the name of building a garden. Even with Cixi’s exalted position, she still needed a “proper” reason, much less anyone else! So China’s officialdom truly understood this art of “rectification of names”: many projects were given plausible titles, but beneath those dignified names they actually served private interests or the interests of some small group. Not to mention anything else—when today, in quite a few scenic places, one sees many restaurants or leisure centers luxurious enough to reach “star” or even super-luxury “star” levels, yet they turn out to be “training centers” of various ministries and government agencies; when in many cities one sees “achievement projects” that waste people and money... one really can directly feel how deep this historical tradition runs.
