Hong Kong Palace Museum | Qing Court in Four Seasons: Life and Culture of the Imperial Household

The artefact here features the flowers associated with the twelve months of the year. In the Qing dynasty, the Flower Festival, held to celebrate the birthday of all flowers, fell in the second lunar month. The Qing court established temples dedicated to flower deities in Yuanming yuan and the Chengde Mountain Resort to promote agriculture and sericulture and to pray for bountiful harvests. The twelve representative flowers varied by region owing to differences in climate and flowering seasons. Since a single flower could correspond to more than one deity, the festival led to the veneration of over a hundred flower deities.

“Kapala” is a transliteration of the Sanskrit word for skull. Kapala ritual bowls were traditionally crafted from the crania of eminent lamas who had vowed to donate their remains. As such, they are iconic offering vessels within Tibetan Buddhism. In 1780, among the tribute gifts presented by the Sixth Panchen Lama, Lobsang Palden Yeshe (1738–1780), when he travelled to the Chengde Mountain Resort for the Qianlong Emperor’s birthday was a kapala bowl. The bowl displayed here, however, was crafted by the Imperial Workshops of the Qing court. Its decoration is particularly lavish; an archival record notes that the pearl inlay alone consumed “a total of 432 pearls”.

Deer were traditionally auspicious, embodying longevity and prosperity. The animal occupied an even more special place at the Qing court, which paid much attention to hunting activities. Deer were raised at many important imperial sites. The Mulan Hunting Grounds in Manchu were literally “the site for deer hunting”. The Chengde Mountain Resort, the Jingyi Garden, and the Southern Park in Beijing had deer as well. The court not only decorated objects with the “One Hundred Deer” pattern but also commissioned several paintings of the same subject matter.

This hanging screen was presented as a birthday gift to the Qianlong Emperor by Li Shiyao (d. 1788). The poetic inscription on the screen points out that the emperorʼs birthday coincides with the bloom time of osmanthus. The emperor was born on the 13th day of the eighth lunar month, just two days before the Mid-Autumn Festival. The court would prepare a series of celebratory events for his birthday but did not place much importance on the Mid-Autumn Festival. The Jiaqing Emperor (r. 1796–1820) referred to it dismissively as “the Melon and Pastry Festival”, noting that the court did not have a tradition of holding banquets or bestowing gifts to celebrate it. In the year following the Qianlong Emperorʼs death, the Jiaqing Emperor issued a decree that permanently halted the presentation of Mid-Autumn tributes from provinces.

The shape and size of this object identify it as a bowl for meals used in the Qing court. Its lantern and grain patterns convey wishes for an abundant harvest. Qing court records state that the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736–1795) ate sweet glutinous rice balls from enamelled bowls decorated with lanterns and grains, which suggests that the bowl here was used that way during the festival.