ABSTRACT
The epilogue, “Working Toward Closure, the Jiaqing Emperor Reforming Imperial Labor” details the downfall of the Pictures of Tilling and Weaving during the reign of the Jiaqing emperor. Upon the death of Qianling, his son – the Jiaqing emperor – faced two rebellions and straitened finances. Jiaqing needed to restructure the government, and, as a result, Qianlong’s territorial expansion and aggrandizing art commissions did not continue. In an act of homage to the Qing and his forebears, Jiaqing composed poems for the genre and inserted them into the Si Ku Quan Shu or the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries, interpolating his poems into a massive, encyclopedic compilation. The Epilogue contends that Jiaqing had targeted this massive compendium to perpetuate the Pictures of Tilling and Weaving. He shrewdly maintained the Qing vision of agrarian labor and displayed reverence towards his ancestors while reforming the labor of the emperor by aligning it with fiscal responsibility and scholarly acumen.
