ABSTRACT
When the outsiders from the Northeast, the Manchus, took power in China in 1644 and established the Qing dynasty, it was not the first time that non-Chinese had donned imperial yellow court clothing. From China's earliest history there had been a continual pas de deux between Chinese within the Great Wall and those outside, the peoples of the steppe— Mongols, Turks, and Manchus. By the early seventeenth century, the Manchus displayed clear dynastic pretensions by copying the broad structural outlines of the Ming governmental administration. The Manchus were clan-based peoples who stressed martial values based on skills of horsemanship and archery—a stark contrast to Chinese society, which stressed civilian values based on skills of the writing brush. The Qing, for all their Manchu identity, accepted the heart of the Chinese political, social, and cultural system—the imperial civil service examination and the Confucianism on which it was based.
