Abstract:
Inspection tour was an important activity of emperors in the past dynasties. In such tours, the emperors could inspect the territory, examine officials and get a better knowledge of people’s conditions, so as to maintain the regime’s stability. The tours were often accompanied by large-scale constructions, which had impacts on the landscape of the involved areas. Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty made the most inspection tours among all the emperors in Chinese history. His tours mainly took place in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, which greatly influenced the landscape development in the region. Through historical documents researches and quantitative statistics, this research focuses on the main routes and stops of the emperor’s tours, sorts out his tour activities in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, and analyzes the landscape development along the main routes of his tours, to summarize two aspects of the impacts of his tours on the regional landscape: First, his tours promoted the development and evolution of the regional cultural landscape; Second, his tours facilitated the transformation from natural landscape to cultural landscape. The emperor’s inspection tours had a profound impact on the subsequent development of the regional landscape in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.