Objective Scenic spot titles are one of the constituent elements of Chinese classical gardens and an indispensable part of garden construction activities. The temporary palaces for emperor’s inspection tour belongs to royal gardens, and Qing Dynasty witnessed the largest number and largest construction scale of temporary palaces. The current research mainly focuses on the historical background, site selection, layout, and architectural form of temporary palaces, with less emphasis on scenic spot titles, which, however, serve as a recording window for travels and experiences of emperors in Qing Dynasty, and are exactly the most intuitive part of the expression of imperial culture and spirit by temporary palaces. Although there are various research perspectives, which are not yet sufficient to reflect the similarities and differences in the composition and spiritual expression of scenic spot titles between temporary palaces and other types of gardens. Therefore, it is particularly necessary to comprehensively sort out the scenic spot titles of temporary palaces.
Methods Text analysis is a method based on mathematical statistics and computer linguistics, aiming to obtain the internal relationships and patterns of text data based on the information retrieval technology. With high literary value, scenic spot titles are mainly composed of single or multiple words, presenting concise text easy to process. This research selects 14 typical temporary palaces for emperor’s inspection tour in Qing Dynasty as the research objects. To ensure the wide and representative selection of temporary palace, the research involves 7 regions, 5 types of inspection tour routes, and 3 scales, namely large, medium, and small scales. The physical remains of temporary palaces in Qing Dynasty are relatively rare after undergoing changes, for which literature research is the most basic research method. This research collects historical materials and selects effective information related to typical palace cases, and sorts out 187 scenic spot titles and 196 representative imperial poems and essays. On this basis, text analysis is used as a quantitative method, and ROST CM6 software is used as an analysis tool to input all the 187 titles and 196 imperial poems into the text document. Such titles and poems are analyzed from multiple perspectives including word frequency analysis, and semantic network analysis.
Results 1) From the basic composition, 64% of the titles are written by Emperor Qianlong, 23% by Emperor Kangxi, and the rest cannot be confirmed due to missing records. The titles adopt a three character grid as the mainstream form. Each functional space is indicated by its title that is corresponding to its artistic conception, with the number of titles in sightseeing spaces being the highest. 2) From the perspective of category composition, the titles can be divided into the two categories of natural landscape and cultural landscape, with more natural landscapes reflecting the careful consideration of landscape environment in the selection of palace sites. Among them, the northern and eastern tour routes are mostly described as natural landscapes, while the western and southern tour routes are mostly described as cultural landscapes, reflecting the differences in the areas and purposes of the tour routes. The elements of “cloud, pavilion, hall, stone, zhai, qing, and mirror” appear most frequently. 3) From the perspective of theme composition, the four types of themes present a “center – edge” radiating correlation, that is, “mountain & forest wild interests” and “scenic buildings and structures” are concentrated in the center area, while “waterscapes set off by glittering ripples” and “historical religious sites” are scattered in the edge area. Among them, the themes of “mountain & forest wild interests” and “waterscapes set off by glittering ripples” mainly describe different elements from various scales, with such elements integrated as a scenic spot map. The construction of scenic spots is combined with nouns and adjectives for various constructions. The allusion fairyland highlights the purposes of emperor’s inspection tour in Qing Dynasty, namely review of the past and reflection on the present, history-based introspectiona, respect for Confucianism, and culture-based country governance. 4) Scenic spot titles can directly prove the palaces’ shouldering the mission of inspection tour and symbolizing the imperial power. Led by inspection tour activities, each type of inspection tour route has its own emphasis on spirit expression, which can be summarized as praising the prosperous times of peace, establishing the image of benevolence and filial piety, and practicing self-cultivation, diligence, and self-reliance.
Conclusion The rich content and comprehensive spiritual expression of the titles of scenic spots in temporary palaces in Qing Dynasty, present a complexity different from other types of gardens, making them unique in the scenic spot titles of classical garden. It is evident that the purpose of the emperor inspection tour and the nature, history, and culture along the tour routes have a significant impact on the composition of the titles of scenic spots in temporary palaces. As an important component of royal gardens, the temporary palaces in Qing Dynasty have great historical and cultural value. The comprehensive research on scenic spot titles can help deeply understand the important political activities and ruling means in Qing Dynasty, such as emperor inspection tour. Furthermore, the rich and unique composition and spiritual expression of scenic spot titles have certain inspiration and reference value for the titling of scenic spots in modern gardens.
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