MUKDExN, THE MANCHU HOME 



509 



LARGE BLUE-AND-WHITE KANGHSI VASES TEMPORARILY STORED IN TUBS AND 



COVERED WITH DUST: aiukdEn palace (see page 310) 



Peaceful." the inscription over the door 

 of the pavilion which was the study of 

 the Emperor Taitsung, is no longer a 

 niirth-provoking legend to western visit- 

 ors. 



TLIE DRAGON THRONE 



The audience hall is not as vast as the 

 great temples of throne-rooms at Peking, 

 but it is sufficiently impressive, and the 

 red-raftered ceiling, with its fine ribbing 

 and its great beams covered with rainbow 

 decoration, gives excellent setting for the 

 ornate ark sheltering the chair of state. 

 The attendants tell one that it is the chair 

 of Shunche, Kanghsi's father ; and then 

 they tell one that Kanghsi's successor, 

 Kienlung, sent the chair from Peking — a 

 much more likely tale, since it is plainly 

 a replica of the "imperial seat" in the 

 Pao Ho Tien, the great audience hall in 

 the old palace in the Forbidden City at 

 Peking. > 



The state chair is a mass of interlaced 

 dragons carved to a miracle, covered with 

 vermilion and gold lacquer, and stands 

 on a dais approached by three stairways 

 under a canopy supported by splendid 

 dragon-wreathed columns. \\'hen the 

 jeweled person of the great Kienlung sat 

 upon that golden throne it must have 

 been a sight to dazzle the eyes of the 

 simple tribesmen who garrisoned the old 

 citadel. 



On either side of the audience hall 

 are the great storehouses and the famous 

 imperial library, and behind it is a ter- 

 race twenty feet higher on which stand 

 the great palace pavilions, where the sov- 

 ereigns lived and passed their hours of 

 case and occupation. Chief of these is 

 the great three-story tower where the 

 Emperor Kienlung spent all his time 

 during his Mukden visits — in the Man- 

 chu "old home weeks." Tt was in the 

 most fearful state of dilapidation in 



