Macartney Embassy

A heron stood motionless at the water's edge, waiting for a fish that would not come.

I thought about the McCartney mission again.

It was 1793 when Lord McCartney arrived here, in this very resort, carrying gifts for the Qianlong Emperor and hoping to open trade relations.

The Emperor was not impressed.

The wild monkeys, which I'd been warned about, were lounging on the rocks, indifferent to my presence, and I kept my distance, remembering the signs that say not to feed them.

I sat on a bench at the base of the pillars for a long time watching the light change, and I thought about the McCartney Mission, the British envoy who came to Chengde in 1793 to meet the Qianlong Emperor, and who refused to perform the kowtow, the full prostration that was required.

The Emperor, of course, was not impressed, and the mission left without a trade agreement, and historians have argued ever since about whether that moment sealed the fate of the Qing Dynasty, whether it was a failure of diplomacy or a failure of vision.

Standing there, in the shadow of those pagodas, it seemed to me less a failure than a collision, two worlds that could not find a common gesture, and I thought about how the landscape itself, the very rocks, seemed to embody that stubbornness, that refusal to bend.