Emperor in disguise

In a series of online animations, the Palace Museum presents Emperor Yongzheng in many roles, often laced with humor. Deng Zhangyu reports.

What would an ancient emperor, who worked hard and was known for his taste in art, do for fun? He would dress up and pose for pictures.

On Aug 1, a series of flash (computer-generated) animations of Chinese Emperor Yongzheng (1678-1735) was posted online, to the delight of thousands of Chinese history buffs.

In the animations, the ruler, seen through his dynasty's despotic years, plays a fisherman, hunter, calligrapher, a man washing his feet in a river and even someone wearing European clothes and a wig, ready to strike a tiger with a trident.

Yongzheng was the fifth ruler of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

The flash animations were produced by Beijing's Palace Museum and are based on an album of paintings called Yongzheng Xingle Tu (Yongzheng enjoying himself). It made a splash on social media, with about 820,000 views on Wechat and has been forwarded by thousands of people on micro blogs since it was uploaded. Many online users called him "adorable".

According to records of the time, the emperor rose before sunrise and kept working until late at night, often eating dinner at midnight because of his punishing schedule. One of his few amusements was to ask painters to draw pictures of him.

Many of Yongzheng's portraits show that he enjoyed posing as ordinary people, be it a poet or a musician.

The Palace Museum's online store on taobao.com digitalized the paintings, bringing his "harsh personality" to life with a sense of humor by using software to marry different kinds of computer graphics.

One of the animations shows the emperor dressed as an ordinary man sitting by a river, washing his feet by moving one leg against the other.

Another frame has Yongzheng dressed as a hunter, shooting a bird in the sky. The caption reads: "You fly free in the sky but I can never catch up ... I feel tired."

"The paintings of the emperor in costume are different from what he did in real life. That "s strange. It may reflect the inner mind of the emperor to be an ordinary person instead of a ruler," says Zhang Yongjiang, a professor who teaches Qing Dynasty history at Renmin University.

Other rulers usually went to their mansions outside Beijing to avoid the scorching heat in the summer. But Yongzheng, says Zhang, never traveled out of the capital for leisure.

He spent most of his free time with painters, including Italian missionary Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), also known by his Chinese name Lang Shining, who became a popular court painter for the royal family.

Zhang says under the reign of Yongzheng, many foreigners served the emperor as painters, pharmacists, astronomers and cartographers. That is why there are paintings in which Yongzheng is seen wearing European clothing, either fighting a tiger or riding a horse like a medieval knight.

"It is hard to say whether the emperor really did all the things that his paintings portray. Emperor Yongzheng was complicated and hard to understand," Zhang says.

He adds that both Yongzheng's father Emperor Kangxi (1654-1722) and son Emperor Qianlong (1711-99) liked being painted, but not as much as Yongzheng.

Through the flash animations, the Palace Museum is trying to promote the culture of the traditional museum and make their collections come alive to attract younger people, according to a statement issued by the Palace Museum after the animations went viral.

The museum has reached out to more people by opening its online store and Wechat account, as well as launching apps to introduce its other collections. Its first app, Twelve Beauties of Prince Yong, won wide acclaim among netizens.

The statement said that the museum's app team is now working on two apps about Qing emperors and their families, A Day of An Emperor and Clothes of Emperors, which will be posted online soon.

Contact the writer at dengzhangyu@chinadaily.com.cn