The Qianlong Emperor was a well-known jade lover. Jade craftsmanship during his reign is widely regarded as its peak of development. According to official records, he regularly inspected the jade carving process to make sure products were up to standards. With the Qing court’s expansion of territory in western China in the mid-18th century, there was an increased supply of jade material from Xinjiang province, particularly from the renowned jade-rich region of Khotan (Hetian). Highly skilled jade artisans worked at workshops both inside and outside of the palace, for example, in cities such as Suzhou and Yangzhou, creating a wide range of jade items of unprecedented quantity.

From the hundreds of poems and essays he had written about jade, it is possible to get a sense of the Emperor’s taste. Khotan jade, for example, was highly prized by the Emperor who on several occasions expressed his admiration for this treasured stone. In terms of style, he was particularly fond of jade designs inspired by antiquities and paintings. The latter, typically with depictions of figures and landscapes, aim to create a visual effect similar to that of paintings, but in a three-dimensional form by carving the stone in relief on varying levels. Like on paintings, verses were sometimes inscribed on jades to accompany pictorial representations.

A jade mountain, carved with two scholars standing by a waterfall, bears the same poem. It is in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei (accession no. 故-玉-003848), and included in the Museum’s exhibition The Refined Taste of the Emperor: Special Exhibition of Archaic and Pictorial Jades of the Ch’ing Court, Taipei, 1997, cat. no. 41 (fig. 2). The Emperor’s poems are often found inscribed on more than one work.