The Qing hunt at Mulan and the banner soldiers of the Three Eastern Provinces

As a means of practicing warfare, hunting was deemed highly important among many northern people, including the Khitans and Jurchens. Later the Manchus developed a new military and social organization, the Eight Banners, which originated from their traditional hunting units. During the Qing period, the Manchu emperors built a hunting preserve at Mulan and held grand hunting ceremonies in the fall, for the purposes of training banner soldiers and checking their military prowess. The hunt at Mulan also had a political significance: various Mongol tribes, whom the Manchus subjugated militarily, were invited to the hunting at Mulan and had to pledge their allegiance to the emperor. The autumn hunting at the Mulan preserve has attracted scholarly attention because it demonstrated many features of the Qing Empire. But previous studies have mostly relied on Chinese documents and discussed the Mulan hunt only from the perspective of the imperial court. However, it was not only the emperor and imperial families that attended the hunt at Mulan. The banner soldiers, especially from the Three Eastern Provinces (Ma. dorgi ilan golo), were dispatched to escort the emperor from Beijing to Mulan and participate in the hunt, by holding spears, attacking tigers, riding horses, and shooting arrows in front of the emperor. The hunt at Mulan was a grand ceremony in which the emperor was able to demonstrate his power to his subjects; simultaneously it was mandatory dispatch work (Ma. alban) imposed on the banner soldiers of the Three Eastern Provinces. Unlike other Qing documents written in Chinese, Manchu documents in the Records of the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Hunchun includes many entries about the banner soldiers who were sent to Mulan to attend the hunting. Generals and lieutenant governors exchanged numerous letters to discuss how to select capable soldiers, train them properly, and provide their travel expenses to Mulan. These Manchu records show us that it was the banner soldiers of the Three Eastern Provinces who sustained the hunt at Mulan, a symbol of the Manchu tradition and imperial glory during the Qing period.