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TEA AND OPIUM:
SOME FURTHER NOTES ON MACARTNEY'S
ROLE1
DAVID AKERS-JONES
Macartney's audience with the Emperor Qianlong recorded in the journal which the former wrote actually took place on 14th September 1793 (not on the 30th) at Jehol (Chengde) which is now about five hours journey by 'bus from Beijing. It took the Embassy six days. Macartney himself travelled in a post chaise which he had taken to China especially to ride about in, 'drawn by four little Tartar ponies.' His cavalcade amounted to seventy people of which forty composed the guard. He says that about two hundred porters were required to carry their baggage.
The great circular yurt where the audience subsequently took place is described in the journal as follows:
The Emperor's tented pavilion which is circular I should calculate to be about twenty or twenty-five yards in diameter and is supported by a number of pillars, either gilded or damasked according to their disposition....
Macartney then gives a colourful account of the audience.
He was seated in an open palanquin carried by sixteen bearers attended by numbers of officers bearing flags, standards and umbrellas, and as he passed we paid him our compliments by kneeling on one knee, whilst all the Chinese made their usual prostrations. As soon as he had ascended his throne I came to the entrance of the tent, and, holding in both my hands a large box enriched with diamonds in which was enclosed the King's letter, I walked deliberately up, and ascending the side-steps of the throne, delivered it into the Emperor's own hands, who, having received it, passed it on to the Minister, by whom it was placed on the cushion. He then gave me as the first present from him to his Majesty the ju-eu-jou or giou-giou (a white jade sceptre) as the symbol of peace and prosperity, and expressed his hopes that my Sovereign