Exact title: Wei yuan jian zi qiang paodui jian rui ying ma dui, wei yuan li zi qiang paodui wai huo qi ying ma dui shuijun paochuan hecao chentu.
Illustrated record of the combined naval and gunboat exercises of the [imperial] artillery companies.

This detailed record of naval exercises on Kunming Lake, the main, and artificial, lake in the garden grounds of the New Summer Palace in the northwest of Beijing, represents a unique document of an early attempt to modernize Chinese naval forces.

The Qianlong emperor (reigned 1736 to 1795) was responsible for the dredging of Kunming Lake and several accounts exist of naval exercises taking place during the late period of his reign. Although the extensive grounds of the New Summer Palace were largely used as residential, recreational and, on occasion, hunting spaces, Qianlong went to great lengths not to designate them as such. Big building projects such as the adjacent Yuanming Yuan, the Summer Palace at Jehol (Rehe, now called Chengde) and his own tomb site had already consumed substantial parts of his revenue and he was keen to avoid the image of being over-indulgent in his old age. Naval exercises were a perfect excuse as well as a convenient spectacle for spending extra funds on the area.

The name 'Kunming Lake' is in fact a reference to the famous emperor Han Wudi (156 BCE to 86 BCE) whose navy carried out exercises on a Kunming Lake in the former capital of Chang'an (now Xi'an).

Qianlong had several reasons for the expansion and remodeling of these grounds: He wanted to secure the water supply for the capital and regulate the water levels of the moat surrounding Beijing. Controlling water levels and flood-prevention schemes were traditionally high on the agenda of Chinese emperors and crucial to maintaining the 'Mandate of Heaven'. The large bronze sculpture of an ox placed on the eastern shore of the lake (plainly visible in the panels of the document) was supposed to be able to control the waters. This sculpture can still be seen in exactly the same location. Another reason was the celebration of his mother's 60th birthday in 1751. Most of the buildings around and above the lake were built in her honor. "In this same year [1751] and the years following the Emperor issued various regulations for naval practice on this lake, by the Manchu soldiers of the new Chen Jui [i.e. Jian rui] Garrisons of crack troops which had just settled near the Hsiang Shan [the so-called Fragrant Hills, in the vicinity of these grounds]. He brought ten instructors and 110 sailors from the naval stations at Foochow [Fuzhou] and Tientsin [Tianjin] to train his Manchu troops. Twenty-four new boats were made... By 1786 he commanded 1000 of the Ch'ien Feng, or pioneer troops to learn naval warfare." (Malone: History of the Peking Summer Palaces; Urbana, 1934, p. 110ff.).

Braam Houkgeest (1739-1801) visited the garden in February 1795 as part of the VOC Embassy. He describes the scenes in great detail and each of the features he mentions corresponds to buildings shown graphically in the document. "The lake was the first object that attracted our attention. In the midst of it is an island of considerable magnitude, on which are several buildings (such as the Dragon King temple, longwang miao) that have been erected that are dependencies of the Imperial residence, and overshadowed by lofty trees. The island communicates with the adjacent continent by a noble bridge of seventeen arches, built of hewn stone and standing on the eastern side. Turning to the west, the sight is gratified by the view of the lake smaller than the former, and only separated from it by a wide road. In the midst of it is a kind of citadel of a circular form (yuan cheng), with a handsome edifice in its center. These two lakes communicate by a channel cut through the road that divides them, while a stone bridge of considerable height, and of a single arch (Yudai qiao), supplies the defect in the communication by land which that channel occasions." (Malone, p.119ff.)

The present album shows twelve stages of the naval exercises on 12 double-page plates or panels. The war junks are performing various maneuvers, firing cannons as they go. On the western shore, banners indicate the strength and type of troops taking part in the exercises. There is also a row of eight cannons being fired from the shore that are clearly of western origin, something that is confirmed on the title slip by the term 'mounted troops with foreign guns' (wai huo qi ying ma dui). They appear to be of the 18th rather than the 19th century, although they may of course have been in use in the early part of the 19th century. Important structures in the confines of and around the lake are indicated on slips of yellow paper in a fine official hand. A slightly larger slip on the upper right side of each panel describes the various stages of the naval [and land-supported] exercise.

The album carries no date or indication of authorship (such as chops, etc.) and it is thus rather difficult to date. It must predate the destruction of the garden grounds by English and French troops in 1860. It appears to be the only album of an event that, by its very nature, must have been a state secret. The blank yellow paper on the prelims seems to indicate an Imperial provenance.