People of the Qing were of diverse heritage. The governing Manchus themselves were hugely outnumbered by other groups, especially the Chinese, and fused different traditions into their brand of rulership.
Emperor Qianlong was routinely depicted as a Manchu-style hunter and warrior on horseback, as a Chinese-style Confucian scholar with books and writing utensils at a desk, and as a Tibetan-Buddhist enlightened being. Their ever-expanding frontier brought the Qing in contact with people from multiple cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
Albums like this illustrate how Qing officials perceived the people and culture of the southern borderlands of their empire. Categorised as ‘Miao’, this term was applied to many non-Chinese groups, illustrating how imperial China perceived ethnic minority cultures. Here, some Miao people are practicing wet rice cultivation, while others are praying at a Buddhist shrine.