Ten Thousand Nations Coming to Pay Tribute (, 1761) is a monumental (299207cm) Qing dynasty painting depicting foreign delegations visiting the Qianlong Emperor in the Forbidden city in Beijing during the late 1750s.
The painting was intended to show the cosmopolitanism and the centrality of the Qing Empire, since most countries of Asia and Europe are shown paying their respects to the Chinese Emperor. China already had a long tradition of such paintings (designated as "Portraits of Periodical Offering"), starting from around the 6th century CE, but such paintings ended around the time of the Opium War, which shattered the ideal of the Great Chinese Empire in the middle of the world, and gave way to the awareness of China as simply one country among others. The principle was one of more-or-less voluntary submission, with presents being periodically brought to the Chinese Emperor as a symbolic gesture of acknowledgement of Chinese overlordship. According to Ming period writings "The Emperor resides in the center and holds the reins of all other nations and all things under the sun".
The "ten thousand" ("") in the name means "countless" rather than a literal number.
Delegates of many Asian countries appear, such as Korea (), Vietnam (), Ryukyu (), Siam (), Luzon (), Sulu (), and Myanmar ().
Numerous representatives of the newly conquered territory of Xinjiang (through the DzungarâÂÂQing Wars) also appear: Ili (), the core of the former Dzungar Khanate; Uqturpan (); Kashgar (); and Yarkent ().
Many representatives of Europe are also present, such as France (), Holland (), England (), and Russia ().
While the Imperial Ten Thousand Nations Coming to Pay Tribute is quite realistic and derived from the Jesuit pictorial tradition of Giuseppe Castiglione, this theme also gave rise to some contemporary popular prints with the same title, but a much more caricatural rendering, such as the New Year print (nianhua) by Wang Junfu (, mid to late 17th century). This reflects the tradition of Chinese folk art with commercial intent, sold to ordinary households for New Lunar Year festivities.
Wang Junfu's Ten Thousand Nations Coming to Pay Tribute () also depicts various foreign countries visiting the Imperial court, but in a rather grotesque manner. Various foreign tribute-bearers arriving at the Zhengyangmen gate of the imperial palace are depicted, but with a much more caricatural understanding of geography and foreign physionomies: the print is crowded with representatives of the "countries of the pygmies" (, xiaoren guo), the people with perforated chests (, chuanxin guo), Japan (), India (, tianzhu guo), the Muslim countries (, huihui guo), Holland (, helan), the Giants of Patagonia (, changren guo), and the âÂÂWestern Oceanâ (, xiyang), probably Europe.