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Archer's Ring

The Manchus, founders of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and a tribe from today's Northeast China, paid more attention to the martial arts, or rather, the military arts than the Han people did before the Manchus established China's last feudal empire. Manchu nobles were particularly good at, and fond of, riding horse riding and archery. After they took over China, they maintained their hunting tradition to practice their archery. Emperors Shunzhi (1638-1661), Kangxi (1654-1722) and Qianlong (1711-1799) often went hunting in the royal paddock.

When mentioning archery, we cannot neglect the archer's ring or banzhi (in Chinese). It is a ring worn on the thumb finger to help protect the finger of the archer when drawing the string of the bow. China's earliest archer's ring was found in a tomb of Yin Dynasty (16th century - 11th century BC) and was made of jade. Before conquering China, the Manchu used rings made of deer's bones. In the Qing Dynasty, since it was the emperor's favourite archer's ring, it became a popular gift and was more exquisitely made. After the Jiaqing reign (1796-1821), it gradually became a decoration.

Archer's rings sometimes appeared as the sign of an emperor's power. For example, one day, Emperor Shunzhi went to Mount Yanshan (today's northwestern Beijing) for hunting. When seeing the beautiful scenery there, he immediately fell in love with this land and decided to build his tomb nearby. He examined the terrain carefully and chose the Fengtailing area. He then made prayers to the heavens, took off his archer's ring, threw it to the hillside and announced that wherever the ring stopped would be the location of his tomb. At last, his officials found it where today's Xiaoling tomb stands.