Abstract: This paper will examine the newly released Rehe archives and explore the Qing government's allotment of enormous financial subsidies to the Rehe region for the purposes of enhancing the empire's border defenses in that area. During the Qing dynasty, tax revenue consisted primarily of monies collected from land taxes, and this revenue was an important financial base for the local and central governments. The land in the Rehe region, however, was largely barren and infertile, and thus, land tax revenue was insufficient to support the residing troops and lamas there. Consequently, financing for the area was mostly provided by the Imperial Household Department and the Board of Revenue. After 1771 (the thirty-sixth year of the Qianlong reign), temples in the Rehe region enjoyed increasing budgets for construction and renovation. Prominent examples include the Putuo Zongsheng (Potala) Temple and the Xumi Fushou (Tashi Lhunpo) Temple. Both of these temples were decorated with brilliant golden cupolas and cost over a million taels to erect, and their construction demonstrates that the income of the Imperial Household Department had increased by that time. Especially after the Lianghuai salt case, during which salt merchants had refunded to the government over ten million taels, the Qianlong emperor was able to construct temples in a manner of much greater extravagance than was previously possible. During his reign, the Qianlong emperor visited the Mountain Resort in Rehe forty-nine times. Each time he held religious ceremonies in the temples there, and Mongolian nobility participated in these activities as well. Two important temples in the region, the Putuo Zongsheng Temple and the Xumi Fushou Temple, were replicas of the two most significant centers for Tibetan Buddhism at the time, the former imitating the Potala Palace of the Dalai Lama, the latter the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery of the Panchcn Lama. The Putuo Zongsheng Temple and the Xumi Eushou Temple reproduced the significance and function of the original edifices they imitated, subtly shifting the religious center of the Mongolian peoples from Tibet to Rehe. The Qianlong emperor built the Puning Temple for his birthday religious services, the Pule Temple for his esoteric practices, and the Yongyou Temple for ritual offerings to his ancestors. He hung pictures of himself and the Seventh Dalai Lama in the Putuo Zongsheng Temple and constructed a glass longevity tower in the Xumi Fushou Temple. All of these examples demonstrate the Qianlong emperor's faithful devotion to Tibetan Buddhism. Seen from a historical perspective, the Qianlong emperor's establishment of Tibetan Buddhist temples in the Rehe region helped to maintain more than a century of peaceful relations with the Mongolian government. When compared with the seven to eight million taels the Ming dynasty spent in wars with the Mongolians every year, it is clear that the Qing dynasty's strategy for rule was both more successful and more cost effective than that of the Ming.
