Empress Xiaoshengxian, mother of Qianlong. [Photo provided to China Daily]

However, no one could take the place of Emperor Kangxi, the grandfather who, after seeing Qianlong for the first time, decided to take the boy away and put him under his tutelage, a tutelage widely interpreted as an initiation into future kinghood. Kangxi died in 1722, eight months after seeing Qianlong for the first time in March that year.

Kangxi was 67 when he died, after having been emperor for more than 60 years. His grandson Qianlong enjoyed a much longer life, dying when he was 88. However, in a rare gesture to pay tribute to his grandfather, Qianlong abdicated three years before his death, in 1796, after being on the throne for exactly 60 years.

"What is not so well known is that Qianlong traveled to southeastern China six times and no more, possibly because Emperor Kangxi had been there six times," Le says.

"It seems that Qianlong decided he was not going to surpass his grandfather, in any controllable aspect. He had taken upon himself to make Kangxi the greatest emperor of Chinese history."

Sometimes the journey seemed to have been ruined, at least in part. Qianlong's fourth trip in 1765 saw the emperor getting furious with his empress: the unfortunate lady, who was made an empress three years after the death of Qianlong's first wife, fell out of his favor once and for all. (She was sent back to Beijing that very day, while the emperor and his entourage journeyed on.) The empress died the next year, followed by her son 10 years later.

No official record recounts what happened. Qianlong blamed the empress for "cutting her hair and breaking a national taboo". But for what? No one knew exactly. A widespread rumor was that the empress alienated herself from her husband by trying to stop him from taking on more romance on the road. This was never verified, of course.

The empress dowager died in 1777, after having accompanied her son four times during his southbound journeys. For the last two trips, in 1780 and 1784, the emperor was alone, without the mother whose death he mourned for the rest of his life, and without the wife he never forgave. Of course there were many concubines, but none claimed a place in the emperor's heart in the way his mother and first wife did.

During his sixth and final trip, the 73-year-old Qianlong wrote: "My travel ends here. Everything I am experiencing today will be memories for tomorrow."