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Conclusions This book, which has taken me more than a score of years to complete, has been worthwhile. Ruan Yuan’s accomplishments were legion, and some of his work has remained relevant today, two hundred years after his time. At any rate, scholars and students in many areas of endeavour are still benefiting from knowledge enhanced by Ruan Yuan. In addition to philosophy and literature, his research topics embraced bronze inscriptions and stone steles, historical geography, Sino-British relations, minority cultures, construction of seaworthy junks, shrines and temples, dredging of waterways, measurement of grain storage in warehouses and on ships, location of planets, mathematicians, astronomers, and even species of mushrooms and fish. For me, research has been intense and extensive, and writing challenging. I am happy that I made the decision to undertake this biographical study. I am also happy that the task has not become stale despite its long duration. I have regrets, however. Certain important information is missing, especially financial records. I have managed to estimate Ruan Yuan’s earnings from official sources, and these figures are fairly accurate, I believe. I know the origins of some of his income from non-official sources, such as the sale of reeds for fuel, but not the amount. He also operated a ‘publishing house’, the Wenxuan Lou Printers, but I have no knowledge as to whether it was a profitable concern, or depended on his subsidy. There is no record of expenditure. If indeed any of his accounts is extant at all, I have not been able to find even a single clue of its whereabouts. Therefore, except for the fact that he had accumulated property and maintained a more than comfortable style of living, not withstanding supporting a household of more than one hundred persons, he was never totally free from financial worries. Otherwise, I have found plenty of information on Ruan Yuan. He kept copies of his official memorials, especially during the earlier years of his government career. We know he had not altered these records, because where both the published and the archival versions are extant, they were identical. Although it 306 Ruan Yuan, 1764–1849 has been satisfying to use the archival documents to check against published sources, it is still disappointing not to have a journal of his day-to-day thoughts and activities. The chronological account of his life and work recorded by his sons and pupils, Diziji, contains a wealth of information, but it is no substitute for a diary. Somehow the colour of daily life is missing.1 Nor is there any writing of his true feelings on certain significant issues. On opium, for instance, the only non-official record available comprised remarks made to Liang Zhangju in a casual conversation. Portraits I still do not know anything about Ruan Yuan’s physical appearance. There are two often reprinted black and white informal portraits executed during different stages of his life, in middle age (fifty-six sui) and in old age (eighty), but they do not tell anything about his height or weight.2 The portraits do not give the impression of a tall man, although judging by the size of his male descendants I have met, and his North China origin, more likely than not he was at least of medium height. Yet, in one instance, he wrote about himself at thirty. ‘I was small in stature and was very, very thin.’3 From the portraits he appeared to have gained some weight during his middle years, and he did become gaunt in old 1. This may not be fair, but I feel the lack of a diary especially keenly since I read the Pepys diary in the autumn of 2003 when I visited a special exhibition on Samuel Pepys and his contemporaries at the National Portrait Gallery in London. 2. As I was looking for illustrations in June 2005, Dr Patrick Connor of the Martyn Gregory, a London gallery specializing in China Trade paintings, sent me a coloured portrait of Ruan Yuan, a grand portrait in ceremonial dress of a second rank official, with summer hat and one feather on his collar. As shown by a colophon on the unsigned painting, his traditional Chinese portrait was executed when Ruan Yuan was Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi. In English, the subject is identified as ‘Yuen, Viceroy of Canton’. As wonderful as this portrait is, its existence presents certain questions. The provenance of this portrait is impeccable. It was brought back...

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