But the young Qianlong deeply felt that it was not easy to be a king. Therefore, when our descendants now study the history of the Qianlong period, we can glean and analyze his thoughts at that time from the seals written after he ascended the throne. This has undoubtedly become an important circumstantial evidence for studying the history of this period. Among these seals, he urged himself to be diligent in political affairs; about loving the people and making the people live and work in peace and contentment, such as "Thinking innocently", "Being tireless in doing good", "Seeking benefits widely", " "Government is about nourishing the people", "respecting heaven and working hard for the people", "gathering blessings and benefiting the people", "all the people in the world respect their children", "being careful in daily life and careful in life", etc. In addition, it is worth mentioning that in the later years of Qianlong, when he was 80 years old, he also engraved a seal with the words "Eight Zheng Nian", and at the back of this seal, he also engraved the four words "self-improvement". Moreover, this seal of "Continuous Self-improvement" was the seal that Emperor Qianlong valued most in his life, because he had forty-five seals carved with the four-character seal "Fang" using various materials and fonts. This is quite unreasonable and incredible to ordinary people. Whether it is the seal of "Eight Expeditions" or "Continuous Self-improvement", it shows that although Emperor Qianlong at that time was already 80 years old, he still wanted to manage his own affairs. This may have something to do with the powerful minister He Shen. Because He Shen continued to participate in politics after Emperor Qianlong's old age until Qianlong's death. The implicit meaning of "self-improvement" here is to prevent Emperor Qianlong from letting go and delegating power, which resulted in this strange phenomenon. As a romantic and elegant emperor, Qianlong had many interests. In his spare time from busy political affairs, he also enjoyed playing music, chess, calligraphy and painting, which are often reflected in his seals, such as "Intention comes first with the pen", "Using the pen with the heart", "Bi Hua Chun Yu", "Half Couch Qin Shu", etc. He also liked to use his own poems to carve seals as seals, and there were twenty-six lines of his own poems carved into seals. For example, "Knocking on poems makes the moon spin around for a long time", "The autumn light is full of poems when you see it", "Qingyin expresses reverie", etc.
Because Qianlong had been writing poetry since he was a child, he developed a strange obsession with Chinese characters. In the Forbidden City, there is a painting called "Nine-nine Cold-repelling Pictures", with a nine-character inscription "The weeping willows in front of the court cherish the spring breeze", which is said to have been written by Qianlong. Each word is double-crossed with a red pen, because each word happens to be nine strokes, so one stroke is drawn every day from 19th to 99th, and it is completed in ninety-nine and eighty-one days. Emperor Qianlong also carefully selected twelve Chinese characters that he considered to be the best based on his personal preferences to name his many descendants. The result of this is that the names of the descendants of the royal family since Emperor Jiaqing are obscure and difficult to recognize, which is difficult to understand.
In short, because he was deeply influenced by Han culture and Confucian ethics since childhood, Emperor Qianlong was deeply obsessed with Han traditional culture and had no regrets throughout his life. He ordered the compilation of the "Sikuquanshu", and his rich poetry and numerous seal cuttings fully illustrate this point. It is precisely these that make him the last feudal emperor in China who is the most successful in inheriting Chinese traditional culture after Li Yu, the later lord of the Southern Tang Dynasty, and Zhao Ji, Huizong of the Song Dynasty.