Seven Lands and Twelve Houses: on the Issue of Real Estate of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Beijing in the Middle of the 19th Century

The article provides information about the real estate of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Beijing (REM) in the middle of the 19th century. The information was extracted by the author from the inventory of 1850, now kept in the Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire in Moscow and dating back to the arrival of the XIII REM (1850–1858) in Beijing. At the beginning of the article, the history of the northern and southern yards of the mission is briefly described. The following is information about seven plots of land outside Beijing and twelve houses owned by the REM and probably used by missionaries for economic purposes. A comparison is made between the inventory information and the data indicated by Archimandrite Avraamy (Chasovnikov) (1864–1918) in his “Brief History of the Russian Orthodox Mission in China, compiled on the occasion of the bicentennial of its existence in 1913”, as well as old maps of Beijing. Due to the fact that in the archival document all Chinese names are given in not always accurate Russian transcription, the first attempt was made to search for and indicate the Chinese characters of some names. This article is provided with brief notes explaining some Chinese terms.