1625–35. In his youth Tulišen was physically weak and his family was poor. He studied both the Manchu and the Chinese languages but was not a brilliant student. By payment of the required fee he was registered as a student of the Imperial Academy. In 1685 he passed an examination for a position as translator of the T'ung-chien kang-mu, or Mirror of History (see under Sung Lao), and in the following year passed the examination for a secretaryship in the Grand Secretariat. In 1697 he was promoted to the post of assistant reader in the same office, and served from 1702 to 1703 as superintendent of Customs at Wuhu, Anhwei. Returning to Peking in 1703, he was given charge of the cattle raised for sacrificial use by the Board of Ceremonies. Two years later he was discharged because he failed to raise the required number of cattle, and thereafter he retired for seven years.
In 1712 he volunteered to be the envoy to Ayuki 阿玉氣 (d. 1724, age 83?), Khan of the Torguts, who had migrated to the lower Volga River Valley. This Torgut tribe was one of the Four Tribes (Uirads 衛拉特) of Mongolian nomads who occupied the Kokonor region and part of Chinese Turkestan (see under Galdan). The chief of the Torguts traced his ancestry to a brother of Wêng Khan 翁罕. About 1616 their chief, Khu Urluk 和鄂爾勒克 (d. 1643), finding the pressure of the rising power of the Sungarians woder Batur (father of Galdan) unbearable, had led the tribe westward in search of new pastures. He halted in southwestern Siberia on the Russian border north of the Caspian Sea where the tribe thrived, despite constant warfare with the Turks and other nomads. The Torguts soon found it expedient to recognize Russian suzerainty, but lived quite independently. In 1672 Khu Urluk's great-grandson, Ayuki, succeeded to the chieftainship and became so prosperous and powerful that about the year 1700 he styled himself Khan (King). In 1698 Ayuki's nephew, Arabjur 阿拉布珠兒, set out on a pilgrimage to Tibet, and while sojourning there five years was prevented from rejoining his tribesmen because a war broke out between his uncle, Ayuki, and Tsewang Araptan [q. v.] of Sungaria. Appealing to Emperor Shêng-tsu for help, he was given pasturage west of Chia-yü-kuan 嘉峪關. Since envoys from Ayuki had to pass through Siberia in order reach Peking, Emperor Shêng-tsu sent Tulišen to Ayuki by that route, ostensibly to ascertain whether Arabjur could return that same way, but in reality perhaps to learn more about the conditions, both of the Torguts and of the Russians. After his official rank of assistant reader of the Grand Secretariat had been restored to him, Tulišen set out on this journey with a large retinue on June 23, 1712. Passing through Mongolia via Urga, he reached Selenginsk, Siberia, on August 24. Here the embassy was detained for five months awaiting permission from Moscow to proceed through Siberia—a delay caused by the fact that the Chinese memorandum concerning the mission was dispatched from Peking only seven days before the main caravan started. The Czar's permission finally came and, on February 10, 1713, the party moved northward on sleds along the Selenga river to Udinsk and thence westward across Lake Baikal. After waiting at Irkutsk more than three months for the ice on the Angara river to melt, Tulišen resumed his journey on May 27. His party proceeded in boats most of the way and arrived at Tobolsk on August 24. He was well received by the Russian governor of Siberia, Prince Matvîeĭ Petrovich Gagarin, who assured him that if Russia had not been at war with Sweden the Czar would gladly have granted him an audience. Quitting Tobolsk on September 1, he arrived at Saratov on the Volga river January 2, 1714, where he remained about seven months awaiting envoys from Ayuki to welcome him, although it would have taken but ten days for the latter to make the journey. Concerning this delay, Ayuki explained that he had expected the Russians to escort the Chinese embassy, whereas the Russians thought it was his duty.
Having descended the Volga river, Tulišen met Ayuki in the latter's camp at Manytch on July 12, 1714, and was well received. Ayuki was told that it was better for his nephew, Arabjur, to remain where he was. Ayuki, on his part, confided to Tulisen that he regarded himself as having much more in common with the Manchus than with the Russians, but that, however much he might desire to communicate with China, he feared that his aims would be frustrated by Russia. He therefore urged China to pay more heed to the Russian situation. Perhaps this friendly gesture was a factor in the migration of the Torguts back to China in 1770–71 (see under Shu-ho-tê). Tulišen returned to China, for the most part by the same route he had previously taken. He sojourned in Tobolsk from December 13, 1714, to January 27, 1715, and finally reached Peking April 30, 1715, after being nine months on the way, although the outward journey had taken more than two years. Chinese official accounts explain this delay on the ground
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