「滿洲本性素樸」、「滿洲淳樸之風」、「滿洲簡樸之道」為入關後諸帝屢屢提出的論述，而在現代學術研究上，無論是持「漢化論」者或「滿洲主體」者，「素樸」均被視為滿洲性的一環。本文在二說之外，運用新清史所強調的滿文檔案，指出「素樸」並非滿洲入關之前的生活樣態，而是入關後諸帝與旗人所塑造的「記憶」。而滿洲皇帝如此論述，可能是受到漢文化「文質之辨」的影響，為了抵抗漢人的「文」，而將滿洲人放到了「質樸」的一面。若將這樣的社會情境放到「比較歷史」中，應該比僅止於表象的比較來得有意義。

“The unsophisticated quality” was often seen as the basic Manchu character by Manchu emperors after their conquest of China. These emperors worried that the Manchus were losing this basic quality, and made efforts to maintain it. In academia, the Sinicization School regards the loss of Manchuness as proof of sinicization, and the New Qing History or the Altaic School regards the emperors’ efforts as an assertion of ethnic sovereignty. This article compares the discourses of the Manchu emperors in the postconquest period with the Manchu archives in the preconquest period, and finds differences between the two periods. These emperors and some Manchus adopted the non-Manchu schema to commemorate their ancestors. To resist the “cultivated quality” (wen) of the Han, the Manchus adopted the paradigm of “unsophisticatation.” It would be more meaningful to understand this social context from a perspective of comparative history than by a simple comparison of phenomena.