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Title: The attaché at Peking

Author: Baron Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford Redesdale

Release date: April 5, 2023 [eBook #70467]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: Macmillan and Co

Credits: MWS, Quentin Campbell, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)


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[Illustration: Decorative illustration facing the title page]




                              THE ATTACHE

                               AT PEKING


                                  BY
                      A. B. FREEMAN-MITFORD, C.B.
       AUTHOR OF ‘TALES OF OLD JAPAN,’ ‘THE BAMBOO GARDEN,’ ETC.


                                London
                      MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
                    NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
                                 1900

                        _All rights reserved._




                                PREFACE


These letters were written many years ago, but in China, and especially
at Peking, the old order changes slowly, and they are at any rate a
faithful record of the life which was led by those whose duties lay, as
the Chinese say, “within the walls.” They profess no more than that.
Those who wish to learn more about China and Chinese manners must go
to that monumental work of the late Dr. Wells Williams, _The Middle
Kingdom_, to Sir John Davies’s fascinating book, _The Chinese_, or to
Professor Douglas’s book on Chinese society.

It will occur to many people to ask how it comes that we should have
lived for so many years peacefully, travelling through the country
unarmed, in the midst of a people capable of the atrocities which
have recently taken place. China is of all countries the land of
contradiction and of paradox. But I think that those who read these
letters will see that though, for obvious reasons, they were written
in a spirit of optimism, there was an undercurrent of feeling that
at any moment things might become very different. For instance, if
the insurrection in Shantung had not been quelled, and the rebels had
marched upon Peking, which was undoubtedly part of their programme,
the tragedy of 1900 might, and probably would, have been anticipated
in 1865. Moreover, although we were riding at anchor in smooth water,
there were from time to time uncomfortable signs of disturbance below.
I remember how on more than one occasion we were warned that on such
and such a day there would be a massacre of Europeans for the old
reason, the murder of babies whose eyes were used for purposes of
photography. These stories were put about by intriguing mandarins, who
succeeded in deceiving even some of the more ignorant of their own
class. The famous General Tsêng Kwo Fan (father of the Marquis Tsêng,
who was afterwards minister in London) was talking one day with an
English doctor on the subject of this babies’-eyes fraud, when suddenly
he said, “It is no use your attempting to deny it, for I have here some
of the dried specimens,” and he pulled out a packet of those gelatine
capsules which are used for covering castor oil and other nauseous
drugs! We paid little heed to these warnings, though, as recent events
have proved, there was perhaps more in them than we supposed. We were
sitting on a volcano, for experience has often shown how swiftly
this seemingly mild and almost childlike people can be lashed into a
fury like that of the flaming legions of hell. One thing we knew for
certain. If a rising should take place, we were in a death-trap from
which there could be no escape. Those grim and frowning gates once
shut, rescue was impossible, for what could a mere handful of men—in
those days there were but some seventy or eighty Europeans, all told,
in Peking—avail against the seething mob of enraged devils? When years
afterwards, in 1879, there came the horror of Sir Louis Cavagnari’s
murder, with all his company, at Cabul, I could but think how much the
position of the Legations at Peking resembled his.

It is the fashion to belaud Japan for the spirit of progress which she
has shown, at the expense of China, which remains wedded to old ways
and worn-out customs. Much as we may admire the marvellous headway
which Japan has made, this is hardly quite fair. It must be remembered
that Japan has never originated anything. All that she knew, up to the
time of her first real intercourse with foreigners forty years ago,
she owed to China. Buddhism, which replaced and in some sort throve
hand-in-hand with the old ancestor worship, the Shintô, reading and
writing, every art and accomplishment, from music and dancing down to
the game of football, all filtered through Corea from China to Japan,
and the dates of their advent are solemnly recorded as important facts
in the _O Dai Ichi Ran_. “A Glance at the Generation of the Kings,”
the native history. Borrowers from the beginning of time, it mattered
little to the Japanese whether they borrowed once more or once less,
and so when they saw that if they wished to hold a place among the
nations their only chance was to get rid of ancient Chinese forms
and adopt the civilisation of the West, they did not hesitate—they
took a leap into the light and left the thirteenth for the nineteenth
century. To hear some enthusiasts talk one would almost be led to
believe that the Japanese invented the nineteenth century. They found
it ready made to their hand. It was impossible to go through the
intermediate centuries. They had to skip, and they did it with a will.
The transformation scene was as sudden as it was complete. But it cost
the Japanese no sacrifice of national pride. What they gave up was none
of their own invention.

The Chinese, on the other hand, have an autochthon civilisation of
which they are justly proud. Five hundred years before Christ came
into the world—when the inhabitants of these islands were hopeless
savages clad in skins, or stained with woad according to the seasons,
if the old stories be true—Confucius was teaching respect for customs
which were already ancient. Since his day there have been thirteen
changes of capital and no fewer than thirty dynasties, but even when
Tartar[1] emperors have sat upon the Dragon Throne they have been
compelled to follow the rules of the Chinese, and civilisation has
remained what it was “under the shadow” of the great Teacher. No wonder
that the son of Han thinks a good many times before he will scatter his
past to the four winds of heaven, as the Japanese did without a sigh!

In one sense the mandarins have been wiser in their generation than
the men who made the Japanese revolution of 1868. These were the
daimios, such men as Satsuma, Tosa, Choshiu, and their karôs (elders
or councillors), who thinking to overthrow the Tycoon and his rule,
were blind to the fact that in so doing they were working their own
downfall as well as his. For they, no less than he, were the embodiment
of the feudal system. Where are they now? _Où sont les neiges d’antan?_
They have vanished, and their places are filled by a mushroom growth of
dukes, marquises, counts, viscounts, and barons. For Japan has stopped
short at nothing; not content with adopting the cocked hat, which as we
all know is the very marrow of all good government, giving the _entrée_
to the comity of nations, she has actually invented a full and complete
peerage. Far more astute is the mandarin. Such wily anachronisms as
Li Hung Chang and his compeers know full well that under the sun of
Western civilisation they must melt away, and it is no matter for
surprise that they die hard. All the myriads of officials, from the
highest to the lowest, swarming like ants over that vast empire, are
alive to the fact that their very existence depends on keeping up a
constant animosity against the Hung Kwei Tzŭ, the red devils. That has
always appeared to me as the keynote of the situation.

Various causes are commonly assigned for the fanaticism against
foreigners, which has from time to time broken out with fatal
consequences in different parts of China. Some blame missionary
enterprise; some commerce in general; others the opium trade in
particular. My belief is that it is due to neither of these in itself,
but to the dread of reform which haunts the official mind, and which in
the end must win its way.

The Chinese are not by nature a people of strong religious convictions,
nor have they any strong religious antipathies. If it were otherwise,
how is it that a colony of Jews[2] has dwelt among them unmolested
for two thousand years, and still remains, dwindling in numbers, it
is true, at Kai Fêng in the province of Ho Nan? How is it that the
Mohammedans have flourished exceedingly in certain provinces, even to
becoming a danger to the empire? On the walls of the Imperial palace at
Peking there is a pavilion richly decorated with Arabic inscriptions
from the Koran in honour of a Mohammedan lady who was a wife, or
favourite, of one of the emperors. This does not look like persecution
for religion’s sake. And, more than these, Buddhism? Ever since the
Emperor Ming Ti dreamt a dream, nearly nineteen centuries ago, and sent
for Buddhist books and images to China, Buddhism has been the popular
religion, as Confucianism is the popular school of moral philosophy.
Tao-ism, the native religion of Lao Tsŭ, cannot hold its own with it.
Troublous days, indeed, it has gone through at various times, but it
has outlived them, and now, to quote Dr. Morrison, “Buddhism in China
is decried by the learned, laughed at by the profligate, yet followed
by all.” (See further Wells Williams, _ut suprà_.)

Why, then, this tolerance in certain cases, side by side with the
cruellest intolerance where Christianity is concerned? If it is not
religious conviction, it must be political antipathy. And there is the
rub. The bitter hatred of Christianity is not inborn in the people,
who have in many instances, indeed, shown a sort of limp willingness,
not altogether unconnected with better wages, to embrace its tenets;
but the hostility is bred, fostered, and fomented by the mandarins to
whom it means the end of their rule. Under a Christian dispensation
the whole tottering fabric of their power must inevitably fall to
the ground. The poor Jews were to them a negligible quantity. The
Mohammedan creed, the sacred book of which may not be translated,
presents for that reason but small terrors to the lettered class,
though we hear of an old prophecy to the effect that there will be a
great Mohammedan revolution, and that a Hui-Hui (Mohammedan) dynasty
shall rule over China. Buddhism, on the other hand, except in Tibet,
aims at no temporal power, and even there the Chinese Emperor is the
Suzerain. But Christianity is a very real terror, to be put down at
any cost, however bloody. And yet, strange to say, there was a time
when it seemed as if it were destined to conquer everything and to
become the state religion. Internal dissensions and ambitions amongst
its sects alone stopped its course.

The history of the early missions to China is full of interest; it is
not possible, however, to do more than glance at it here. Putting on
one side the dim legend that St. Thomas, the doubting apostle, was
the first to preach the Gospel to the Chinese, there is no doubt that
missionaries did visit them in very remote ages. It was two Nestorian
monks who carried the first Eastern silkworms’ eggs to Justinian in
the sixth century (see my _Bamboo Garden_, pp. 31–33). It is strange
at the present time to read how at the end of the thirteenth century
John of Monte Corvino was sent by Pope Nicholas the Fourth to the
court of Kublai Khan at Kambaluk (the ancient name of Peking); how he
was kindly entreated there, building a church “which had a steeple
and belfry, with three bells that were rung every hour to summon the
new converts to prayer”; how he baptized nearly six thousand persons
during that time, “and bought one hundred and fifty children, whom he
instructed in Greek and Latin, composing for them several devotional
books.” Clement the Fifth made him an archbishop, and sent him seven
suffragan bishops. He died full of years in 1328, “having converted
more than thirty thousand infidels.” All Kambaluk is said to have
mourned for him, Christians and heathen rending their garments at
his funeral, and his tomb became the resort of pious pilgrims. This
account, which will be found given at length in the third volume of the
_Chinese Repository_, is probably not a little exaggerated; but even
discounting it largely, it is very striking as an evidence of devotion
on the one side and toleration on the other. “It is now twelve years,”
he wrote, “since I have heard any news of the west. I am become old
and gray-headed, but it is rather through labours and tribulations
than through age, for I am only fifty-eight years old. I have learned
the Tartar language and literature, into which I have translated the
whole New Testament and the Psalms of David, and have caused them to
be transcribed with the utmost care. I write and read and preach openly
and freely the testimony of the law of God.” Until the year 1368, when
the Yuan or Tartar dynasty was driven out by the Chinese, and the Ming
Emperors ruled first at Nanking and afterwards at Peking, Dr. Williams
says “there is no reasonable doubt that the greater part of Central
Asia and Northern China was the scene of many flourishing Christian
communities.” From that time forth, during upwards of two hundred
years, they dwindled away so that nothing more was heard of them.

It was at the end of the sixteenth century that the Jesuits first began
to exercise an influence which was very nearly overwhelming all rivalry
in China. Saint François Xavier, the gospeller of India and Japan, had
marked China as the special field of his future labours, but he died of
fever at the island of Shang Chuen, near Macao, being only forty-six
years old at the time of his death—a wonderful man, truly! But his work
was destined to fall into hands no less competent for the task than
his own.

Matteo Ricci, the famous Jesuit father, was born at Macerata, in the
Papal States, in 1552. At the age of nineteen he was sent to Rome to
study law, which career he quickly abandoned, to his father’s great
displeasure, to enter the Society of Jesus. Here he came under the
orders of Father Valignani, the Inspector-General of Eastern Missions,
with whom, before he had even finished his noviciate, he went to
India, continuing his studies at Goa, where he became professor of
philosophy. In 1580 he followed Father Ruggiero to Macao, where the
two priests gave themselves up to the study of the Chinese language.
They availed themselves of the trading privileges of the Portuguese
to visit Canton, and some two years later, not without encountering
some difficulties and disappointments, they obtained the permission
of the Viceroy of Kwang Tung to build a house at Shao Ching Fu, and
a church. Ricci soon saw that a reputation for learning was then,
as now, the only passport to high consideration among the lettered
classes. He published a map of China and a catechism, in which he set
forth the moral teaching of Christianity, excluding carefully all that
pertains to the doctrines of revealed religion. He had his reward,
for many learned men came to consult him, and his fame spread far
and wide. For some years the Jesuit fathers adopted the garments of
Buddhist priests, but finding that these were treated with anything
but respect, they, upon the advice of Father Valignani, dropped the
yellow robes and assumed the garb of the men of letters, whom above all
it was their wise endeavour to conciliate. Ricci paid three visits to
Nanking, but on the second occasion he was expelled, and forced to go
to Nanchang, where he established a school and published two treatises,
the _Art of Memory_ and a _Dialogue on Friendship_. This last work was
a marvellous success, for it became famous not only “for the loftiness
of its thoughts, but even for the purity of its style,” a feat perhaps
unique in a country where literary style is so much thought of, and
so difficult to attain, even by native scholars. In the year 1600 he
achieved his ambition of going to Peking charged with presents for the
Emperor Wan Li from the Portuguese at Macao. But the mission was not
accomplished without difficulty. A eunuch of the court had offered
himself as his escort, and with him Ricci set out in a native junk. But
the presents of which he was the bearer had aroused the cupidity of the
eunuch, who contrived to imprison Ricci and his companion Pantoja at
Tientsing for six months. Happily the affair came to the ears of the
Emperor, who ordered him to be released and brought to Peking, where
he was kindly received by Wan Li, who assigned him a house and salary.
Ricci soon made many friends and converts, of whom one named Sü helped
him in the translation of Euclid. His secret of success was being all
things to all men, and he contrived so to edit Christianity as to make
it fit in with existing manners and customs, and to give offence to
none. Among other things he allowed the rites of ancestral worship to
be continued, affecting to consider them as being of a civil and not
of a religious character. In short, he followed the Buddhist system
of incorporating, not condemning, those articles of native faith to
have fought against which would have been fatal to his schemes. Father
Ricci died in 1610, being fifty-eight years of age. If, on account of
the laxity of his theological concessions, he cannot be called a great
Christian missionary, he was at any rate a great conciliator, and it
was no fault of his that the seed which he successfully sowed did not
bring forth good fruit. He was possessed of rare talents, his learning
was conspicuous in many branches, and his winning charm of manner
commended him to the favour of high and low. He was perhaps the only
European who ever acquired the Chinese literary style to such a degree
as to call forth the admiration of native critics. To such an extent
was this recognised, that about 150 years after his death his treatise
on _The True Doctrine of God_, revised by a minister of state named
Sin, was included in the collection of the best Chinese works made by
the order of the Emperor Chien Lung.

To follow a man so various and so plastic as Ricci was no easy task;
but the Society of Jesus has never been wanting in men possessed at any
rate of the latter quality, and Father Longobardi proved an efficient
successor, though he did not make history. But there were troubles in
store for the missionaries. Their successes aroused the jealousies of
courtiers and officials, whose intrigues led to the publication of
an edict banishing the Christian teachers. This decree, however, was
never carried into effect. They had made many converts who protected
them, and foremost among these were Sü (Ricci’s special friend) and
his daughter, christened under the name of Candida. These two Chinese
converts were so famous for their virtues and so beloved for their
charity, that they are actually worshipped to this day by the people
at Shanghai, and the Roman Catholic Mission at Sü Chia Wei, near that
city, occupies the property once held by the Christian Sü. Candida was
indeed a saintly woman. She built no fewer than thirty-nine churches;
she published upwards of one hundred books; she established a foundling
hospital for babies whom, then as now, their unnatural parents were
in the habit of abandoning; and she employed the blind improvisatori
of the streets to substitute Gospel stories for their obscenities and
inanities. The Emperor himself conferred upon her the title of “The
Virtuous Woman,” and sent her a robe and headgear embroidered with
pearls, which she stripped off to further her religious works with
their price.

The beginning of the seventeenth century was a time of internal trouble
and revolution in China. The old Chinese dynasty of the Mings was about
to be replaced by the present Tartar dynasty, the Chi̔ng. That the
Jesuits had become a real power in the land is proved by the fact that
the claimant to the Ming throne was supported by the missionaries, his
troops being led by two native Christian generals, Kiu who was called
Thomas, and Chin who was baptized Luke. His mother, wife, and son were
christened as Helena, Maria, and Constantine, and Helena went so far as
to write to Pope Alexander VII. “expressing her attachment to the cause
of Christianity, and wishing to put the country, through him, under the
protection of God”! (Wells Williams).

The Jesuits held a high position in the early days of the Tartar rule.
This was due to the pre-eminent abilities of their leader, Johann Adam
Schall, a man of good family, native of Cologne. This great priest
was born in A.D. 1591, and entered the Society of Jesus at Rome in
1611. There he became a student of theology and mathematics, and left
for China in 1622. His great learning won for him such renown that
he was sent for by the Emperor in 1631, installed at Peking as court
astronomer, and charged with the revision of the Chinese calendar.
Needless to say this position was not won without exciting great
jealousy among the native men of science, who attacked him fiercely,
both openly and in secret. But his correct calculation of an eclipse,
as to which they were hopelessly wrong, defeated all their intrigues,
and he was more than ever in favour with the Emperor Chung Ch’êng
(the last of the Mings), who, in dread of the Tartars, caused him,
much against his will, to start a cannon foundry, rewarding him with
a pompous autograph inscription in praise of his science and virtue.
When at last the Tartars became masters of Peking, Schall, though in
continual danger himself, was able to give effectual protection to the
Christian converts. It cannot fail to strike us with amazement that,
like the Vicar of Bray, when matters settled down, Schall should have
enjoyed even more favour under the Tartar Emperor Shun Chih than he had
done under his Ming predecessor; and when, at that sovereign’s death in
1662, he actually was holding the post of tutor to the young Emperor
Káng Hsi, who became one of the most famous monarchs that ever ruled
in China, it seemed as if nothing could arrest the progress of Jesuit
influence.

But the supreme power was for a time in the hands of four regents
who were opposed to the Christians, and a memorial was presented
to court denouncing the new sect as dangerous to the state. The
Dominicans and Franciscans, of whom I shall speak presently, had,
during a quarter of a century and more, been working in opposition
to the Jesuits, and the internal dissensions of the sects gave their
enemies an opportunity of which they were not slow to avail themselves.
The memorial, a remarkable document, calls attention to the strife
between the orders as to the worship of Ti̔en (Heaven) and Shang Ti
(God), which dissensions as to the principle of doctrine show the
true aspirations of the rival sects to be political; and in this
connection the memorialists call attention to the schisms and civil war
to which Christianity gave rise in Japan, evils which could not fail
to occur sooner or later in China if the missionaries were allowed to
remain there. The regents, nothing loth, yielded to the wishes of the
memorialists, and in 1665 the Christian teachers were proscribed as
seducers of the people, leading them into a false path. Father Schall
died miserably at the age of seventy-eight, after having been for
thirty-seven years the trusted and favoured servant of five emperors.
His converts were degraded, and his colleagues imprisoned or banished.

Among those who were held in chains, beaten, and subjected to every
indignity, was Father Verbiest, a native of Flanders, partly educated
at Seville, the third of the great triad of priests who, by their
talents, their learning, and their personal charm, so nearly succeeded
in turning the current of Chinese history. For six long years who
shall say what he suffered? Six years of the horrors of a Chinese
prison! At last, however, the minority of the Emperor Ka̔ng Hsi came
to an end. He had not forgotten the good teaching of Father Schall,
and one of his earliest acts, on assuming the power in 1671, was to
release the priests, with Father Verbiest at their head. Ka̔ng Hsi was
not a Christian; but though he forbade his subjects to follow the new
teaching, he was sufficiently liberal to put an end to persecution, and
to recognise the value of Western learning. There is a myth to the
effect that an earthquake was the immediate cause of the release, but
the truth is that the Emperor wanted Verbiest’s astronomical science
to set straight the crooked inventions of the native professors. The
father was appointed court astronomer and chief mathematician. He was
also ordered, as Schall had been, to cast cannon, which, with much
pomp and ceremony, robed as for mass, he blessed, in the presence of
the court, sprinkling them with holy water, and giving to each the
name of a female saint which he had himself drawn on the breech. This
brought him a letter from Pope Innocent XI., praising him for having
so wisely brought the profane sciences into play for the salvation of
Chinese souls. To Father Verbiest are due the wonderful mathematical
instruments of bronze, beautiful as works of art, which are still one
of the sights of Peking. They are in the Observatory at the southern
corner of the Tartar city, where they remain as the last witnesses of
the Jesuit greatness. Verbiest died in 1688, and the Emperor himself
composed the funeral oration, which was read with great pomp before
his coffin. No three men ever succeeded in obtaining the favour of
the Chinese court so signally as the three Jesuit fathers, Ricci,
Schall, and Verbiest. When Father Verbiest died there was no man with
a sufficiently commanding intellect to fill his place and continue his
work.

It is conceivable that if they had not been thwarted by the Dominicans
and the Franciscans, the Jesuits might have succeeded in their
ambition even to the extent of Christianising China. But those two
sects effectually put a stop to the process of conversion. The great
bone of contention was the so-called worship of ancestors and of
Confucius. Another point was the translation of the name of God by
Ti̔en, literally Heaven, and Shang Ti, for which there is indeed no
other rendering. This last controversy, which has in it much that is
childish, and mere splitting of hairs, is not worth discussing. The
great point was to render the Sacred Name by some term that should
be intelligible to the Chinese mind. Both seemed to fulfil that
condition. As regards the former question, we have seen how Father
Ricci dealt with it. He saw the wisdom of not repelling the Chinese
by at once condemning a custom to which they were so wedded that any
attempt to do away with it would evidently alienate them altogether,
so he, a true Jesuit, effected a clever compromise, treating the rites
in honour of ancestors and of Confucius as civil and not as religious
ceremonies. It always has seemed to me that he acted wisely, for in no
other way could he have hoped to obtain any hearing. By degrees the
Christianised Chinese might have been weaned from their old practices,
and Christianity in all its purity have been made a dominant religion.
This, however, is mere speculation.

When the Dominicans and Franciscans became aware of the successes of
the Jesuits, they too resolved to have their share in the work, and
they promptly sent out missions to China on their own account. But
their school lacked the liberality and plastic nature of the Jesuits.
They resolutely refused any compromise. They accused the Jesuits
of countenancing idolatry and heathen practices, and one Morales, a
Spanish Dominican, sent home a report to the Propaganda to that effect.
This produced a decree from Pope Innocent the Tenth, in which the
conduct of the Jesuits was censured and their doctrine condemned in
1645. It took the Jesuits eleven years to procure from Pope Alexander
VII. another Bull, not indeed contradicting that of Pope Innocent, but
one which might be so read as to give them a free hand. But the battle
was not over, for in 1693 Bishop Maigrot, Vicar Apostolic in China,
declared in the face of the Inquisition and the Pope that Ti̔en meant
the material heaven, and not God, and that the worship of ancestors was
idolatrous. In this difficulty it is not a little strange to find that
the Jesuits appealed to the Emperor Ka̔ng Hsi to show them the way out.
They addressed him in a memorial which is quoted at length by Wells
Williams from the _Life of St. Martin_, and which is so curious that I
am tempted to transcribe it, the more so as it shows so clearly all
the points of the great controversy:—

“We, your faithful subjects, although originally from distant
countries, respectfully supplicate your Majesty to give us clear
instructions on the following points. The scholars of Europe have
understood that the Chinese practise certain ceremonies in honour
of Confucius; that they offer sacrifices to Heaven, and that they
observe peculiar rites towards their ancestors; but persuaded that
these ceremonies, sacrifices, and rites are founded in reason, though
ignorant of their true intention, earnestly desire us to inform them.
We have always supposed that Confucius was honoured in China as a
legislator, and that it was in this character alone, and with this view
solely, that the ceremonies established in his honour were practised.
We believe that the rites in honour of ancestors are only observed in
order to exhibit the love felt for them, and to hallow the remembrance
of the good received from them during their life. We believe that
the sacrifices offered to Heaven are not tendered to the visible
heavens which are seen above us, but to the Supreme Master, Author,
and Preserver of heaven and earth, and of all they contain. Such are
the interpretation and the sense which we have always given to these
Chinese ceremonies; but as strangers cannot be considered competent
to pronounce on these important points with the same certainty as the
Chinese themselves, we presume to request your Majesty not to refuse to
give us the explanations which we desire concerning them. We wait for
them with respect and submission.”

Ka̔ng Hsi cut the Gordian knot by declaring that “Ti̔en means the true
God, and that the customs of China are political.” In spite of this
Imperial opinion Pope Clement XI. upheld Bishop Maigrot, declared that
Ti̔en Chu, Lord of Heaven, must be the name for God, Ti̔en and Shang Ti
being altogether inadmissible.

Tournon, Patriarch of Antioch, was sent to Peking, where at an audience
of Ka̔ng Hsi the Emperor demanded to be informed of the decision of
the Pope. When Ka̔ng Hsi learnt that a Pope of Rome had ventured to
give an opinion contrary to his own in a matter which was altogether
Chinese, and in part purely linguistic, he was furious, and issued
a decree declaring that the Jesuits should be protected, but the
followers of Bishop Maigrot should be persecuted. The Patriarch Tournon
was banished to Macao, where further difficulties arose between him
and the bishop of that diocese, who went so far as to imprison the
legate in a private house, where he died. A second legate was sent to
Peking in 1715 in the person of one Mezzabarba. Ka̔ng Hsi received
him civilly, but would not talk about rites, and after six years
fruitlessly spent he returned to Europe.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century it is claimed that there
were in the provinces of the two Chiangs alone one hundred churches
and a hundred thousand Christians. Those were the palmy days of
missionary enterprise, but they did not last long. The quarrels of the
missionaries amongst themselves, their political ambitions, which it
was represented constituted a danger to the state, disgusted Ka̔ng Hsi.
The Jesuits, indeed, he continued to tolerate, forbidding any priests
but those who would follow the rules of Ricci to remain in China. In
1723 Ka̔ng Hsi died, and was succeeded by his son Yung Chêng, who in
the following year issued an edict strictly forbidding the propagation
of the Christian religion. A few missionaries were retained at Peking
on account of their scientific acquirements, but the majority were
banished to the south. The native Christians in the north were left
as a flock without shepherds; they were subjected to extortion and
blackmailing of the worst description, and although many remained
faithful and even contrived to harbour their teachers secretly, this
edict of Yung Chêng gave the death-blow to an energy which had made
itself powerfully felt for a century and a quarter.

I have been led further afield than I intended in this sketch of the
Jesuit enterprise (based mainly upon Dr. Wells Williams’s book and on
the _Biographie Universelle_), but it is a fascinating subject, and
few people outside of those personally interested in China know how
nearly at one time the Christian religion seemed to be reaching a great
triumph. The story of Ricci, Schall, and Verbiest teaches one great
truth. If missionaries are to be successful it must be by the power of
masterly talent and knowledge. They can only work on any scale through
the lettered class, and in order to dominate them must be able to give
proof of superior attainments as the old Jesuits did. With courage,
devotion, self-sacrifice, our missionaries are largely endowed. They
have given proofs of these, even to the laying down of their lives; but
these qualities are as nothing in the eyes of the cultivated Confucian.
One such convert as Schall’s friend Sü and his daughter Candida would
do more towards Christianising China than thousands of poor peasants.
To make such a convert needs qualifications which are rare indeed.
Above all things an accurate and scholarly knowledge of the language
is necessary. There have been not a few excellent scholars among our
missionaries. But there are many more whose ignorance in that respect
has been fatal, covering themselves and the religion which they
preach with ridicule. Fancy a Chinese Buddhist mounting on the roof
of a hansom cab at Charing Cross and preaching Buddhism to the mob in
pidgin English! That would give some measure of the effect produced
on a Chinese crowd by a missionary whom I have seen perched upon a
cart outside the great gate of the Tartar City at Peking, haranguing
a yellow crowd of gapers in bastard Chinese, delivered with a strong
Aberdonian accent. The Jesuits knew better than that.

Not an uncommon argument in support of the truths of Christianity is to
call attention to the purity of the lives of the missionaries. I find
a note of a conversation on this subject in my Journals. “Venerable
sir,” answered the learned and respectable Kung, “the goodness of a
dumpling does not depend upon the pucker at the top of it. You can no
more judge a man’s merits by his outward seeming than you can mete out
the sea in a bushel measure. It is true that to all appearance your
missionaries lead very pure lives; but to all appearance so do our
people. Look at Mr. Li and Mr. Pao, who live in my street. Nothing can
be more respectable than their outward demeanour, yet we know perfectly
well that Mr. Li sleeps in flowers and closes his eyes in willows” (a
metaphorical expression for leading a dissolute life), “while as for
Mr. Pao, the less said about him the better. What guarantee have I that
these men, whose excellence you extol, are not like my neighbours Li
and Pao? Since I must doubt even that which passes before my eyes, how
can I believe that which comes to me only by hearsay? The proverb says,
‘If your front teeth are knocked out, swallow them.’ Nobody publishes
his own misfortune or his own disgrace.”

The Chinaman knew his own country well. Virtue without the supremest
power of science and education is not enough to carry conviction to the
man of letters.

At any rate, the history of the great Jesuit movement proves my
point that the spirit of religious intolerance is not a fault which
can fairly be laid to the charge of “The Hundred Names,” as the οἱ
πολλοί of China call themselves, and that where it has shown itself
it has been engendered and fostered by the fears of the officials. It
is the same with trade. The rulers and not the ruled are the authors
of all difficulties. The Chinaman is a born trader. Buying, selling,
and barter are the very joy of his life, and so long as he can get the
better of a bargain what cares he with whom he deals? Foreigner or
fellow-countryman, it is all one to him.

The third source to which hatred of foreigners is ascribed is opium.
That has been dealt with so recently by a Royal Commission that there
is nothing new to be said upon the subject. All I can say, speaking
from personal observation, is that I have known some hundreds of
Chinese of all classes who were opium smokers. None of them abused
the drug. They regarded it as a most valuable prophylactic against
fever and ague, and would have been very loth to do without it. Some
were literary men and officials doing hard brainwork; others, like a
travelling pedlar whom I met on one of my Mongolian excursions, were
doing equally hard bodily work. The abuse of opium has, so far as I
can judge, been grossly exaggerated. It cannot be denied that there
are to be seen in the opium dens of great cities a few poor wretches
who have reduced themselves to a state of abject degradation by their
intemperance; but their percentage must be small indeed compared
to that of the victims of alcohol who are the disgrace of our own
towns, and at any rate, as has been cunningly observed, they do not
go home and beat their wives. To deprive the Chinaman of the finest
qualities of Indian opium would be to condemn him to the use of the
miserable substitute which he grows in his own fields. It would be
like forbidding the importation of champagne and Château Lafitte into
England, and driving our epicures and invalids to the necessity of
falling back upon cheap and nasty stimulants. If the opium trade were
to be abolished to-morrow it is my firm conviction that it would
spring up again immediately, but under altered conditions and in
native hands. If it be thought that I am wrong in what I say as to
the use of opium, read what Dr. Morrison says in his delightful book,
_An Australian in China_. There you have the independent testimony of
a competent physician who has travelled over the whole of China from
east to west, and who has dealt exhaustively with the question. No one
has had better opportunities of judging. No opinion is worthy of more
respect.

My conclusion then is that neither the religion of the missionaries,
nor the trade of the merchants, nor even the much-abused drug, can
honestly be counted as the cause of the anti-foreign movement in
China, though one and all have been used as levers to envenom it.
Foreign intercourse in any shape is the bugbear of the mandarin, as
being the one standing danger threatening abolition of himself and
his privileges, of which the two most dearly prized are robbery and
cruelty.

Let us be just, however, even to the mandarin. It often happens that
the missionaries are surrounded by natives of bad character, who hang
on to them for protection. Especially is this the case with certain
Roman Catholics, who have always endeavoured to “extra-territorialise”
their converts, that is, to exact for them the same privileges of
immunity from Chinese jurisdiction as are granted to the subjects of
their own country. It is easy to see how this may give just cause of
offence to the officials, and how readily a cunning malefactor will
run to his priest to shelter his back from the bamboo rod, swearing
that the charge brought against him is a mere pretext, his profession
of the Christian faith, in which he is protected by treaty, being the
real offence. Full of righteous indignation and confidence in the truth
of his convert, who, being a Christian, must necessarily be believed
before his heathen accuser, the priest rushes off to the magistrate’s
office to plead the cause of his protégé. The magistrate finds the
man guilty and punishes him; the priest is stout in his defence; a
diplomatic correspondence ensues, and on both sides the vials of wrath
are poured out. How can a priest who interferes, and the mandarin who
is interfered with, love one another? Some instances there have been
where the priests have gone a step farther, and have actually urged
their disciples to own no allegiance to their native authorities, but
to obey only themselves as representatives of the Sovereign Pontiff of
Rome.

The missionaries, on the other hand, of the China Inland Mission put
forth no such pretensions, and excite no such animosities.

The jealousies of the different sects of Christianity among themselves
throw as great difficulties in the way of conversion to-day as they did
in Ka̔ng Hsi’s time. A highly-educated Chinese gentleman, who had been
making inquiries into the doctrines of Christianity, once appealed to
me on the subject. “How is it,” he asked, “that if I go to one teacher
and talk to him of what I have learnt from another he answers me, ‘No,
that is not right; that is the doctrine preached by So-and-So; if you
follow him you will go to hell’?” But that one missionary should speak
of the Church of another Christian as a “Scarlet Woman” appeared to him
to be altogether lacking in decorum. It must be a puzzle—yet not worse
than the various schools of Buddhism.

It used to be a cardinal article of faith among Europeans in China
during the fifties, that if once we could throw Peking open to foreign
diplomacy all would be well. That was to be the sovereign cure for
all the ills of which we had to complain. We should be in touch with
the Emperor and his court, and we could not fail to convert the most
recalcitrant of mandarins to the adoption of our Western civilisation:
perhaps even China might become a Christian country. We have now been
at Peking for forty years, during which time successive ministers of
all countries have preached, flattered, scolded, and threatened over
the sweetmeats and tea of the Tsung-Li Yamên, and what is the result
to-day?

What really was wanted was not to get into Peking ourselves, but to
get the Emperor with his court and Government out of it. This is no
new theory of mine. So confident have I always been that Peking is the
worst capital on all grounds for China, that thirty years ago, writing
in _Macmillan’s Magazine_ of the Tientsing massacre in 1870, I said,
“This time we hope that the past will be a lesson for the future, and
that such conditions will be imposed as will secure our countrymen,
be they laymen or missionaries, from outrage, and will prevent China
from remaining the one bar to the progress and civilisation of the
world. It is not within the province of a magazine article to suggest
what those conditions should be; but we cannot help hinting that if
the treaty powers were to treat China as Peter the Great did Russia,
and transplant the capital and court from Peking back to Nanking,
whence it was removed by the Emperor Tai Tsung, who reigned under
the style of Yung Lo at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the
headquarters of obstructiveness and mandarinism would be destroyed,
the power of the viceroys would be brought under the control of the
central Government, and a new era might be inaugurated which should
be as conducive to the welfare and happiness of the Chinese people
as to the safety and profits of the European trader. Above all, the
representatives of European powers, instead of being boxed up in Peking
like rats in a trap, would in the not improbable event of their having
from time to time certain demands and requisitions to make of the
Chinese Government, be backed up by the presence of their men of war
on the spot. It is wonderful how distance weakens a threat, and how
wholesomely the sight of power acts upon the Oriental mind.”

Subsequent events have not led me to alter an opinion formed so many
years ago. So long as Peking remains the capital so long will it be
impossible to bring home to the Government certain facts which are
well known to many of the provincial governors, but which only in rare
instances they dare to report to headquarters. It is not conceivable
that, if the Empress Tsŭ Hsi had known what a hornet’s nest she was
stirring, she would have acted as she must have done in encouraging
Prince Tuan and the Boxers. But it is a far cry to Peking.

It cannot be said that the policy of foreign governments in China
has been calculated to raise the powers in the estimate of those
very Chinese whom it ought to be our chief duty to impress. Take the
outrages upon missionaries and the constant murders of which we have
had to complain—until the German Emperor seized Kwei Chao we have
always been content to accept a money indemnity as reparation; so
that the local mandarins must have looked upon the death of a few
missionaries—the most sweet-smelling offering that could be made to
Tsŭ Hsi and her eunuchs—as a mere question of cost, and that moreover
not to be defrayed by themselves, but squeezed out of the people. If
some poor wretch or wretches were decapitated, the instigator, the real
culprit, could enjoy the luxury of sitting in judgment over his own
crime, and sentencing to death some victim caught at random out of the
prisons, or perhaps even—for Chinese methods are ingenious—paying off
an old score.

As regards intercourse with the ruling classes, or obtaining
any influence with the court, our presence at Peking has been
useless—perhaps worse than useless, actually mischievous. For what can
a Chinese gentleman think when he sees the filthiest beggar pass freely
without let or hindrance in parts of the city where the presence of the
minister of the proudest nation in Europe would be deemed a pollution?
We have been tolerated in Peking as a necessary evil—accepted we have
never been. The receptions at court have been so rare, and made such
a great favour of, that they have been a mere farce, and in some
cases, such as the visit of the ladies of the _Corps diplomatique_
to the Empress Tsŭ Hsi, a degradation. Compare with the position of
the British Minister at Peking—stoned and insulted in the streets,
and unable to obtain protection or redress—the reception of Li Hung
Chang by all Europe three years ago. How that astute old intriguer
must have laughed in his sleeve when he found himself petted, coaxed,
and flattered, treated like a royal personage! and what must have been
the inference drawn by every ignorant Chinese, from Tsŭ Hsi and the
poor down-trampled Emperor Kwang Hsu down to the meanest beggar on the
bridge? Crystal is not so clear as the fact that the Son of Heaven is
the ruler of the world, and all other monarchs mere vassals, doing
homage to the steps of the Jasper Throne.

Peking has exercised upon foreign representatives a sort of unholy
glamour. They have been bewitched. Some have fallen down and worshipped
before its scholastic and historical traditions; others have treated
the great city and its rulers as a sort of gigantic “curio”; optimism
has been the bane of all. If any serious attempt has been made to bring
the mandarins into the pale of statesmanship it has been singularly
unsuccessful. They remain as retrograde and as hopelessly obstructive
as ever. They have occasionally been clever enough, like Li, to throw
dust in the eyes of foreigners, and that is all. Unless a radical
change is effected European diplomacy will continue to be abortive; to
effect that change it is absolutely necessary that the court should be
removed from the headquarters of obstruction, and brought into actual
contact with our civilisation and with the material evidence of Western
power. The old-world prejudices of Moscow were a hindrance to Peter the
Great; the Kugés buried for centuries at Kiyôto were a drag upon the
reformers of Japan; the capitals were moved. These are the two great
precedents for such a policy.

In spite of protesting princes and potentates, it seems as if the
partition of China, that unwieldy monster, was at hand. When the
phrases “Sphere of Influence” and “Hinterland,” diplomatic expressions
recently invented for the benefit of savage Africa, came, three or four
years ago, to be applied to China, then nominally a friendly power,
it was not difficult to foresee what must follow. The events of the
last three months have precipitated matters. Germany is in honour
bound to exact exemplary retribution for the murder of her minister,
the deadliest insult that could be offered to a great nation. If she
were minded to take Shantung, where she might establish a flourishing
colony, she would act as a buffer state between Central China and
Russia, who has already to all intents possessed herself of Manchuria,
and has for many a year cast longing eyes upon Chihli; and after all,
if Russia were to annex Chihli with Peking would the world have any
great cause for lamentation? Apart from all other considerations,
Russia with a nucleus of co-religionists in the Albazines, of whom
there is a short account at p. 211 of these letters, would have more in
hand towards Christianising the people than any other nation or sect;
and it seems to me that Peking Russian, and possibly Christian, would
be far better than Peking Chinese, and certainly heathen. If further
encroachment were guarded against by Germany in Shantung we should not
be losers. Should France want a rectification of frontier for her
great Asiatic colony—why should we interfere? The restoration of the
old frontier of Burmah and the freedom of the Yangtze region should
suffice us.

As for a change of dynasty in China, which some writers are crying for,
that is an impossibility, because there is no Chinese pretender ready
to replace the Manchus. It would mean chaos such as the world has never
seen.

Freed from the incubus of the Empress Tsŭ Hsi and her eunuchs, freed
from Prince Tuan and the other bloodguilty Manchus, the Emperor,
surrounded by a more enlightened court, and acting under capable
advisers, would be enabled to rule peacefully and honestly over an
immense and prosperous empire; while the removal of the capital would,
without any act of vandalism, such as the suggested destruction of the
Tombs, read China that lesson which is so sorely needed, and which
the absurd reprisals of 1860 utterly failed to convey. After the
second occupation of Peking we should not again hear of the Barbarians
bringing tribute to the Son of Heaven from his vassals.

The idea of a change of capital is not one that is of itself strange
or repugnant to the Chinese mind. It has even, apparently, been
contemplated by the Dowager-Empress herself, though her choice would
not unnaturally fall upon a spot like Hsi An Fu, near which town, at
Hao, at Hsien Yang, and at Chang An, the emperors of the Chou dynasty
(B.C. 1122–781), the Tsin (B.C. 249–200), and the Sui (A.D. 582–904)
held their courts. But the chief charm of such a capital would be its
inaccessibility and remoteness from the haunts of the foreign devil.
Hsi An Fu would be Peking over again, and worse. It would give the
_coup de grâce_ to all hope of civilising the court.

In a letter published in the _Times_ newspaper of June 22 I advocated
once more the choice of Nanking as a new seat of Government, and I
said that such a change would be hailed with joy by many millions of
Chinese. A few days after that letter appeared my arguments received
a very remarkable confirmation. A telegram from Yokohama informed us
that the Chinese community in Japan, a highly intelligent, educated,
and respectable body of men, of first-rate business capacity, had
presented a petition urging the foreign powers to take advantage of
the settlement which must follow upon the present troubles, to insist
upon the removal of the capital from Peking to Nanking. Now these men
know what they are talking about. They know that such a change would
work wonders in the direction of good government; that it would take
the power out of the fossilised hands of the court; that the light of
day would be fatal to the bats and owls of the forbidden city; that the
secret societies would be deprived of their chief support; that the
viceroys and the whole descending scale of mandarins, brought under
control of an intelligible and intelligent Government, would no longer
be able to squeeze and persecute the people, paralysing trade by their
extortions and blackmailing, and setting up insuperable barriers to the
progress of civilisation.

In the Blue Book published recently (July 30) we have the first
instalment of the official history of the tragedy of Peking—most
melancholy reading, truly! But there is one bright spot in this
miserable record. The attitude of our Foreign Office in all the
negotiations which have taken place appears to have been altogether
admirable. In spite of the cold water thrown by international
jealousies upon Lord Salisbury’s efforts to retrieve the situation, he
has held his own position, and he has succeeded in using the best means
which were available without in any way compromising the future. Japan
is to furnish troops, but there are no vague promises, no encouragement
of inordinate ambitions, and no raising of hopes, which, if realised,
might be fraught with dangers beside which even the horrors of the last
few weeks would be as child’s play. Lord Salisbury boldly promises to
find the money, and England will honour his bill. That is all. “Her
Majesty’s Government wish to draw a sharp distinction between immediate
operations which may be still in time to save the Legations, and any
ulterior operations which may be undertaken.” No language could be
clearer or more satisfactory than this. Is it too much to hope that
when the final settlement comes, the counsels of the same master-mind
may devise a solution which shall bring about a happier era for China,
without endangering the harmony of those nations which are now united
in their resentment of outrages, for which the history of the world
finds no parallel?

Besides the Blue Book, recent events have produced a plentiful crop
of letters to the newspapers, many of them written with great ability
and knowledge of Chinese affairs. The deposition of the undoubtedly
guilty Empress, and the restoration to power of the Emperor, with a
Government composed of the progressive party to which he is inclined,
are with most of the writers a _sine qua non_. To this I say Amen. “The
murderer Tuan must be executed” is a favourite cry. By all means; but
we know what is the first postulate in the cooking of a hare. Prince
Tuan will hardly be more easy to catch than was Nana Sahib in 1857.
If the Emperor, a weakling at best, be left at Peking in a hotbed of
harem intrigues and secret societies, how can he be protected? Will
his life be worth many days’ purchase? Will a progressive ministry be
able to exercise any authority over the great provincial satraps? The
foreign representatives will be locked up in the old death-trap, and in
ten, twenty, thirty years history will repeat itself. The inviolable
sanctity of Legations with such surroundings becomes a most miserable
farce.

The return to the _status quo ante_, with all its possibility of
tragic repetitions, is just the sort of lame and impotent conclusion
to which we have accustomed the Chinese, and in their dealings with us
they count upon a moderation which, like all Asiatics, they construe
into fear, and despise accordingly. A barren conquest like that of
1860, which left things as they were, is something which they cannot
understand. When Li Hung Chang, who knows exactly what string it
is best to harp upon, sweetly urges us to arouse “the gratitude of
millions” by abstention from revenge, be sure his gentle mind sees its
way to turn such magnanimity to good account. The horrors of to-day
were begotten of the mistakes of 1860 and 1870. Let us hope that 1900
may be the parent of a less ill-omened brood.

                                  ————

Those who desire to study the political problems of the Far East will
find admirable instruction in Mr. Chirol’s the _Far Eastern Question_
(Macmillan), in Mr. Colquhoun’s _Overland to China_, and in the same
writer’s more recently published _The Problem in China and British
Policy_.

My best thanks are due to the proprietors of the _Times_ newspaper for
permission to reproduce here their admirable plan of Peking.




                                LETTER I


                                       HONG-KONG, _23rd April 1865_.

Life at sea may be a very pleasant one for those who like it, but I
doubt whether any one ever arrived at the end of a voyage of a month
and a half by one of the P. and O. Co.’s steamers without uttering an
expression of thanksgiving, hearty and sincere. The monotony of the
ever-recurring daily occupations is killing. However,

    Be the day weary or be the day long,
    At length it ringeth to evensong,—

even Hong-kong is reached at last.

We rush up on deck after breakfast to see the first of the brown,
sun-scorched island. It is shrouded in mist, however, and there is
not much to look at. But every one is excited and flurried, and
in the happiness of realising the luxury of being on land, we
feel kindly towards all mankind, and bid a cordial farewell to our
fellow-passengers. In a short while we are in harbour, and the little
colony, planted at the foot of wild and rugged hills matching those
of the mainland opposite, lies before us. A crowd of boats plying for
hire, and partly manned, to use a bull, by women often pulling away
lustily with a baby slung across their backs, hail us with cries of
“Wanchee boat?” “Wanchee big boat?” These Chinese boatwomen are real
wonders. Hardy, strong, and burnt by the sun, they look and probably
are as sturdy as any of the men. At any rate I saw one woman fight and
thrash a couple of stalwart young boatmen; and a good stand-up fight
it was, give and take. They did not spare her, and she belaboured them
most lustily, screaming and chattering all the while in a way that
would have frightened Billingsgate itself into silence. The boats seem
to hold whole families,—even the nursery,—the small boys wearing corks
or bottles to keep them afloat when they tumble overboard. The girls,
being reckoned of no value, take their chance, and wear nothing to
protect them. As soon as we came to an anchor the boats of the great
commercial firms came alongside, each probably steered by a partner
eager to hear the latest news or to welcome a friend. One by one the
passengers disappear, and he who has letters for one of the merchant
princes of China may look forward to luxurious quarters and a warm
welcome, for nowhere else is hospitality carried to such an extent as
it is here.

The houses in Hong-kong are large and airy. Lofty and spacious rooms
not overloaded with furniture (for everything is dispensed with an
eye to the getting the most air and coolness) look out on to a broad
verandah, which is shaded with green rush blinds to keep out the glare.
Here bamboo lounging chairs, of indescribable comfort, hold out arms
that invite one to doze away the sultry afternoon, or sit smoking a
cheroot and sipping cool drinks in the most luxurious laziness. The
clean and neat matting on the floors, the rare curiosities and jars
which decorate the principal rooms, the quiet, mouse-like steps of
the China boys in their blue dresses, who act as servants, coming in
to take an order or deliver a message in their quaint pidgin English,
give a peculiar and original stamp to the whole, which is of itself
immensely refreshing. Everything speaks of rest and quiet, and yet it
is in these quiet, idle-seeming houses—very castles of Indolence they
appear—that busy brains are at work, toiling all day, calculating rises
and falls, watching chances by which thousands are won or lost in a
day. In the old days when the opium trade was unlawful, and therefore
at its height, when the rival houses had each their fast sailing
clippers racing against one another from Bombay and Calcutta, and the
first to arrive would lie hidden round the corner of the bay, and send
a man on shore across the hills with the all-important intelligence,
only showing itself when a price had been made, the life of a man
of business at Hong-kong must have been one of untold excitement.
Nowadays every man gets his letters by the mail, the opium trade is
legitimatised, and there is no longer the same amount of “go” and dash
about the thing. Still, a venture of tea to the tune of a million of
dollars, upon which 40 or 50 per cent may be made or lost, must be
exciting enough for most men. Just at present the China trade is in
a singularly bad way; vast sums have been lost in tea speculations;
some of the larger houses have been very hard hit, but with plenty
of capital at their backs have stood the shock well. Smaller firms,
however, not having the same elasticity, have sunk under it; smashes
and rumours of smashes are rife; and the only men who have not suffered
are those who, with wise prescience, have folded their hands and done
nothing, waiting for better times.

Hong-kong presents perhaps one of the oddest jumbles in the whole
world. It is neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red-herring. The
Government and principal people are English—the population are
Chinese—the police are Indians—the language is bastard English mixed
with Cantonese—the currency is the Mexican dollar, and the elements no
more amalgamate than the oil and vinegar in a salad. The Europeans hate
the Chinese, and the latter return the compliment with interest. In the
streets Chinamen, Indian policemen, Malays, Parsees, and half-castes
jostle up against Europeans, naval and military officers, Jack-tars,
soldiers, and loafers of all denominations. Constantinople, Smyrna,
and Cairo show more picturesque and varied crowds, but nothing can be
more grotesque than the street life of Hong-kong. The local cab is a
green chair[3] open in front and covered in at the top, in which you
may sit Yankeewise, with your feet sprawling above your head, and be
carried along at a good pace by a couple of strong-shouldered coolies
with shaven polls, long tails, and huge umbrella hats. Plenty of these
are waiting for hire at every corner. They have a fixed tariff of ten
cents the trip. The weights that these coolies carry slung on their
bamboo-poles are something surprising. I have seen Turkish hamals
bent nearly double under the most impossible loads, such as no London
railway porter would look at; but it makes one’s shoulders ache to see
the Chinamen fetch and carry, for they do not hold the poles in their
hands with the support of a shoulder-strap, like the chairmen who used
to take old ladies out to tea and scandal in English country towns,
but the bamboo poles are fastened at the ends, and the men simply
hoist them on to their shoulders and stagger off under them. Both men
and women of the lower orders are certainly to our eyes mightily
ill-favoured, and have villainous countenances which, if all tales
be true, do not belie their characters; but now and then one comes
across a pretty creature enough, some Cantonese, probably, as frail as
fair—for St. Antony is not generally worshipped in seaside garrison
towns. The long plaited tails worn by the men, and eked out with silk
until they reach nearly to the heels, are a never-ending source of
wonder to the new-comer. But there is one fashion of shaving the poll,
leaving here and there a hair like the bristles on a gooseberry, which
is peculiarly droll in its effect—a “coiffure à la groseille.” The
Chinaman is very careful of his tail, and no cat has a greater horror
of wetting her coat than he has of a drop of rain falling on his back
hair. To cut it off is the height of indignity; and when the Chinese
sailors on board the P. and O. ships have been stealing opium from
the cargo, which they find it very hard to keep their hands off, they
are tied up by their tails to the capstan and summarily flogged; in
which case they become useful as well as ornamental. The barber drives
a brisk trade; nor does he confine himself to shaving, clipping, and
plaiting; he has also cunning instruments with which he cleans the
eyes and ears of his clients, the result of which is that the drums
of their ears are often injured, and the poor patients afflicted with
chronic deafness.

In this island of contrasts none is greater than that between the
European and Chinese quarters of the town. In the former the houses
are large and well built of gray slate-coloured bricks and fine
granite, and others, some of which will be real palaces, are in course
of construction. In the latter, on the contrary, the houses are low
and mean. They are generally built with one story: on the ground
floor is the shop with its various goods and quaint perpendicular
inscriptions and advertisements; on the first floor, which is thrown
out over the footway and supported by wooden posts, so as to form a
covered walk, the family live, and here the ugly old women—uglier
in China than anywhere—and queer little yellow children may be seen
peering out of their dens at the passers-by. Towards evening, when the
paper lanterns are lighted and the shops are shut up, not by doors
and shutters as with us, but by a sort of cage of bamboo poles,
through which the interior is visible, the Chinese house looks very
fantastic and strange. This quarter of the town bears a very bad name.
It swarms with houses of the worst repute, and low grog-shops which
are largely patronised by the sailors. The coolies in the street are
a most ruffianly looking lot, not pleasant to meet in a by-road alone
and unarmed. Indeed, life and property seem to be by no means so safe
in the colony as they should be, considering the force which is kept
here. A short time since a gentleman was attacked in broad daylight in
the middle of the town, knocked down and robbed; and it is downright
dangerous to venture on the hills alone without the moral influence of
a revolver. The Chinamen are very clever thieves and housebreakers, and
will even venture into barracks, smuggle themselves into the officers’
quarters, burn a little opium under the nose of some sleeping hero,
and in double-quick time clear the room of watch, chain, loose cash,
and valuables. Sometimes, however, they get caught. The other night a
young officer was too quick for one of these light-fingered gentlemen,
and pinned him just as he was making off. A mighty pretty dressing
he got too—for when the officers were tired of thrashing him, with
ingenious cruelty they turned him into the lock-up where the drunken
soldiers were, and I leave you to guess what sort of a night he spent.
It is said that a Hindoo will rob a man of the sheet he is sleeping on
without disturbing him, but I think to clear the goods out of a large
warehouse under the owner’s nose, and with the police looking on, is
at least as great a feat. This happened in this wise. A “godown” or
storehouse full of valuable goods was fixed upon, a number of coolies
walked in one fine day with a “comprador” (headman, bailiff, steward,
and factotum), and with the utmost innocence set to work emptying the
place, the pretended comprador all the while, in the most businesslike
manner, making notes of the bales which were sent down to the quay
and shipped off in small boats. One coolie is so like another that no
wonder the policeman who was standing by thought it was all right, and
the very audacity of the robbery put him off his guard. By the time the
theft was discovered, goods, coolies, and comprador were well out of
reach, and the owner was left lamenting over his empty godown.

It is rather hard on a man when he first comes to these parts to
have to learn a new dialect of his own language more bizarre than
broad Somersetshire, more unintelligible than that of Tennyson’s
northern farmer. This is the Cantonese or “pidgin” English. Pidgin
means business, of which word it is not difficult to see that it is a
corruption, and the jargon is the _patois_ that has invented itself
for transacting affairs with the natives. Use a plain English word to
a Chinaman, and he will stare and “no sabé”; but distort it, add a
syllable or two, put it in its wrong place, and, in short, make it so
unlike itself that its own root would not acknowledge it, and he will
catch your meaning at once. Several Chinese, Portuguese, and other
words of doubtful pedigree, mixed up with this maltreated English, make
up the lingo, which is a literal translation of Chinese syntax, and
puzzling enough at first. Here is a specimen. I should tell you that in
pidgin bull is _male_, cow _female_. An English gentleman from Shanghai
went to call at a friend’s house in Hong-kong. The door was opened
by the head Chinese boy. “Mississee have got?” said the gentleman.
“Have got,” answered the boy, “but just now no can see.” “How fashion
no can see?” The boy answered, grinning from ear to ear, “Last night
have catchee one number one piecee bull chilo!” The lady of the house
had been safely brought to bed during the night of a fine baby boy!
Sometimes the boy will dot his I’s and cross his T’s with unfortunate
distinctness as to the occupations in which his master or mistress is
engaged, putting one in mind of Gavarni’s _Enfants Terribles_. It is
not to be wondered at that the coolies and servant boys should talk
this lingo, but that clever, intelligent fellows like the compradors in
big houses should not have acquired a better form of English is indeed
strange.

Life at Hong-kong passes away pleasantly enough. The residents are very
rich, and they spend their money like princes. Their hospitality is
boundless, and open house is the rule. I can fancy no better quarters
for a naval or military man. The climate is very different from what
it used to be, and has become very healthy; but if a man should fall
ill he can get away north to Peking, or run up to Japan, or choose
between a dozen trips nearer at hand. The usual daily routine here at
this season of the year is as follows:—At six your boy wakes you with
a cup of tea; you rise and bathe, and read or write till it is time to
dress for breakfast at twelve (the merchants, of course, go to their
offices at ten or even much earlier). Breakfast, as it is called, is a
regular set meal with several courses, and champagne or claret; any one
comes in who pleases, and is sure of a cordial welcome, and probably an
invitation to return to dinner. After a cup of coffee and a cheroot,
office work begins again, and goes on until about five, when every one
turns out to ride, drive, or walk until seven, which is the hour for
gossip, and sherry and bitters at the club, a first-rate establishment
to which strangers are admitted as visitors, and where a man may put
up if he pleases. Dinner is at eight, and a very serious affair it is,
for Hong-kong is fond of good living and fine vintages; and this rule
does not apply only to the heads of houses, for their clerks are lodged
and boarded exactly on the same scale as themselves, and a boy who has
been content to dine for a shilling at a London chop-house, sits down
here to a dinner fit for a duke, criticises the champagne and claret
with the air of a connoisseur, and rattles in his pocket £300 or £400
a year for his _menus plaisirs_. Which shows the superiority of vulgar
fractions to genteel Latin and Greek.

The rides and drives about Hong-kong are in their way very pretty,
though the almost entire absence of trees presents a violent contrast
to the rich tropical vegetation of Singapore and Penang. On the other
hand, both on the mainland and in the island itself, there are bold,
rugged mountain outlines, often shrouded in a mist that reminds one
of Scotland and Ireland; huge boulders of rock from which beautiful
ferns of every variety (fifty-two species have been classed) grow in
profusion; a bay studded with wild barren islands; and to the east,
where the colony is only separated from the mainland by about a mile of
sea, the picturesque peninsula of Kowloon. The racecourse in the Happy
Valley is a lovely spot. It is surrounded by hills on three sides, and
from the fourth, which is close to the bay, one looks up a blue glen
such as Sir Walter Scott might have described. Here on the slope of
the hill is the cemetery, and here and at Government House there are
some trees, among which the graceful bamboo is conspicuous. But it is
the south-west of the island that is most affected by the residents. At
a place called Pok Fo Lum, about four miles off, several of the rich
merchants have built bungalows to which in summer-time, after stewing
all day in their offices, it is their wont to resort of an afternoon,
and let the fresh sea-breeze clear their brains of tea, opium, silk,
rises and falls, and such-like cobwebs. On a fine evening these gardens
are a very pleasant lounge. At the back rises the Peak, a fine bold
rock some 1700 feet high; all around are sweet-scented tropical flowers
teeming with strange, many-coloured insects and gorgeous butterflies;
while in front the view stretches to the mainland hills across the
brilliant sea rippling against little islands, and covered with
flotillas of native boats, peaceful enough to all appearance, but ever
ready for any little piece of light piracy that may turn up.

I was very anxious before leaving the south of China to see Canton,
and accordingly on the 28th April I started with a friend in one of
the huge house-steamers that ply between Hong-kong and Canton, and
are of themselves curiosities. They are divided into separate parts
for Europeans, Parsees, and natives of the poorer class, with loose
boxes into which bettermost Chinese families are put. You may form
some idea of their size when I tell you that three weeks ago, on the
occasion of a festival, our boat the _Kin Shan_ took up 2063 Chinamen
to Canton, whither they were bound to “chin-chin” the graves of their
ancestors. In all American steamers—and this is a Yankee venture—speed
is the great object, and we accomplished the distance, between 80 and
90 miles, under the six hours.

We had a bright sunny morning for our expedition, and the harbour of
Hong-kong appeared to great advantage, for there were plenty of fleecy
clouds in the sky throwing fantastic shadows over the hills around.
The sea was as calm and transparent as a lake, and we could sit in the
best cabin, which is a huge building on the forecastle, catching every
breath of air, and enjoying the scenery. The river-banks are at first
wild, barren, and hilly, like Hong-kong, but higher up there begin to
be signs of cultivation. Plantains and rice, which is the greenest
of all green grasses, grow in profusion among the snipe marshes.
Bamboos spring up close to the water’s edge, and the hills are lower,
less savage-looking, and more fruitful. Ruined forts, destroyed when
we forced our trade upon the unwilling Chinese, numberless boats and
junks, here and there a pagoda with different sorts of plants peeping
out of its many stories, tell us that we are drawing near a town, and
after about four hours and a half we reach Wampoa, a miserable place,
with about as dirty and degraded-looking a population as could be seen
anywhere. A few lime kilns, soy or ketchup factories, and dry docks
where ships are brought to have their keels cleaned of barnacles and
sea-muck, seem to constitute all the business of the place. I shall
always henceforth look upon soy as the essence of the dirt of Wampoa.

Canton itself does not present a very clean face to be washed by the
unsavoury river. If any one should come here expecting to see a fine
city of quays and palaces, he will be grievously disappointed. Myriads
of low dirty wooden houses, built almost in the very water itself,
are crowded together higgledy piggledy, without order or method. As if
these were not enough, there are whole streets, alleys, and quarters
of the foulest boat-houses, all swarming with human, and probably
other, life. Junks in numbers, carrying guns for defence, and if a safe
opportunity occurs, for offence, are moored in the stream. Strange,
grotesque craft they are, with their huge bows built to represent
the heads of sea-monsters; a great eye is painted on each side, for
the Chinese treat their ships as reasoning beings, and say, “S’pose
no got eye, no can see; s’pose no can see, no can walkee,” which is
unanswerable—even the _Kin Shan_ carries an eye on each paddle-box in
deference to this idea. But as at Hong-kong, the chief peculiarity of
the river scene here is the crowd of small boats with female crews. The
mother pulls the stroke oar, the aunt the bow, and grandmamma is at
the helm with a third. I am sure there must have been several hundreds
of these yellow ladies round the steamer at one time. The parrot-house
at the Zoological Gardens was silence itself by comparison, for hard
work, and strong pulling, have given them lungs of leather. They
all claim acquaintance, and employment on the strength of it. “My
boatee, my boatee, my no see you Cheena side long tim.” We had our
own boat, however, and with patience cleared a way and got to shore.
But no description of the Canton River would be complete without an
allusion to the famous “flower-boats.” Huge, unwieldy barges they
are, moored by the river-side, and tricked out with every paltry
decoration of cheap gilding, paper lanterns, and bizarre ornament that
the Owen Jones of China can invent. These are the temples of Venus.
The priestesses are mostly brown ugly little women in sad-coloured
garments, upon whose flat yellow faces the rosy paint looks even more
ghastly than on Europeans; some are almost pretty, however, and all
have beautiful hands and feet (when the latter have not been wantonly
deformed), indeed this is the one gift of beauty common to all the
Chinese, and the very men-servants who wait upon one have hands kept
delicately clean, and so well formed that many an European lady might
envy them; they have no need to wrap a napkin round their thumbs, nor
to wear white cotton gloves; their taper fingers and filbert nails are
pleasant to look upon. At night, when the lanterns are lighted, and
the tawdriness of the decorations is less offensive, the flower-boats
look gay enough, and they are one of the sights of Canton. The trade
that their denizens ply is not looked upon as disgraceful, nor does it
prevent their marrying respectably afterwards,—at least so it is said.

We had had an empty house placed at our disposal, and we took with
us a servant, a coolie, and a native cook. And this brings me to the
record of a feat. When we arrived at our house we found that the boy in
charge (a “boy,” like the boy in Oliver Twist, may be a very old man)
had gone off to “chin-chin” his ancestors’ graves, a ceremony which,
although our coming had been announced to him, could on no account be
deferred. So there we were at half-past three, without so much as a
scrap of fuel or a gridiron to put upon it. In spite of this we sat
down, four of us, at eight o’clock, to a dinner of mulligatawny soup,
soles, for which the river is famous, three _entrées_, a buffalo’s
hump, like boiled beef idealised, snipes, curried prawns, and a dessert
of plantains, oranges, rose apples, tasting just like rose leaves, and
dried lychees, the whole being decked out in the most excellent taste,
with a profusion of the sweetest scented and most brilliant flowers.
We had our wine with us, and altogether I never sat down to a better
dinner. Could any English servants, arriving at an empty house in
London, have done the same? The Chinese, when they have learnt to cook
after our fashion, are the best _chefs_ in the world. You see the art
requires delicacy of hand, plenty of imagination, and does not involve
a knowledge of perspective, so it just suits their talents.

I am afraid I can give you but a poor description of Canton; the
inventory is too large to be taken in a letter. Mr. Sala or any of the
professed literary appraisers would find matter for at least a chapter
in the bad smells. The streets are very narrow. Three men might walk
abreast in them, and perhaps you might throw in a boy if he was very
tiny indeed. On each side are small, low shops, which throw out such a
multitude of lanterns and perpendicular notices, like the attenuated
ghosts of many-coloured banners, that they look as if a solemn
procession in a pantomime had been changed by a tap of the harlequin’s
wand into a scene of streets and advertisements. As if the gangway
were not narrow enough, hucksters and costermongers, offering every
kind of goods for sale, hold their stalls on each available square foot
of pavement. There are meat stalls, fruit stalls, sweetmeat stalls,
sugar-cane stalls, fish stalls, and what can only be designated as
offal stalls. The yellowest crowd in the world hustles along pell-mell
at a furious rate, for every one is busy and every one is in a hurry.
Coolies carrying every conceivable burden balance-wise, from a load of
timber to a bundle of leeks, rush at one, and it needs a sharp look-out
to steer clear of their bamboo poles. Round the corner, lolling in
his chair, for all the world like one of those “magots” Frenchwomen
are so fond of, a Chinese dignitary is borne along, attended by five
or six policemen in white caps and red tassels, nearly upsetting a
small-footed lady, who has just time to totter out of the way on her
rickety legs. If there is a clear space, you may be sure there is a
doctor or fortune-teller peering into his patient’s mouth, like a groom
examining a horse’s teeth, or tapping his head mysteriously with a fan,
to the wonder of a small gaping circle. Barring in very rare instances
a dog or two—for the wary little beasts seem to know the danger that
they run of being turned into butchers’ meat if they stray out of their
own domain—no animals are to be seen. Beasts of burden are represented
by the men, and beasts of draught there are none; indeed, no carriage,
cart, or costermonger’s barrow could thread its way here. The amount
of industry to be seen in a single street is something surprising.
Carpenters, cobblers, turners, carvers—artisans, in short, of all
guilds, are toiling away for dear life—no one is idle. The butcher
is busy separating the coarser from the finer parts of the meat; the
fishmonger gutting his fish, and setting the entrails carefully on one
side—there is no part too vile or mean, none too dear and delicate to
find a customer. Chow-chow dogs (I saw such a pretty little puppy being
carried off to execution; he looked like a brown spitz, and I felt
inclined to buy his release), birds’ nests, rice-birds, the beccafichi
of China, and all manner of delicacies, are cheek-by-jowl with equally
numerous abominations, not to speak of rats and “such small deer.” The
greengrocers’ are the most tempting of the provision shops; they at
least show nothing offensive, and they make their fruit look to the
greatest advantage, setting oranges, apples, lychees, and vegetables in
curious patterns, while ropes of bananas, leeks, young lettuces, and
other greens hang from the ceiling. Competition is great, and with the
utmost labour it is hard to earn a living, for the two cities, Tartar
and Chinese, with their suburbs, hold an immense population, not to
speak of the thousands who are born, live, and die in the boats, and
have no part or share in the land until they come in for that property
six feet by three, which is the common inheritance. Altogether, taking
both sides of the river, there are probably a million and a half of
inhabitants, of whom not more than one hundred are Europeans.

Until the return of the English to Canton, it used to be a point of
honour with the Chinese at Hong-kong to try and persuade people that
the bombardment of 1856 had not done much damage. If they were asked
whether Yeh’s Palace or Yamên had been injured they would answer,
“Not too muchee; my hab hear they breakee that cup that saucer; that
alloo.” But the fact is that the city still bears the marks of the
punishment it received; considerable spaces have been laid waste by
fire; Yeh’s Yamên has been razed to the ground and its site “annexed”
by the French, who are building a cathedral and Jesuit college upon
it. Notwithstanding the havoc made by shot and shell, however, there
is much to be seen. The Yamêns of the Viceroy, the Governor, and
other high functionaries are standing. I only saw the outsides of
these palaces. They are all pretty much alike. An arched gateway,
with a colossal warrior painted in fresco on either side, faces a
blank wall, on which is drawn the outline of some fabulous monster,
and this appears to be used for notices and announcements; marble
kylins and grotesque beasts adorn the courtyard, which is crowded with
functionaries and dependants. The roofs are fretted into a thousand
quaint designs; but you are as familiar with their style as I am, and
as I shall probably in some future letter have an opportunity of saying
something about the interior of a Chinese officer’s palace, I had
better let the subject alone now.

Of course we went to see the “Temple of Punishments” and that of the
Five Hundred Saints, which last is one of the celebrities of China.
The former is so called from its containing models of all the various
modes which Chinese ingenuity has invented for torturing malefactors.
Guarding the portals are two colossal “josses” or idols, represented
with vermilion faces and a prodigious corpulency. Bits of paper, as
votive offerings, some with inscriptions, but more without, are pinned
or fastened to them by the pious: this is a Chinese method of showing
respect to the graves of their dead, and to their gods. Inside the gate
is a large courtyard, which we found crowded with people; all around
were little tables at which sat fortune-tellers, some young men, others
veterans with scanty beards and enormous tortoise-shell spectacles,
writing as solemnly as judges. Here in bamboo divisions are the dolls
which give the temple its name, and very horrible are the scenes which
they represent; beyond the courtyard is the real joss-house, from which
I carried away a confused idea of tinsel, artificial flowers, scraps of
paper, and gloom.

Far more interesting was the Temple of the Five Hundred Saints. In the
gateway, as in the former case, two josses of stupendous size mount
guard. One is represented as solacing himself with a tune on a kind of
mandoline; and I noticed that many of the scraps of paper with which
he has been “chin-chinned” were cut in the shape of his favourite
instrument. Without let or hindrance we wandered through a maze of
white-washed and neatly-kept cloisters, until we came to the refectory
(for there is a monastery attached to this temple), where we found the
monks at their afternoon meal. Just as we arrived, a tiny musical-toned
bell was sounded, at which signal the brethren rose, and what appeared
to be a short prayer or grace was recited in chorus, after which a
monk of higher rank, preceded by an attendant, left the hall, which
was a square room with long tables, and fenced off from the cloisters
at one end by a low bamboo railing. As soon as the great man was gone
the others fell to at their chopsticks and small bowls with renewed
vigour. The monks wear a long light gray robe, and they shave the whole
head, but in other respects their dress does not differ from that of
laymen. The temple itself is a large hall in which the five hundred,
placed in alleys at right angles, sit facing one another in all their
majesty. They are all of gilt metal or wood, and under life size, if
one may use such a term with regard to idols. They are represented in
every variety of attitude, occupation, and expression. Some are playing
on musical instruments, and are bland; others are evidently preaching,
and are didactic; others are inflicting punishment or doing battle, and
are very fierce; one is performing a difficult act of horsemanship on a
large kylin, while two smaller kylins are looking on in admiration—one
and all are made to look fat and comfortable, with huge paunches.
Before each is placed a small green porcelain pot filled with the ashes
of the joss-sticks which have been burnt in his honour. The monks were
uniformly civil to us, and neither here nor in the Temple of Horrors
was any fee asked or expected; how much better it would be if Europeans
would follow the example of these heathens, and not ask admission fees
in their cathedrals and churches.

You may well imagine that during a first visit to a great Chinese city
everything appeared strange and marvellous, but the greatest wonder of
all was that we should be able to wander hither and thither, intruding
into temples, thrusting our curious noses into every hole and corner,
like ferrets in a rabbit warren, elbowing our way unmolested through
crowds that a very few years ago would have mobbed and brick-batted at
least, and perhaps tortured and murdered by inches, any European that
ventured outside the factories. It seems almost a fatality that now
that the city is safe, and its inhabitants peacefully inclined, the
opening of the Yang-Tse-Chiang should have turned the European traffic
with the interior, of which Canton was formerly the headquarters, into
a new channel. The prosperity of Canton is evident, and very striking.
But it is a native and self-containing prosperity, and in no ways
dependent on Europe, and shows that the Chinese were quite right when
they asserted that they could do very well without us. Just before the
principal English firms withdrew their representatives from the city,
finding that the little business there was to do could be more cheaply
transacted by agents drawing a small percentage, an arrangement was
made with the local government whereby we became the lessees of a
small mud island, which had to be filled in at a great cost, called
Shah-Meen. This was to become the English quarter. The church and
new consular buildings have been erected there, and there are a few
empty bungalows belonging to merchants, but the place does not seem
likely ever to wear a look of great importance; the merchants see no
likelihood of an inducement to return, so Shah-Meen has so far been a
poor bargain.

Not far from Shah-Meen are the pleasure-gardens of a merchant named
Po-Ting-Qua. Terraces, summer-houses, stairs, drawbridges, carp-ponds,
rock-work, and flowers are thrown together most fantastically, exactly
like the gardens that the ladies and gentlemen on teacups and plates
walk about in. The doors are cut out of the walls in quaint shapes,
such as circles, jars, bottles, etc. As the rainy season has set in the
garden was not looking its best, but it was very pretty nevertheless,
although there was a little too much stagnant water about for our
ideas. Lord Bacon in his essay on gardens says: “For fountains they are
a great beauty and refreshment; but pools mar all and make the garden
unwholesome, and full of flies and frogs.” If this is true in England,
how much more does it apply to the East. Such things as flower-beds are
unknown here. The plants grow anyhow, without order or arrangement, but
they are carefully tended, and indeed the whole place was beautifully
kept, and there seemed to be a large staff of gardeners and carpenters,
who play a conspicuous part in a Chinese garden.

You will be wanting to hear about the curiosity shops. I went to
see them, but found nothing but rubbish at outrageous prices. The
Chinese buy up everything good at any price. The dealers carry round
their best things to the native connoisseurs, and put off any trash
upon chance customers, swearing that everything is “oloo and culew,”
old and curious. I bought one small bottle for a few shillings as a
souvenir of Canton, but even if I had had heaps of money, there was no
temptation to spend it. I found an old friend at Canton in the person
of Mr. R., our consul, who was a most amiable cicerone. He has passed
the chief part of his life in China, and is a great authority upon
all matters connected with our relations with the Chinese. He lives
in a fascinatingly picturesque Yamên with quite an extensive garden—a
curiosity in itself,—we spent most of the day together and met for
dinner, either at my quarters or in his beautiful Aladdin’s palace,
every evening.

We returned to Hong-kong on May Day. I found that the P. and O. Co. had
put on an extra steamer, to start on Thursday the 4th, so I determined
not to wait for the mail, but to start for Shanghai without delay. This
prevents me from making a trip to Macao, which is par excellence _the_
“outing” from Hong-kong. But as the rainy season has begun in earnest,
perhaps I do not lose much—at any rate, I shall leave my Hong-kong
friends with the utmost regret; their kindness and hospitality have
known no bounds.




                               LETTER II


                                          SHANGHAI, _10th May 1865_.

The _Ganges_ did not leave Hong-kong until the 5th at noon, and we
anchored off the lightship in the estuary here on Monday night, but the
river is so difficult of navigation that we could not run into Shanghai
until the next morning. We had on the whole a fine passage and a very
quick one; C. and R., who were my companions at Canton, came on with
me, and the captain of the ship being a very well-read, gentlemanlike
man, sparing no pains to make every one comfortable, we had a very
cheery voyage. We had besides a young French artillery officer on his
way to revisit the scene of the campaign he had made in 1860, a few
nondescripts, two or three Chinese families, and a Parsee. Of course
the Chinamen pigged together separately, and his “odium theologicum”
forbade the Parsee to eat with us, which was a benefit to all parties,
for he was not a desirable companion by any means. The point of dirt
at which the Chinese passengers contrived to arrive during the voyage,
and the whiffs which came from their cabins when the doors were opened,
surpass belief; one of their great gentlemen here stood over the
French officer and myself as we were playing backgammon one day, and
manifested the utmost interest in the game, uttering exclamations at
every lucky throw, for the Chinese are gamblers to the backbone,—but
so noisome was he that we had to leave off playing and rush on deck
for fresh air. This being the condition of a “gentleman,” fancy how
pleasant the 110 coolie passengers under the forecastle were to sight
and smell. The Chinese ladies did not show at all, but they used to
send their dirty little brats up on deck to play, and very offensive
they contrived to make their small selves. Independently of their
dirt, Chinamen are a sorry spectacle on a journey—their heads require
shaving (a week’s crop looks even worse on the poll than on the chin),
and their tails get untidy and shaggy from being slept upon. Talking
of tails, it seems to be the “chic” at Shanghai to lengthen them
with white instead of black silk, which does not look near so well. I
noticed one man who, like little Cock Robin, had “tied up his tail with
a yard of blue bobbin.” (I found out afterwards that these white and
blue tails are signs of mourning.)

The voyage from Hong-kong to the north, being principally a coasting
affair, is not so dull and uneventful as more sea-going cruises. We
were constantly in sight of land—numberless headlands and islands
mark the course, but render it dangerous in bad weather. There are
plenty of ships to be seen, and all around the rocky islands the sea
is alive with fishing-smacks, their crews busily at work. We had no
mails on board, nor stern officers in charge, so the captain stopped
once and bought a quantity of fresh fish, delicious pomfret all alive
and kicking, paying the fishermen in kind with ship’s biscuit, which I
hope was as great a boon to them as their fish was to us. It is such a
fine sight in one of these narrow island passages, where one can almost
hear the sea dashing against the basaltic rocks on either side, to pass
a great sailing-ship close on our lee, and steam away from her at top
speed. Long before the estuary is reached, the sea, which in these
parts is of a deep aquamarine green, becomes clouded and discoloured.
This is owing to the immense volume of yellow dirty water which the
Yang-tse-kiang pours down. It is much the same colour as the Rhine, and
quite as foul-looking.

We began ascending the river soon after daybreak on Tuesday morning.
Its banks are low and flat. If it were not for a few trees there would
be nothing to relieve the eye from the monotony of the filthy water and
vast plain. Here and there a group of European houses and an ensign
or two mark a settlement. By eleven o’clock we had threaded our way
through the labyrinth of shipping and had reached Shanghai. I landed
at once and heard of an opportunity for Tientsing on Friday next, of
which I shall avail myself. By the way, I must tell you here, that so
far as I can learn, the communications between Tientsing and this place
are somewhat uncertain, so if any mail should not carry a letter to you
from me, do not pay me the compliment of being uneasy, but let no news
be good news.

My good quarters and the kind hospitality which I had met with at
Hong-kong seem to follow me on my travels. Here again I have been
received with the warmest welcome by Mr. D., a junior partner of C.’s,
and I am assured of the same at Tientsing. If all the travellers and
officers stationed in China, whom I have met, did not tell me that this
hospitality is the universal rule, I should be almost shy of accepting
so much kindness.

I have little enough to tell you about Shanghai. The city is ugly and
unattractive, the river dingy, and the country a dead level plain.
From the top of the club-house the view in every direction is utterly
unbroken, there is not a mound the height of dear old Salt Hill. Then,
commercially speaking, the town at the time of my visit was a blank.
The crisis of which I have spoken to you before has told here more
than elsewhere; to my eye the harbour seems full enough of shipping,
but I am told that there are not more than a third of the vessels that
used to be seen in former years. One of the causes which has brought
about this effect has been the speculation in land. When the rebellion
panic was upon the Chinese they were only too glad to flock into the
settlement for shelter; land rose in value, and was bought up in every
direction. Now that the revolt has been put down in this part of the
empire the natives have gone home to their own abodes, and of course
landed property has fallen, so that those speculators who did not sell
in time have their money hopelessly tied up. This, and the competition
system practised by the Europeans in contrast to the Chinese, who do
everything by combination, together with “hard times,” have brought
Shanghai very low. In short, morally as well as physically, it is, for
the present, flat.

I have had a good deal of conversation with Sir Harry Parkes, our
consul here. You will recollect him as famous for the pluck he showed
when he and Loch were taken prisoners in Peking; he is one of the great
authorities in China, and one of our ablest officers in the East. He
tells me that he considers the state of feeling between the Chinese and
Europeans in this part as on the whole satisfactory; that the natives
have begun to accept us and our trade as a necessity; to use his own
expression, it is a sort of husband and wife arrangement, with slight
incompatibilities of temper on both sides. Sir Harry Parkes is a man of
extraordinary determination and energy; his knowledge of the Chinese
language, customs, and character have given him an immense influence
over the natives. He is in every way a remarkable man, and great things
are expected of him, even by those who differ from him in opinion. It
is only fair to say, that there are many men of judgment and experience
out here who do not agree with him in holding that our trade with China
stands on a solid footing. They consider that the unwilling spirit with
which the natives first received us has by no means died out, and that
little by little, always by fair means and without violence,[4] for
they know our strength, the Chinese will endeavour to oust us from our
position, and return to their traditional conservatism. Perhaps this is
a pessimist creed, but still it is largely professed. At any rate the
Chinese will find it a hard matter to get rid of us, for no Government
will give up a matter of nearly six millions of revenue without a
struggle. For the present the British are welcome here. The Ta̔i Pi̔ngs
have been driven out of this part of China, and the rebellion has
dwindled down to comparative unimportance. The Chinese may be given
credit for so much of gratitude as looks upon past benefits as earnests
of future favours. We can still be useful, so we are still courted. It
remains to be seen whether, when we shall have played our part out, our
friends will try to cast us on one side.

When Sir Rutherford Alcock was in authority here he established a
municipal system which so long as Shanghai was prosperous answered very
well; of course, however, this being Chinese territory, subscription
to the authority of the municipality could not be compulsory, nor were
its enactments binding; but it suited the interests of the public to
accept it, and so it was supported by all the respectable part of the
community. Now the failures have told upon this as upon every other
institution, and unless better times come, it will fall to the ground
for want of funds and strength. It would be a great pity that this
should be the case, for there are many improvements needed here; above
all, gas-lighting. It is really to be hoped that things will take a
better turn soon, for they seem to be quite at their worst.

I must tell you of rather a funny offer of service that I received the
other day. R.’s Chinese boy came into me, and after playing nervously
with his tail for a little while, said, “My massa talkee my too muchee
fooloo; my thinkee more better my walkee Peking side long you.” I felt
half-inclined to engage the man for his simplicity, especially as he is
a good servant, though certainly not over bright.


                                                         _11th May._

I have just been to see my berth on board the _Yuen-tse-Fee_, a private
steamer. She is to stop at Chihfu. I have a cabin to myself, a piece of
good luck which I have enjoyed ever since Galle. In about a week hence
I expect to be at Peking. We sail at three in the morning to-morrow,
so I must go on board this evening. The _Yuen-tse-Fee_ is a very tiny
craft; nothing big can get up the Peiho, so if it blows at all shan’t
we just pitch about!

We are expecting the mail in hourly, but I hope to reach Peking before
it.




                               LETTER III


                                           Ship _Yuen-tse-Fee_,
                                             In the Gulf of Pechili,
                                               _15th May 1865_.

I daresay you will understand that I was rather melancholy at leaving
Shanghai. For the first time on all this long journey I was to set out
alone, and my hosts, although they were only recent acquaintances, had
been so kind to me that I felt as if I were leaving old friends. I took
leave of them at half-past eleven on Thursday night, 11th May, for as
the ship was to sail at three in the morning I had to sleep on board.
The harbour was dark and gloomy, and it was as much as I could do to
steer the six-oared gig by the dim light of the lanterns at the various
masts’ heads. In short, everything looked black and dismal, and I felt
very much like going back to school after the holidays; but it don’t
do to give in, and very soon after I got on board I was sleeping as
sound as the rats in my cabin and bed, and an army of mosquitoes which
had flocked on board, would let me. When I woke next morning we were
hard and fast aground in the estuary; a thick fog had come on in the
night, and the captain, missing his course, had run upon one of the
many treacherous shoals of the great river. The tide took us off again
at about eleven, and we went on without further accident.

I had one fellow-passenger, an officer of the purveyor’s department of
the army, on his road to Peking to seek employment under the Imperial
Government.

We had a strong head wind against us at first and very dirty weather
on Friday night. But in spite of wind and weather the little
_Yuen-tse-Fee_ justified her name, which a Chinaman interpreted for me
as “walkee all the same Fly,” and she kept up a good average of eight
knots and a half.

On Sunday morning we were off the Shantung promontory, a fine broad
headland with a rough, jagged outline. Notwithstanding the haziness
of the atmosphere we had a good view of the coast and of the Rocky
Islands which make this sea so dangerous. Passing Cape Cod, we left
to the westward the spot where the unlucky _Race Horse_ was lost, and
arrived at Chihfu at about five o’clock the same evening.

For a town which really has some little commercial importance, Chihfu
is certainly one of the most wretched dens I ever saw. It consists
of one long narrow street of untidy stone and brick houses, the
peculiarity of which is that they have no apparent front or back, so
that it is a mystery how the inhabitants get into or out of them. Two
or three European houses, the office of the Chinese officer of Customs,
a few godowns more or less empty, and here and there a hovel built
up of mud, seaweed, and bamboo matting, complete the town. Its only
ornaments are the flags of the consul and of the Chinese officer. It
is prettily situated at the foot of a range of low, but picturesquely
tossed-about hills, and the harbour with its fleet of junks and
ships looks very well from the town. The type of the inhabitants is
different from that of the southern Chinese, the Tartar features are
very prominent among them, and it seemed to me that they were stronger
and finer men. I certainly never saw a better boat’s crew than the
six men who rowed me on shore. Whether they would have the pluck to
“stay” against an English crew I cannot say, but their short spurt was
admirable.

In spite of its mean appearance there is sufficient trade carried
on at Chihfu to induce some seventy Europeans to reside there. It
is, moreover, likely to become popular as a sea-bathing resort and
sanatorium.

In former days it was a great port for the junks, and there are still
many of them running there; but the junk trade has been very much
knocked on the head by foreign ships and steamers, which the Chinese
see the advantage of chartering, although they continue to build their
own clumsy and unwieldy craft. The principal exports of Chihfu are peas
and bean cake, and a little manufactured silk; there is besides a small
import trade of shirtings and opium.


                                                         _17th May._

The best part of Monday was occupied in discharging our cargo, and we
did not get up steam until five o’clock. A strong wind had sprung
up from the north-west, and the harbour, which is very much exposed
on that side, gave signs and tokens which led us to expect a very
squally night outside; however, the wind dropped suddenly and gave
place to a thick fog, so we escaped being tossed about, at the expense
of a few alarms of running on to the rocks; which is not at all a
pleasant look-out, for even if our lives would not have been in actual
danger, there was the certainty that if we had struck a rock we should
have lost all our baggage, and passed a very uncomfortable night.
We took up another passenger at Chihfu, an interpreter, bound for
Tientsing—apparently a very popular gentleman, for the captain had to
turn out neck and crop a company of friends who had come to see him
off, and who were inclined to prolong that ceremony, which involves
much sherry and brandy drinking, until long past the hour fixed for our
departure.

On Tuesday morning we took up our pilot for the Peiho River. He
reported having come across a junk wrecked and without masts—all
hands had evidently been lost; and on fishing about the cabin with a
boat-hook in order to get the papers if possible, he found two or three
dead bodies in a fearful state of decomposition. It is supposed that
she must have been wrecked more than a month ago.

We are absolutely suffering from cold here. The thermometer is 55°
in my cabin—a serious contrast after the 90° and 95° I have been
accustomed to. My warmer clothes are in the hold, so I am forced to
wear a greatcoat. We expect to find it warmer at Tientsing.

It was late in the afternoon on Tuesday when we arrived at the entrance
of the River Peiho.

Here are the famous Taku Forts, the scene of the disaster of 1859,
when Sir Frederick Bruce went up to get the treaty ratified, and our
vessels were beaten back with the loss of two gunboats, which were
sunk. The two forts stand on either side of the mouth of the river, and
are occupied—that on the north by the French, and that on the south by
the English. A company of infantry suffices to garrison each. They are
about to be evacuated. A little to the east of the British Fort there
still lies one of our sunken gunboats; the Chinese have recovered and
appropriated her guns. I cannot conceive a more dismal lot than that
of garrisoning Taku. Besides the forts, which in themselves are dreary
enough, there are but a few Chinese mud huts and an hotel, principally
patronised by pilots; and the French are cut off even from these by the
Peiho, than which no more filthy little stream ever defiled a sea. Its
banks at the mouth are vast plains of mud, lying flush with the water,
and so bleak and sad-looking that one almost wonders that the very
wild-fowl should be induced to stop there. Mud forts, mud houses, mud
fields, and muddy river—everything is mud.

Higher up stream, although the banks are very flat and uninteresting,
there is no lack of verdure. The trees are insignificant, but there are
green fields and gardens cultivated with vegetables and fruit-trees.
The neighbourhood of Tientsing is said to be the garden of China, and
in the season a peach only fetches three cash, of which one thousand or
more, according to the exchange, go to make up the dollar.

We soon had an experience of the difficulty of navigating the Peiho,
which is no broader than the Thames at Eton, and as tortuous as Cuckoo
weir. Over and over again we were on the point of running aground, and
when on one occasion we did stick, it was a labour of great difficulty
to get off again. A boat’s crew had to be landed, and a line fastened
to a stout tree on the bank, by which means and by backing with all our
force we floated off, the sailors on shore improving the occasion by
stealing onions and vegetables from the gardens on the bank. Nor was
the shallowness of the water our only impediment, for we did not reach
Tientsing without several brushes and collisions with junks, in one of
which our screw was broken.

I found Tientsing in a great state of excitement. It was the last day
of the races, and to my great joy I found my colleague Saurin staying
at the Russian consulate. Of course we agreed to make the journey
to Peking together, and the Russian consul, by way of making things
pleasant, most kindly volunteered to put me up.

The races really showed some very good sport. Tientsing cannot boast
of such a meeting as those of Hong-kong and Shanghai, where English
thoroughbreds are run, and for which such horses as “Buckstone,” since
dead, and “Sir William” are imported; the horses are but Mongol ponies,
the _bona fide_ hacks of their owners and riders, yet they accomplished
the three-mile race in seven minutes and forty seconds. They are very
plucky, strong little beasts, and run till they drop. The races were
an additional stroke of luck for me, for I was able at the end of the
day to buy a capital pony for fifty dollars. The Chinese crowd showed
the greatest possible interest in all the proceedings, and the course
had to be kept _vi et flagellis_, which latter were not spared by
the native police. Perhaps they feared spoiling the Chinaman, who is
proverbially a child.

                                                         _19th May._

I must own that I was agreeably disappointed in Tientsing. So many
travellers have abused it, and inveighed against its filth and its
beggarly crowd, that I expected to be shocked in one or other of my
senses at every step. It certainly is very dirty, but not much more so
than other Chinese towns, or, for that matter, than many in Europe;
and who that has travelled in the sunny South has not seen rags and
tatters, vermin, foul diseases, and deformities paraded as stimulants
to charity? There is one drawback to Tientsing which is really
insufferable. All the wells are salt, and the inhabitants are obliged
to drink the loathsome water of the river. In order to cleanse it, it
is first placed in large jars that the impurities may settle at the
bottom, and then filtered. But nothing can purge it so as to convince
one that the disgusting matter, which forces itself upon one as one
sails up the stream, has been entirely got rid of.

We went to see some of the curiosity shops. There was a great deal
of porcelain to which the dealers and local connoisseurs assigned
wonderful dates and fine titles, but nothing that would be cared for
in England; and the prices were simply outrageous, for the merchants
will pay any mad sum that is asked by the rascally dealers. There were
some very fine specimens of cloisonné enamel, but if the sums demanded
for the porcelain were high, the enamels were ten times dearer. I saw a
quantity of Chinese picture-books; they were not fit to buy, although
some had great merit for delicacy of drawing. They each represented
a story, generally the “Harlot’s Progress,” from a Chinese point of
view, very coarse, and without Hogarth’s grim retribution at the end.
Of course, where such drawings are openly exposed for sale there is
no great strictness of morals, and Tientsing is famous, or rather
infamous, even in China, for every bestial and degrading vice.

The European settlement of Tientsing is about two miles distant from
the Chinese city. There are some fairly good houses built by the side
of a broad bund or quay, and they command fabulous rents. The same
municipal system which obtains at Shanghai has been established here;
and, on the whole, the community shows signs of prosperity, although
the port has been a disappointment to those who expected that it would
reach an importance such as to crush Shanghai and its other rivals, or,
at all events, to divert a considerable portion of their trade. For the
first year or two after its establishment the business done was very
great, and large fortunes were made; one merchant, for example, is just
retiring with a fortune of £5000 a year, accumulated since 1861. But
the Chinese, cunning in trade, very soon found out that it answered
their purpose better to charter steamers, and have consignments made
to themselves directly, than to buy from the agents of the great
houses; consequently, as the trade is entirely import, the Europeans
are finding less and less to do. The _Yuen-tse-Fee_, although she hails
from Glasgow, and is nominally owned by Messrs. Trautmann and Co., a
German firm, is in reality chiefly, if not entirely, the property of a
dirty little Chinese comprador, whom I saw, and to whom the whole of
her cargo was consigned.




                               LETTER IV


                                            PEKING, _23rd May 1865_.

We left Tientsing early on Friday morning the 19th, by which means we
had the tide in our favour, and were able to get quicker clear of the
hideous sights and smells of the river as it runs through the town. We
each had a boat; Saurin’s was the drawing-room, mine the dining-room,
and his servant occupied the third as kitchen. They were capital roomy
boats, covered in with hoods of bamboo and rattan matting, and with a
sort of dresser in each upon which we spread our beds. Each had a crew
of three men, and in Saurin’s, which was the biggest, there was a boy
besides. They were very cheery, hard-working fellows, and indeed they
had no sinecure, for although the wind was ostensibly in our favour,
still the river winds round such sharp twists and elbows that in every
other reach it was dead against us, and we had to proceed laboriously
by dint of towing and punting. But the harder they worked the better
humoured the crew seemed to be, and the boy especially distinguished
himself by zeal equalling that of an unpaid attaché. The shoals are
innumerable, and we were constantly crossing the river backwards and
forwards, along a course marked out by twigs stuck in the mud. There
is no scenery to enjoy, nothing but interminable fields of millet, and
here and there a little wood. There is not a hillock to be seen, and
we were lucky in being as short a time as possible over what must be
a very dull journey. We reached Tungchou at three o’clock on Sunday
afternoon. Here we found our horses, with an escort which had been sent
down with them to meet us.

Tungchou was very busy. A fleet of junks had come in with grain, and
the quay was alive with crowds of coolies, many of them as naked as
they were born, discharging cargo, sifting corn, and carrying it into
granaries. Our appearance produced some astonishment, for “foreign
devils” are hardly yet quite familiar objects so far north. Tungchou
was the place where the unfortunate English prisoners were taken
in 1860, and where Wade and Crealock, carrying a flag of truce and
demanding to parley with the commander, were fired upon and narrowly
escaped with their lives. It is fortified, as all the northern cities
are, but its walls would only be a security against native warriors.
The roads in this part of the world are miracles of badness, and it
is not difficult to conceive the tortures that the English prisoners
must have suffered when they were conveyed along them in native carts
without springs, and having their hands and heels tied together behind
them with cords tightened by water. Every inch of the road to Peking
is famous from the events of that time. Some way outside Tungchou we
rode over the bridge of Palikao,[5] where the Chinese crossed their
spears with the French bayonets, and held their own for half an hour.
From this bridge the Général de Montauban takes his title. Its kylins
and stone flags still bear traces of shot and shell. Riding through
dust over one’s pony’s hocks, and raising a cloud at every step, is
very dry work, and I was glad when we struck off the main road, and,
coming upon a tea-house in a shady nook, stopped to rest and refresh.
The people received us with the utmost _bonhomie_ and civility, and
brought us delicious tea, without milk or sugar, in bowls, hard-boiled
eggs, and a sort of roll-twist fried instead of baked. We soon had
ten or twelve yellow gentlemen round us, eagerly asking all sorts of
questions about ourselves, our ages, and belongings. Murray talks
Chinese fluently, and Saurin has also some knowledge of it, so we got
on capitally. Our ages always puzzle Chinamen. They neither wear beard
nor moustache until they have reached the age of forty, so they think
that all Europeans who wear such appendages must have passed that age.
A single eye-glass is, however, the possession which commands the most
astonishment. They are familiar with spectacles and double eye-glasses,
for they themselves wear them of portentous size, and mounted in thick
brass or tortoise-shell rims. But a single glass is indeed a marvel,
and provokes much laughter. Though the peculiarities of foreigners
amuse the Chinese as much as theirs do us, it is singular how their
natural courtesy prevents their showing it in the offensive manner
that every Englishman has experienced in some foreign countries. I
had expected to find the country on this side of Peking flat, ugly,
and barren. Flat it certainly is, but there are plenty of trees and
rich fields, and it cannot be called ugly. The villages and graves
argue an immense population. It is not till one is under the very
walls of the town that one sees Peking. The walls are high, ruinous,
battlemented, and picturesque, of a fine deep gray colour. They are
capped at intervals by towers of fantastic Chinese architecture, and,
with their lofty gates, make a strange and striking picture. As a means
of defence against modern artillery the walls of Peking are probably
absurd. However, before I tell you anything about Peking I had better
know something myself. At present I only know that I was very hot, very
tired, and as dusty as the oldest press in the Record office, when I
rode into the court of Her Majesty’s Legation, where I received the
warmest welcome from Wade, the _chargé d’affaires_.

We have received bad Chinese news. Sangkolinsin, the Mongol chief
who commanded at the Peiho in 1859, and was temporarily disgraced for
not being able to beat off the allies in 1860, has been killed by
the rebels in the province of Shantung, some 400 miles hence. He was
reputed a brave soldier and an honest man. Although the Chinese affect
to disregard the importance of the intelligence, there is no doubt that
it is very serious. The fire is burning everywhere, and they cannot or
will not take the proper means to put it out.

  _Note._—I should wish to add here one word of admiration and respect
  for the memory of Sir Thomas Wade, my first chief in China. He had
  been Lord Clyde’s adjutant, but gave up the army for diplomacy. A
  great student and master of many languages, his Chinese scholarship
  won the admiration even of the learned mandarins with whom he had
  to deal. During the two Chinese Wars he distinguished himself, not
  only by his great abilities as a negotiator, but also by the most
  dauntless courage. Generous and self-sacrificing to a fault, he was
  one of the greatest gentlemen I ever met.—1900.




                                LETTER V


                                            PEKING, _1st June 1865_.

When Wade was in England last year Lord Stanley said to him: “Peking’s
a gigantic failure, isn’t it? not a two-storied house in the whole
place, eh?” To Lord Stanley’s practical eye, no doubt, it might be a
failure, but an artist would find much to admire and put on paper.

Pe-king, which means the northern capital, as Nan-king means the
southern, consists of two cities, the Chinese and the Tartar, and
within this latter, again, is the Imperial city, which contains the
palace and precincts of the court. Both cities are surrounded by walls
of dark-gray brick; those of the Tartar city are fifty feet high, forty
feet wide at the top, and about sixty feet below; the walls of the
Chinese city are less important, being only thirty feet high. These
walls have battlements and loop-holes for guns. That of the Chinese
city has fallen into decay, but that of the Tartar is more carefully
repaired. At intervals are lofty watch-towers standing out against
the sky. High towers stand also above the gates, which are closed at
sunset, after which time ingress and egress are forbidden.

The streets are broad roads, in most cases unpaved, and in all uncared
for. They are flanked on each side by shops and low houses, but their
breadth is lessened by the countless stalls and stands of hucksters of
all sorts that take them up often in quadruple rows. In this region of
dust and dirt the streets are equally filthy summer and winter. Both in
the Chinese and Tartar cities there are large open spaces and buildings
standing in their own grounds, covering areas of many acres. In the
former city these are the temples of the Buddhist and Taoist religions,
in the latter they are the palaces of the Emperor and persons of
distinction. These grounds, planted as they are with lofty trees, give
a great beauty to the town, and often in the heart of either city
there are spots which are pictures of village life. Standing among
these groves of trees the brilliant colours and fantastic designs
of the Chinese architecture have a wonderfully pleasing effect. The
wall of the imperial palace, covered with highly glazed yellow tiles,
with towers at the corners shining like gold in the sun, is especially
striking. Whichever way one turns there is something grotesque and
barbarous to be seen, and the signs of decay and rot do not detract
from the picture. In fact Peking is like a vast curiosity shop, with
all the dust and dirt which are among the conditions of bric-à-brac. It
would be pleasant-looking and admiring were it not for the difficulties
of riding through the city owing to the enormous crowds which block
the way—carts, porters, camels, chairs, pedlars, beggars, lamas,
muleteers, horse-copers from Mongolia, archers on horseback, mandarins
with their suites, small-footed women, great ladies in carts, closely
veiled to keep off the gaze of the profane vulgar. In short, every
variety of yellow and brown humanity, not to speak of dogs and pigs,
get into one’s path at every moment, and raise clouds of dust, which
fill eyes, ears, hair, mouth, and nose, and temporarily destroy every
sense save that of touch. It is as if the dust of all the Derby days
since the institution of that race (by the bye I wonder what horse
has won it this year) had been borne by the winds to find a permanent
home here. A dust-storm in the north of China is a natural phenomenon.
Clouds draw over the sky as if a thunderstorm was going to burst. In
my inexperience the first time I saw this I expected rain to fall, but
instead of rain there came a fine dust penetrating everything and not
to be shut out by door or window. This nuisance, which comes to us from
the great Mongolian deserts, besides hurting the eyes as common dust
by filling them with extraneous matter, has chemical properties which
produce a smarting and burning pain. Dust-storms are sometimes so thick
that men lose their way as in a London fog. It is indeed “a darkness
that may be felt.”

The distance round the walls of Peking is something like twenty-three
miles, of which fifteen must be given to the Tartar city, which is
square in shape and lies to the north of the oblong Chinese city.
Tradition, and the mystery which for so many years hung over the
capital, have assigned to it an exaggerated population. The Chinese
affected to believe it contained two million souls, and that no
capital in the world could compete with it. This may have been the case
in the time of the Emperor Chien-Lung, who reigned from 1736 to 1795
a.d. But nowadays, judging from the enormous empty spaces, and from
the gardens and courtyards, which no gentleman’s residence is without,
and even allowing for the dense crowding of some quarters, it probably
does not reach a million. It is impossible to form any precise estimate
of the numbers of the “Doors and Mouths.” Doctors disagree, and I
have heard the people of Peking reckoned at various figures, from six
hundred thousand to a million and a half. Until Peking was opened to
Europeans the southern Chinese used to stick at no lie about it. For
instance, if they were told of some great scientific invention such as
railways, the electric telegraph, or the like, they would say at once
with the utmost coolness, “Have seen! Have seen! Have got plenty Peking
side!” And in like manner they lied about its size and population.
The country round about Peking seems to be very thickly peopled. I
was prepared to find it so, but nevertheless I had hardly expected
to see so many human beings and their traces, which are often very
unpleasant, especially in China.

Our Legation is situated in the southern part of the Tartar city.
We occupy a most picturesque palace called the Liang Kung Fu, or
Palace of the Duke of Liang, which, like all Chinese buildings of
importance, covers an immense space of ground. There are courtyards
upon courtyards, huge empty buildings with red pillars, used as covered
courts, state approaches guarded by two great marble lions, and a
number of houses with only a ground floor, each of us inhabiting one
to himself. When the Legation first came to live here the whole place
was put into repair, and redecorated in the Chinese fashion with fluted
roofs of many colours, carved woodwork, kylins of stone and pottery,
and all the thousand and one fancies with which the Chinese cover their
buildings. Unfortunately the repairs were badly executed, and nothing
further has been done to keep matters straight, so the Legation, which
ought to be as pretty as possible, is really a disgrace to us. The
gardens are a wilderness, the paving of the courts is broken, the
walls are tumbling down, and the beautiful place is going to rack
and ruin. In this climate of extreme heat and cold a stitch in time
saves ninety-nine.[6] Fancy a residence in the heart of a great and
populous city where foxes, scorpions, polecats, weasels, magpies, and
other creatures that one expects to find in the wild country, abound.
That will give you an idea of how space is wasted in Peking. The great
drawback to our palace is its situation. We have more than an hour’s
ride before we can escape from the city and its stinks, to breathe a
breath of fresh air. It requires an immense exercise of energy to face
an hour’s ride through the streets of Peking in order to get a canter
in the open; and I am often half tempted to sell my pony and dismiss
my groom, but this would be tantamount to shutting myself up for good
in the Legation, for walking at Peking is even more disagreeable than
riding.

His Imperial Highness the Prince of Kung, President of the Council,
Chief of the Board of Foreign Affairs, Prime Minister, and what not
besides, sent his card yesterday to announce to Wade that he would pay
him an official visit. I enclose you his visiting card.

The Prince of Kung is the brother of the late Emperor, and in 1860 was
entrusted by him with the negotiations with Lord Elgin and Baron Gros.
During the minority of the present Emperor, who is about twelve years
old, the two Empresses-dowager[7] are nominally regents; but the Prince
has the care of the Emperor’s education, and is virtually the regent of
the empire. He was very nearly meeting with the fate of Humpty-Dumpty
a little while back, for he was accused of selling places, abuse of
patronage, and insolence in the Presence. His accuser was supposed to
have been instigated by one of the Empresses who is hostile to him,
and to have been made cat’s-paw of by a court intrigue. However that
may be, the Empresses issued an edict in the style of the chorus in
the _Agamemnon_ which shows how prosperity leads to insolence, and
insolence to retribution, and the Prince was deprived of all his
offices and glories. For a few days he remained in disgrace, but his
brothers came to the rescue, a Grand Council was held, and the Prince
was reinstated in the office of Foreign Affairs in consideration of
his great services. This, however, did not look well for the Prince,
as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs carries with it such unpopularity
that its possession alone might be esteemed a doubtful pleasure; and it
was not until his former honours were one by one restored to him that
he could be said to be reinstated in court favour. The charges against
him were declared unfounded, and it was agreed that the question of
insolence was a family matter, and should not interfere with public
affairs. Meanwhile his accuser goes about at large, but about as free
as a mouse that a cat lets slip out of her claws for a second or two. I
would not be in his skin for something.

A little before the hour fixed for the Prince’s visit, Hêng-Chi and
Tung, two of the Board of Foreign Affairs, arrived to meet him.
Hêng-Chi is the man whose name became known in Europe during the war in
1860, and during Parke’s and Loch’s captivity. He is a little thin old
man very like Mr. Meadows, the actor at the Princesses’ Theatre, and a
great dandy. He wore a pearl gray silk dress turned up with blue. His
fan-case, chopstick-case, and other knick-knacks which he wears at
his girdle, are richly embroidered, and mounted with seed pearls and a
peculiar clouded pink coral which the Chinese call baby-face coral. His
snuff-bottle is of the finest Fei Tsui, or emerald green jade, which is
worth its weight in diamonds here, but of all his possessions none is
in his eyes more charming than a large silver Geneva turnip watch which
he displays with much pride. In his boot, which is of black satin, he
carries his pipe with its tiny silver bowl, and a gorgeous Fei Tsui
mouthpiece, together with sweetmeats, pills, and other trifles. His
white cap with the red tassel of office hanging all round it, has a
pink coral button (Hêng-Chi is a mandarin of the first button), and the
peacock’s feather which falls from it is mounted in more Fei Tsui. To
crown all, he wears a pair of spectacles as big as saucers, with broad
silver rims. Never was a little old man so pleased with himself; his
little airs and graces and _petit-maître_ ways are very funny. Tung is
a jolly, fat, old mandarin and a great contrast to Hêng-Chi. He is a
great man of letters, and has translated Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life”
into Chinese verse. That is, Wade gave him a literal version of the
English, and he made a poem of it, which is said to have great merit.

In due course of time the Prince arrived in his chair attended by a
number of running footmen, and an escort mounted on ponies. Wade and
I received him, and I was presented to him as Mi-ta-jên, the official
name by which my arrival was announced to the Chinese Foreign Office—we
are all obliged to have monosyllabic names for our intercourse with the
Chinese. Sir F. Bruce was Pu-ta-jên (the Chinese cannot pronounce an
R, so they rendered his name as Pu-lu-su), Wade is Wei-ta-jên. Ta-jên,
literally “great man,” is a title denoting official rank, and is that
which is borne by the mandarins.

The Prince is a young man about 28 years of age, judging by
appearances. He is pockmarked, as indeed is almost every Chinaman
I have seen. He is very shortsighted, and has the same trick of
screwing up his eyes that I have, and I could not help thinking what
a caricature we should have made as we sat opposite each other making
faces. As soon as the Prince had taken his seat he drew his pipe out of
his boot, and one of his own attendants brought him fire, serving him
kneeling on one knee. Tea was brought as a matter of course, and then
the conversation began. The great man had a short, flippant manner,
and this it was that so nearly brought him to grief. He was immensely
amused by an English bell-pull, and a mother-of-pearl paper-knife which
lay on the table. My single eyeglass was a real boon to the Prince.
Whenever he was getting the worst of an argument, and was at a loss
for an answer, he would stop short, throw up his hands in amazement,
and pointing at me cry out, “A single eyeglass! marvellous!” By thus
creating a diversion at my expense he gave himself time to consider
his reply. He seemed very friendly with Wade, and full of jokes and
fun—of course I could not understand a word of what was said, but I
took refuge behind a big cigar, and looked on vastly amused by our
guest’s ways. I thought I detected a cruel, cunning look behind all his
affectation of good-humour.

When the Prince had gone, Hêng-Chi, who, besides being part-Minister
for Foreign Affairs, is also a general officer, and many other things,
for pluralism is the order of the day, invited us to a review and
breakfast afterwards on the 3rd of June, at six in the morning.

It may be a calumny, but I strongly suspect Hêng-Chi of dyeing his tail.

  _Note._—The senior Empress-dowager, who had been the first wife
  of the Emperor Hsien Fêng, appears to have been more or less a
  cypher. The real power was wielded by the Empress-mother Tsu Hsi.
  This remarkable lady was according to some accounts a slave girl,
  according to others the daughter of a member of the imperial family.
  Nor are the two statements incompatible in a country where adoption
  of children holds good. The Emperor wishing to raise a girl in his
  harem to the highest position would only need to command one of his
  relations to adopt her, and she would at once be an imperial princess
  as much as if she had been born in the purple, or rather in the
  yellow.

  The senior Empress-dowager, or Eastern Empress as she was called,
  died on 18th April 1881, and the power was then absolutely and solely
  in the hands of the Empress-mother. The latter’s son, the Emperor
  Tung Chi, had died without issue in 1875, and his cousin, a child of
  four, was raised to the Lung Wei or Dragon’s throne in his stead. The
  regency remained as before with the two Dowager-empresses.

  Dr. Wells Williams, in his _Middle Kingdom_, a perfect encyclopædia
  on all Chinese matters, says, “The Empress-dowager is the most
  important subject within the palace, and His Majesty does homage
  at frequent intervals, by making the highest ceremony of nine
  prostrations before her. When the widow of Kia King reached the age
  of sixty in 1836 many honours were conferred by the Emperor. An
  extract from the ordinance issued on this festival will exhibit the
  regard paid her by the Sovereign:—

  “Our extensive dominions have enjoyed the utmost prosperity under
  the shelter of a glorious and enduring state of felicity—our
  exalted race has become most illustrious under the protection of
  that honoured relative to whom the whole court looks up. To her
  happiness, already unalloyed, the highest degree of felicity has
  been super-added, causing joy and gladness to every inmate of the
  Six Palaces. The grand ceremonies of the occasion shall exceed in
  splendour the utmost requirements of the ancients in regard to the
  human relations, calling forth the gratulation of the whole Empire.
  It is indispensable that the observances of the occasion should be
  of an exceedingly unusual nature, in order that our reverence for
  our august parent and care of her may both be equally and gloriously
  displayed.... In the first month of the present winter occurs the
  sixtieth anniversary of Her Majesty’s sacred natal day. At the
  opening of the happy period the sun and the moon shed their united
  genial influences on it. When commencing anew the revolution of the
  sexagenary cycle the honour thereof adds increase to her felicity.
  Looking upward and beholding her glory, we repeat our gratulations,
  and announce the event to heaven, to earth, to our ancestors, and
  to the patron-gods of the empire. On the nineteenth day of the
  tenth moon, in the fifteenth year of Tao Kwang, we will conduct
  the princes, the nobles, and all the high officers, both civil
  and military, into the presence of the great Empress, benign and
  dignified, universally placid, thoroughly virtuous, tranquil, and
  self-collected, in favours unbounded; and we will then present our
  congratulations on the glad occasion, the anniversary of her natal
  day. The occasion yields a happiness equal to what is enjoyed by
  goddesses in heaven, and while announcing it to the gods and to our
  people, we will tender to her blessings unbounded.”—_Middle Kingdom_,
  vol. i. p. 410.

  Rations to soldiers, honours, promotions, pardons, etc., were
  ordered in honour of the day—“Every perfectly filial son or obedient
  grandson, every upright husband or chaste wife, upon proofs being
  brought forward, shall have a monument erected with an inscription
  in his or her honour.” Soldiers who had reached the age of ninety
  or one hundred received money to erect an honorary portal, and
  tombs, temples, and bridges were ordered to be repaired; but, as Dr.
  Williams slily remarks, “how many of these exceedingly great and
  special favours were actually carried into effect cannot be stated.”

  This edict of the Emperor Tao Kwang is of high interest at this
  moment (1900), as illustrating the position of the present
  Dowager-empress Tsu Hsi, which has seemed so incomprehensible to us
  Westerns. An ambitious woman, with the master mind of an Elizabeth or
  a Catherine, would, it is easy to perceive, find opportunities which
  she has certainly turned to the best, or worst, advantage.


                                                         _4th June._

I wished my friend General Hêng-Chi with all his soldiers a long way
off when my boy came to pull me out of bed at daybreak yesterday
morning. We had had a great storm the night before, so the dust was
laid, but _en revanche_ the streets were a sea of mud, and many of
them regular rivers, and we had to flounder on, our horses putting
their feet in holes at every step. It took us nearly an hour and a
half of this work to get to the parade ground on the Anting plain.
The ground was kept by means of sticks and red string, with a soldier
at each stick. We were shown straight to a small blue tent, where the
general received us with much ceremony. When we had drunk tea the three
generals, the Russian Embassy, and ourselves left the tent and took
up our place on a small mound. Our appearance was the signal for the
military music to strike up. The band was composed of about twelve
Chinamen, and their instruments were large sea shells or conches, out
of which they produced the most dismal and distressing and continuous
howl that it ever was my bad luck to listen to. I hardly know what to
compare it to. You have heard the noise in a shell—it was like that,
but magnified a million times. As soon as we had taken our position,
a soldier in front of us waved a huge flag, and the business of the
day began. There were about two thousand soldiers, and they were to
exercise, not with the swords, and bows, and shields of “the Braves,”
but according to our drill book, which Wade has translated for them,
and with rifles and guns given them by the Russians. They went through
their evolutions respectably, so said Wade, who is an old soldier and a
first-rate drill; but I own that when they advanced close up to us and
delivered a volley bang in our faces, I felt that it was not unlikely
that, as at our Volunteer reviews, a stray ramrod might have been left
in a rifle. However, no accident occurred, barring the bursting of the
powder box of one of the big guns, by which four men were severely
scorched and five put _hors de combat_, for the lieutenant in charge
of the gun was then and there collared and summarily bambooed, _coram
populo_, for carelessness in giving the word to fire before the powder
box was closed. Such is discipline!

The sun was beginning to be very powerful, so it was a great relief
when the review was declared to be over, and it was announced that each
of the men was to receive three halfpence for his good conduct that day
in the field. Upon the hearing of this joyful intelligence, the army to
a man went down on one knee, in token of gratitude, though they knew
perfectly well that they never would see the money. Poor devils!

Breakfast was served in a temple hard by. When we sat down Hêng-Chi was
not to be found. It turned out that, with a thoughtfulness which would
have done credit to many a more civilised host, he had gone to see that
the men of our and the Russian escorts were well cared for.

A Chinese meal exactly reverses the order of the things which is
practised in Europe. First came cups of tea, and when these were all
cleared away two tiny saucers were placed before each person. Then the
dessert and sweets were put upon the table; oranges, apples, candied
walnuts, sweets of all kinds, hemp seed done up with flour and sugar,
apricot kernels preserved in oil and dried, and other delicacies. Next
came the savoury meats—of these the most remarkable were sea-slugs,
like turtle-soup in taste, bamboo sprouts, sharks’ fins, and deers’
sinews—all gelatinous dishes are the most highly prized; the famous
bird’s-nest soup is just like isinglass not quite boiled down. Finally
came a sort of soup of rice. I found it very difficult at first to
eat with chopsticks. The manner of eating is to dip your chopsticks
into any one of the bowls, and transfer a morsel to your own saucers,
which are not changed, neither are the chopsticks wiped, during the
whole proceeding. If you wish to pay a person a compliment, you select
a tit-bit with your own chopsticks and put it on your neighbour’s
plate, and he does the same in return. This gives the entertainment
the appearance of an indecorous scramble, for one is continually
leaning across two or three people to repay some civility. The dishes
are very rich, and I should think unwholesome in the extreme. There
were upwards of sixty different eatables put upon the table, and I
must own that although my chopsticks went into nearly every little
bowl, there was not one which did not please my taste. Native wine was
served to us in little cups of the size of our liqueur glasses; it
had rather a pleasant taste, and was very dry. As soon as breakfast
was over the Chinese gentlemen produced out of their boots—which seem
an inexhaustible receptacle for everything, from tobacco to state
papers—small pieces of paper, with which they wiped their mouths and
ivory chopsticks, and then came a piece of Chinese politeness which
is very offensive to Europeans; for it is good manners here, out of
compliment to the host, and in token of having eaten well and been
satisfied, to produce the longest and loudest eructations, and Hêng-Chi
and the two generals left nothing to be desired in that respect, making
a great display of good breeding. Tea and conversation in the court of
the temple brought my first Chinese entertainment to a close. I can’t
tell you how strange it seemed to me to begin with dessert and end
with soup!




                               LETTER VI


                                           PEKING, _23rd June 1865_.

Since I wrote to you last I have neither seen nor done anything worth
recording. The thermometer has been standing at from 95° to 107° in our
courtyard, so there is not much temptation to go sight-seeing, or even
to move outside the Legation; inside, the days are as like as twins.
However, there is a bag going to-day, so I must try and patch up a
letter.

We are thinking of making a move to the hills next Monday; we have
almost decided on a temple called Pi Yün Ssŭ, about 12½ miles from
this. I shall be very glad to go, for the town is becoming abominably
stuffy and hot, and the dust is something beyond belief. We shall
probably stay six weeks or two months, coming into Peking on mail days.
We are forced to take our whole establishment with us, so it is not
worth while going for a shorter time.

By the bye my establishment has been increased by a teacher; not as
in Europe, a master who is paid so much to come for an hour a day,
but a man who regularly enters my service, and is at my beck and
call whenever I want him. I have taken a header into Chinese, and am
floundering about in a sea of difficulties. One great disadvantage that
one labours under is that the native teachers, and there are no others,
of course don’t speak a word of any language but their own. At first,
therefore, Ku, that’s my man’s name, and I used to sit and look at one
another in a hopeless state of unintelligibility, until either he got
bored, made signs of having a stomach-ache, and took his leave, or I
could stand him no longer and dismissed him. However, it is surprising
how quick a man may pick up, not the language of a strange country, but
a jargon that will pass current, if he is dependent upon it for the
everyday necessaries of life. Teachers, servants, cooks, and grooms,
all must receive their orders in Chinese; shopping and bargain-driving
increase one’s stock of words; so one way or another Ku and I get on
pretty tolerably. He will accompany me to the hills, and as I mean
to get through much work there, I hope that by the time you get this
letter I shall be well started up the stream.

A pleasanter addition to my personnel, and a sweeter, for he does not
eat garlic nor smoke opium, is a small Manilla poodle, Nou-nou by name,
whom I have inherited. He has consoled the exile of a succession of
diplomatists at Peking, and has finally fallen into my hands. He is
the jolliest little dog, and has the most companionable ways. Although
only a shade bigger than your Tiny, he is as plucky as Tom Sayers, and
is the terror of strange dogs and Chinamen; indeed his valour being
much too great for his body often brings him to trouble. For many years
he would fly at any dog that he saw in any part of the Legation, and
bid him get out of his majesty’s way; but now he is no longer in his
_première jeunesse_, having received much hard usage from dogs over
whom as puppies he had been used to exercise a terror, especially from
one big black retriever, who won’t stand any nonsense. Nou-nou has
taken possession of our courtyard, where by tacit consent the other
dogs seem to respect his authority. If one of them so much as shows his
nose there, Nou-nou pricks his ears, his tail curls as crisply as of
old, and he flies at the intruder, who quickly disappears. Here Nou-nou
leads a happy life; every one has a kind word for him, and his only
grievance is, that on Mondays and Thursdays he is carried off by a big
Chinaman, from his holy looks like a pre-Raphaelite picture, known as
“the apostle,” and summarily washed.

We have better news from Shantung. The Imperialist troops have driven
back the rebels. There is now no danger of this province being invaded,
which might have been a serious thing for us, and certainly would have
resulted in the sacking of Tientsing. It is really provoking, after all
the pains that have been taken to induce this wretched Government to
save itself, which it could easily do by the most ordinary exertion,
to see half a dozen archers outside the gates making such practice
at a target twenty yards off as any girl of eighteen, member of a
toxophilite club at home, would be ashamed of. Yet this is the stuff
which the Chinese Government are content to accept as the means of
putting down the insurrection. The troops that they are drilling in
the European fashion are merely a sop to foreign representatives,
and not the evidence of earnest wishes to improve. Self-help and
self-improvement seem repugnant to the nature of this belly-patting
Buddhist nation. They are willing enough to get foreign officers,
especially Englishmen, in whom the example of Colonel Gordon has
given them unbounded confidence, to drill and lead their troops; but
they will do nothing for themselves; and there is a class of superior
officers (such as Li, the governor of the province in which Shanghai
is situated) who, having acquired a certain reputation for valour and
military ability among their own people, consider it beneath their
dignity to serve under foreign officers. The obstacles which such men
throw in the way of the latter, together with the uncertainty of being
able to obtain supplies and pay for the troops under their command,
render their position intolerable, as Colonel Gordon found on more
than one occasion. The English officers who have been lent to instruct
the Imperialists have found their way in many instances anything but
smooth, and have had great difficulty in carrying out the measures
which they deemed necessary. Under these circumstances, it is not to
be wondered at that the rebels, whose ranks are swelled by the local
banditti, secret societies, and Imperialist soldiers mutinous for want
of pay, should still show a head.

With this internal difficulty pressing them sorely, the Chinese
continue persistently to break their treaty engagements with the Great
Powers, any of which, if it were so minded, has a handle for blowing up
the whole concern. Wên-Hsiang, who is the chief of the Board of Foreign
Affairs [which he virtually directs, although the Prince of Kung is
nominally at its head], and who is the most advanced and patriotic man
in the Government, is fully conscious of the danger of the situation;
but unfortunately he is a timid man, and it is one thing to convince
a Chinaman, and another to induce him to act upon his conviction. So
the treaties continue to be broken, and the existence of the present
dynasty in China hangs upon the patience of foreign governments, who
have too great a stake in the country to sink the ship so long as there
is a hope of her floating.

It is only fair to say, on the other hand, that the residence of
foreign representatives at Peking during the last four years has
certainly been productive of some good. As an evidence of this, Dr.
Martin, an American missionary, has produced, at the expense of the
Board of Foreign Affairs and with the co-operation of a commission
specially appointed by the Prince of Kung, a translation into the
Chinese language of Wheaton’s _International Law_. To this Tung-ta-jên,
whom I mentioned in my last letter to you as the translator of
Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life,” has added a preface. This preface, coming
as it does from the vice-president of the College of Historians, one of
the chiefs of the lettered class in China, adds great authority to the
work, the publication of which is certainly an event of importance in
the history of the country.




                               LETTER VII


                                        PI YÜN SSŬ, _7th July 1865_.

You will see by the date of this that we have beaten a retreat from
the dust, heat, and filth of the city, and that our “villegiatura” has
begun. Indeed, Peking was becoming insupportable. The thermometer when
we left was standing at 108° in the shade, the highest degree which it
has reached for these three years, and I was heartily glad to turn my
back upon the Legation gates.

The plain between these hills and the town is very beautiful. It is
thickly studded with farmsteads, knolls of trees, and tombs, which are
always the prettiest spots in China, for as a balance against the dirt
and squalor in which they pass their lives, the Chinese choose the most
romantic and delightful places for their final habitations. The soil is
wonderfully fertile, and yields two crops in the year, so that usually
the plain bears every appearance of prosperity; but this year, owing
to the excessive heat and drought, the first crop has failed, and the
fields are parched and burnt up. In vain the Emperor prays for rain;
it only comes in rare and scanty showers, and the fierce sun bakes
the ground harder than ever. The country folk are in great distress,
and food is at famine prices. Yet they seem happy and contented, and
when we asked one of the priests here whether there was no danger of a
famine riot, he answered, “Oh, no! the people about here are too great
fools to get up a disturbance.” Those that are hardest up will sell
their daughters into bondage, and there will be an end of the matter.

The hills west of Peking are the Switzerland of Northern China. They
are not very high nor extraordinarily beautiful, but there are some
very pretty gorges and valleys, richly wooded, and at any rate the air
is fresh and pure. Every gorge has a perfect nest of temples, built
by the pious emperors of the Ming dynasty and the earlier Tartars,
for which good deeds the _Corps diplomatique_ at Peking cannot be
too grateful. Properly speaking, according to the rules of their
order, the Buddhist monks are forbidden to receive any money for the
hospitality which they offer to strangers, so when the Chinese go to
stay at a temple they restore or beautify some part of it as a return;
but we prefer paying a few dollars, and in spite of their statutes the
arrangement seems to suit the monks as well as it does us.

Our temple is called “Pi Yün Ssŭ,” “the temple of the azure clouds,”
a romantic name, and certainly the place is worthy of it. It is
built on terraces ascending the hill to a length of about half a
mile, and on every terrace is a shrine, each more beautiful (if
that is the proper word to apply to the grotesque buildings of this
country) than the last; black and white marble statues and vases,
bronze dragons, alto-relievos and basso-relievos representing kings
and warriors, gods and goddesses, and fabulous monsters, all of rare
workmanship,—inscriptions graven on marble and stone, and bronze or
gilt upon wood, meet one at every step; and the whole is set in a nest
of rock-work, fountains, woods, and gardens. At the top is a small
temple more in the Indian than the Chinese style, and here there is
a very curious idol with ten heads, three large ones at the bottom,
from which three smaller ones spring, in their turn carrying three
lesser ones surmounted by a single very small head. The hands are in
proportion. This little place commands a panoramic view over the plain,
with the walls and towers of Peking in the distance.

Our habitation consists of several little houses on one side of
the temple; we dine in an open pavilion, surrounded by a pond and
artificial rockery, with ferns and mosses in profusion; high trees
shade it from the sun, and close by us a cold fountain pours out of the
rock into the pond, in which we can ice our wine to perfection. The
pond was dried up, and the fountain had been turned from its channel,
when we arrived; but we got together a few coolies, and soon set that
right. Fancy our feelings on coming here, when we were told that if
there came no rain we could have no bath! This too in a climate where
the hot nights make a morning wash doubly necessary. The priest had
hardly said the word, when a tremendous thunderstorm broke over the
mountain and set our minds at rest, and next morning we discovered that
we could have the most delicious natural bath. Our life here is very
simple and very, very dull. We are only two—Saurin and myself. We rise
at any hour after daybreak, breakfast at eight, dine at three; after
dinner we go for a ride, or a scramble over the mountain, and come home
to tea at about eight or nine. We sit smoking our cheroots for perhaps
an hour, talking always about home and watching the fire-flies, that,
according to Chinese tradition, served as lamps to Confucius and his
disciples. A visit from or to the Russian Legation, who have got a
temple at about an hour and a half’s ride from here, is the only break
to the monotony of our daily life. I have my teacher with me here, and
work with him at the language from breakfast to dinner; that is my
serious occupation, and about as hard a task as one could wish for. I
carry about my lessons for the rest of the day written on paper fans—a
capital dodge for keeping one’s work before one. We are rather bothered
by mosquitoes, and a most venomous little insect called the sand-fly,
yellow in colour, and smaller than a midge, which is lucky, for if he
were of the size of a blue-bottle I should think his bite would be
fatal. There are quantities of scorpions too; one of our men was stung
the other day. We heard a great wailing and crying one night, for all
the world like an Irish wake; next morning our servants told us that
the cook’s assistant had been stung in the hand, and that he had died
in an hour, but that he had come to rights again, and was getting well.
This sounded something like being “kilt entirely.” The man’s presence
at the temple illustrates a custom of the country; of course, as is the
way of the East, no one can move without a large retinue. There must be
a valet for each man, and a groom for each horse, and a man or two to
do nothing, and two or three more to look on and see them do it. But
besides this, like Thackeray’s description of Irishmen and their poor
relations, no Chinaman is so poor or mean but what he can find a poorer
and a meaner to do part of his work. A coolie earning three dollars a
month will pay another one dollar a month to help him, and he in his
turn will give a boy a few cash, that he may enjoy his ease and his
opium. The man who was stung was the cook’s poor relation. Although his
brother and the other men supposed him to be dying, and finally to
have actually died, they never came and told us, nor did they get any
assistance for him. We heard the noise, but one of our servants has a
very pretty little talent for tickling a lute, and there was so little
difference between the sounds of the wake and those of the concerts he
gets up, that we thought the hullabaloo was only a melancholy variety
of the latter, so we took no notice of it. As far as Chinese remedies
are concerned, better be without them. It is almost impossible to
believe the amount of ignorance which exists in China about medicine
and surgery. Native doctors, who never dissect, are utterly ignorant
for the most part of the position of the heart, the lungs, and the
other principal organs. They are ignorant of the difference between
arteries and veins, nor do they understand the circulation, looking
upon the several pulses of the body as the effects of separate causes.
All diseases are attributed by them to their favourite doctrine, “hot
and cold influences.” They have a certain knowledge of the use of
drugs, and of mercury in particular, but their remedy above all others
is acupuncture. Some days ago my groom had an attack of diarrhœa, and
his medical man pricked him underneath the tongue for it! Sir John
Davis tells a story of a doctor who wanted to prick a man for hernia.
If in these prickings they cut into an artery, and the man dies, why,
so much the worse for him! it is fate. Astrology plays a great part in
their medical art, certain planets being supposed to influence certain
parts of the body. It is one among many instances in which one sees
the analogy between the present condition of China and Europe in the
Middle Ages.




                              LETTER VIII


                                            PEKING, _8th July 1865_.

We have ridden in to spend three days, copying despatches and sighing
for our “cool grot.” The town seemed too beastly as we came in. Peking,
as Southey said of Exeter, “is ancient and stinks.” The “Beggar’s
Bridge,” which we have to pass every time we go into the Chinese city,
and nearly every time we go out, is the most loathsome and stinking
exhibition that it ever was my fate to come across. Here every day a
hundred or two of the most degraded specimens of humanity congregate
and beg. By far the greater majority of them are clothed only in dirt,
and all sorts of repulsive cutaneous complaints; some have a linen rag,
but it is worn over the shoulders, and in no way serves as a decent
covering. Lice, mange, scrofula, leprosy, and filth are allowed to
remain undisturbed by water or drugs. They are a stock-in-trade, and
as such rather encouraged than not. It is a sickening sight when these
creatures come and perform the ko̔to̔u to us, prostrating themselves in
the dust or mud, which is scarcely as dirty as themselves. I spare you
a description of the food I have seen them eating. If ever I get back
to Europe, I feel that the Beggar’s Bridge will be a nightmare to me
for the rest of my life. All this strikes one with double force after
spending a fortnight in the country among the healthy, sunburnt natives
of the hills. I assure you that they look quite handsome after the
yellow townsfolk. It would amuse our friends at home, if they could see
us the centre of a group of thirty or forty of these brown villagers,
in some out-of-the-way valley where Englishmen are about as often seen
as Chinamen in Yorkshire. They ask us all the most absurd questions
about ourselves, our clothes, and our dogs, who are quite as great
objects of wonder as ourselves. They never will believe that Nou-nou is
not some variety of sheep, and Saurin’s pointer, a very handsome young
dog of French royal breed, comes in for much admiration. The women
are all frightened at us, and keep well out of the way; we see them
timidly peering out of their doors at the foreign barbarians who kill
little children, and use their eyes for photography, but it is seldom
that anything but a stout old matron of great courage will venture to
come near us. The people are beginning to get rid of their prejudices
against us, and to see that we mean them no injury; at any rate they
are quite friendly, and seem to look upon us as harmless eccentric
creatures, but very ugly. As for personal safety, no one ever dreams of
carrying arms, either by day or by night, and nobody is ever insulted
or attacked.

We hear bad news of mercantile prospects in the south. Notwithstanding
their having been hit so hard last season, the merchants have been
speculating again more rashly than ever, and vying with each other
in buying up tea. The Chinese are quite up to this, and have leagued
together to raise prices. The nearer our merchants have got to the
tea-growing districts by means of the opening of new ports, the
dearer tea has become. Tea was never so cheap as when Canton was the
only outlet to the market. This seems a paradox, but it is easily
explained. The merchants competing to buy on the spot have caused
the Chinese growers to send up their prices to any height, and the
foreigner cannot transport the tea south so cheaply as the native,
so that both the original price paid to the farmers, and the cost of
transport, have been raised, and the merchants are paying the penalty
of their own hunger for new markets.

As a set-off against this bad news, we have good tidings with regard
to the rebels, who were in Shantung; they appear to be dispersed, some
south and some west, and the capital is safe. For once the Chinese can
lay the praise to themselves, they having acted without foreign aid.




                               LETTER IX


                                       PI YÜN SSŬ, _21st July 1865_.

I daresay you will be curious to hear something more of our temple life
than I have been able to tell you hitherto. We have been exploring the
neighbourhood in all directions, and certainly there is plenty to be
seen, although all the points of interest are temples, either Buddhist
or Taoist, and the description of one might hold good for all. The most
curious of these is at a distance from us of about a mile and a half;
it is called Wo-Fo-Ssŭ, “the temple of the Sleeping Buddha,” from a
huge sleeping idol which it contains, about 20 feet in length. At first
I thought the figure was meant for a female, a sort of Sleeping Beauty
in the Wood, but the attendant priest assured me that it was meant for
Buddha himself. The idol lies sleeping in a huge shrine, surrounded
by a number of lesser saints. His slippers, made of softest velvet
and satin, are lying at his feet ready for him to put on whenever it
shall suit his Holiness to get up; each of his attendants is likewise
provided with slippers. He has been sleeping now for more than 700
years, so he brings no great profit to the shoemaking trade. The shrine
is held in great reverence, and is decorated with an inscription
by the Emperor Chien-Lung himself, who seems never to have lost an
opportunity of writing and building; of both these favourite pastimes
of his, Wo-Fo-Ssŭ bears examples, for leading out of one of the courts
of the temple is a most beautiful little Imperial abode, now falling
into decay, like everything else here, but which once must have been
perfectly lovely. Of all the pavilions, courts, rockeries, and shrines,
the Lotus Pond alone remains in all its glory. Equally in ruins is an
Imperial hunting lodge, close by our temple, standing in the middle of
a deer-park which reaches up to the top of the mountain, fenced in by
a high wall. This, too, was a favourite resort of Chien-Lung, and he
must have spent a king’s ransom in decorating it; a gate or two, here
and there a summer-house, and one pagoda of yellow and green tiles,
show what it must once have been. But the whole place has crumbled to
pieces, and the deer and game stray at pleasure through what were once
the gorgeous apartments of the Emperor. The yellow tiles here, worked
in the highest relief with dragons, griffins, lions, and other emblems,
are marvellous specimens of potter’s work. Whole pediments are made in
small pieces and so cunningly joined together that they look like one
block. A very small annual expense would have kept the place in perfect
repair; but to keep in repair is not an Asiatic attribute. Alongside
one of the paths of the park, which is full of the most delightful
resting-places, I noticed the remains of what looked like a number of
stalls at a fancy-fair, and on inquiring I found that they were little
shops at which it was the privilege of the eunuchs of the palace to
sell trinkets and other trifles to the Emperor as he passed with his
wives.

Among other things that Chien-Lung did for these temples, he imported
from the palace of Jo Hol in Manchuria a quantity of a kind of tree
cigala, by Europeans called wee-wees from the noise they make, by the
Chinese called Tatsŭ-chi-liao. They are the most curious insects, and
make a clatter which is as if it were produced by the metal tongues
of an accordion. They go on all day and drive one nearly distracted.
Sometimes one can hardly hear oneself speak, but the Chinese delight in
them, and my teacher told me the story of their introduction as if he
had been speaking of an importation of nightingales. Happily at Peking
they declined to flourish; there we have only a lesser and more piano
sort, which it is an Imperial amusement at certain times of the year to
catch off the trees with long bamboo rods tipped with bird-lime. The
Chinese certainly find pleasure in what are to us very disagreeable
noises. Fancy a flight of pigeons with Eolian harps tied to their
tails! The first time I heard it above my head I thought something
dreadful must be going to happen. However, that fancy has a practical
side to it, for it keeps off the hawks which abound at Peking.

We have been revelling for two days in the very rare luxury of wet
weather. What a pleasure a real rainy day is in this burnt-up climate!
a day when the hills look as if they might be Scotch moors, and the
temples and pavilions as if they ought to melt away and be replaced
by the clubs in Pall Mall. On these wet days we wander about our own
place, of the size of which you may judge from the fact that one
building alone contains Buddha and his five hundred Lo-hans, or saints
of the third class, larger than life, just like the temple of which
I told you at Canton, where, however, they are smaller; then whole
courtyards are surrounded by buildings, in which heaven and hell are
represented by hundreds upon hundreds of wooden dolls. The Buddhist
heaven is a very queer place according to this view of it, where the
height of happiness seems to consist in riding a tiger or griffin, or
some equally uncomfortable mount; but hell is really too grotesque,
especially the ladies’ department, where the unfortunate women who have
sinned in this world are to be seen experiencing what is, to say the
very least of it, very inconsiderate treatment at the hands of a number
of lavender-kid-glove-coloured fiends. In the gentlemen’s department a
favourite punishment is for sinners to have their heads cut off, and
be compelled to walk about with them under their arms like a crush
hat at a ball. No description of mine could give you any idea of the
absurdity and ugliness of the idols and dolls. I can’t say that, so
far as I can judge, any real respect is paid to them. The people seem
to make sort of picnic parties here, quite as a matter of sightseeing,
rather than of religion, just as some tourists visit cathedrals for
their beauty and for the art treasures which they contain, and not as
an act of worship. However, they call visiting a temple “Kwang Miao,”
which means to do an act of respect and worship, so perhaps some may
attach a religious importance to it. The priests at our temple are a
lazy, brutish lot, and rather inclined to be insolent. At Wo-Fo-Ssŭ
they are far more respectable, and a man who was staying there told
me that they had constantly choral service in the temple, especially
at night; here I very rarely hear the bell and drum beat for prayers.
I must do our priests the justice to say that one day I offered one
of them a glass of wine, which their laws forbid, but their stomachs
crave for, and he refused, although there was no one by to have told
the tale, so I suppose they have a conscience somewhere and that they
regard its pricks.

I am sorry to say that by being out here we missed seeing the state
funeral of the famous general San-Ko-Lin-Sin. He was carried all the
way to Peking from Shantung, where he was killed, every mandarin on
the road being bound to furnish men to bear his body. The Emperor
pays the expense of his funeral and of his lying in state at Peking,
and went himself to pour a libation before the coffin. San-Ko-Lin-Sin
was a feudal Mongol prince, and his son has now been created a Wang,
or prince. There are many people who say that the general was not
killed by the rebels, but by his own troops. The account of his death,
however, was given with great details, and he was probably killed
fighting. “A corner of the Great Wall has gone,” say the Chinese, in
their picturesque way, when a great general is killed in battle.




                                LETTER X


                                                PEKING, _24th July_.

No mail in—we are expecting it any minute, but have begun to fear that
we must send off our bag before its arrival. I never saw anything so
curious as the change which the last few wet days have caused in all
the face of the country—its whole appearance is altered. What were
before arid and desert patches of sand are now turned into green and
luxuriant corn-fields—roads that were like dried water-courses, with
six inches of dust lying on them and banks of sand on each side, are
fresh English-looking lanes. The crops have sprung up to be so tall,
that we could not see our usual landmarks, and lost our way; for the
plain between Peking and the hills is so scarred and intersected by
roads and paths, that one has to make straight for some point in the
distance, or one is thrown out—all the houses and groups of cottages
are exactly like one another and afford no assistance in steering; it
is a regular Chinese puzzle. The thermometer has fallen from 108° in
the shade to 75°. Such a relief!—I hope that we have now got quit of
the very great heat.

By the bye, in my last letter I spoke about Chinese doctors and
prescriptions, and their doctrine of the hot and cold influences. My
teacher has been telling me about their principles of diagnosis. It
appears that they attach great importance to examining the tongue.
Now if the tongue is white the patient is under the cold influence.
If it is yellow, he is under the hot influence. If the centre of the
tongue is white, and the edges yellow, he is under the cold influence
inside, and his skin is under the hot—and so _vice versa_. Palmistry
and the study of the face and features are also brought to bear upon
medicine—certain conditions of feature portend certain events in the
future. My teacher told me that he feared he should not be long-lived,
because the lobe of his ear was small—a large lobe to the ear is much
admired on all accounts, but specially as a sign of wisdom, and Buddha
and the other idols are represented with huge appendages. A soft hand
is the sign of longevity; the eyes, nose and nostrils, and chin, all
have certain prophetic meanings to those who are wise to read them. I
told my teacher about phrenology—he was delighted with the idea, and
stood open-mouthed while his bumps were being felt. His character,
however, did not interest him much, but he was very anxious to know how
long he would live, and whether he would hold an office of any kind.

We have no news.




                               LETTER XI


                                          PEKING, _7th August 1865_.

The extreme heat has left us at last, and the autumn has set in—a most
charming season in this climate. It is a regular second spring—not
such a spring as we are used to in England, which is a struggle for
mastery between hot sun and chilling east winds, but a season in which
the burnt-up vegetation literally _springs_ into life again under the
influence of quickening rain and warmth—the trees put forth shoots
and tender green leaves, and the plain is one rich field of millet
twelve feet high, through which one rides feeling like Gulliver in
the farms of Brobdingnag. The rains have driven us out of our temple
at the hills, which I much regret, but it had become untenable lately
owing to damp; the scorpions, too, began to come into the house in
too great numbers to be pleasant; five were killed in my room in two
days, besides other creeping things. There were quantities of lizards
also in my house. The Chinese have an idea that lizards, which they
call scorpion-tigers, kill the scorpions by making them commit suicide
in this wise: the lizard touches the scorpion on the back with his
tail, the creature strikes at him, but the enemy is too quick, and he
stings himself instead; this is repeated until the lizard sees that the
scorpion’s poison is exhausted, when he goes at him at once and eats
him. We rather exploded this theory, for we caught two scorpions and
two lizards, and put them in a box with a glass cover, and the only
result was that the large scorpion ate the smaller, continuing his
cannibal feast during ten hours, and leaving nothing of him but the tip
of his tail; so we let the lizards go and killed the scorpion, whom
Shao-To, our head man, considered to have become doubly venomous as he
must have the poison of two in him.

Before leaving the hills we took a great walk over all the summits in
order to get a thorough idea of the country around. It looks as if the
sea, now about 100 miles off, must once have washed the foot of the
mountains, forming bays, promontories, and headlands into the plain,
which has the same appearance of being alluvial as that of Troy. The
numberless watercourses which intersect it show that formerly there
must have been a far greater flow of water towards the sea than is ever
seen now, even in the rainiest season. From the highest peak we had a
magnificent view of Peking, Yuen-Ming-Yuen, and the villages around,
and behind us was another range of mountains, more wild, more rugged
and picturesque than that on which we stood. It was raining slightly,
and as we watched there came on one of the strangest atmospheric
effects I ever saw. Between us and Peking there was a faint mist,
while over the city itself a heavy cloud was hanging, partly black and
partly lurid, with a sort of hellish glare about it that was perfectly
indescribable. All around us there was a deep blue gloom; it was such a
scene as Lot’s wife may have looked upon.

We rode into town the day before yesterday, and made a circuit so
as to take Yuen-Ming-Yuen, the famous summer palace, on our way. It
was a new road to me, and a very pleasant one. We passed several
Chinese villages, principally composed of soldiers’ barracks,
like elongated cow-sheds, and one very pretty prosperous-looking
little city. As we drew near the Imperial grounds the scenery became
prettier and prettier; above all there were shady groves, which were
doubly delightful for the scorching morning sun that was blazing
upon us. Quaint stone and marble bridges were thrown over the dykes
and water-channels, and little gables of pagodas, charged with the
inevitable tile gurgoyles, peeped out of the woods at intervals.

Yuen-Ming-Yuen (“the round bright garden”) is one of three parks
containing Imperial palaces, two of which were destroyed in 1860.
Some of the more out-of-the-way buildings in the third escaped notice
and destruction. The name Yuen-Ming-Yuen has been wrongly given by
Europeans to the whole, and still more wrongly to the only one of the
three parks (the third park is called Yu-Chuan-Shan, or the “Hill of
the Fountain of Jewels”) that can be seen, and which we visited. The
proper name of this is Wan-Shao-Shan, the “Hill of the Ten Thousand
Longevities,” which is a figure of speech for the fête day of the
Emperor or Empress. Of course it is against the orders of the Chinese
authorities that this is shown, but the guardians of the place make a
good profit out of it, and if they were caught they would always be
ready with the excuse that “the barbarians forced their way in and
would not be kept out.”

We were ushered through a number of courtyards, where there was nothing
to be seen but ruined and charred walls, and the ghosts of departed
pine-trees, and along a pretty covered walk to a pavilion by the lake
where we were to breakfast. It was a lovely spot. The lake is a mass
of lotus plants now in full flower; there are quantities of little
islands covered with trees and buildings. A number of boats with naked
fishermen in them gave a touch of wildness and barbarity to the scene,
and further added to our amusement; for one of the men, in the hopes of
finding Heaven knows what small loot among the masses of rubbish where
there is not so much as a tile left whole, had come on shore and was
lying hidden among the ruins; whom when the guardians perceived, they
set up such a game of hare and hounds, and such a throwing of stones
and bad language, as reminded me of Eton days when a boy from another
house was found in my dame’s without being able to give a good account
of himself. When the brave men returned all panting and out of breath,
they were very proud of themselves, and told us the story with much
vigour and dramatic action, for it was a very valiant deed, as they
were only three to one, “with power to add to their number.”

There is nothing like a Chinese servant for a picnic or expedition
of any kind, under whatever difficulties he may be placed. Shao-To
never lets us lack for anything. Even Dan, the pointer puppy, had his
usual mess of rice and broth, as if he had been at home. When we had
breakfasted, with an admiring crowd around us, we went to explore the
ruins. It is difficult to form any idea of what the palace must have
been like, so complete has the work of destruction been. We scrambled
up and down steep steps (that must have been hard work for the poor
little cramped feet that trod them) and along terraces where the wild
vines and creepers, and sweet-scented weeds, now grow in tangled
masses; there is not a stone that has not been split by the action
of the fire. Two colossal marble kylins, of rare workmanship, are
seared with cracks, and have almost fallen away in flakes. Of the great
octagonal three-storied palace, not one stone lies on another, and a
white marble balustrade alone shows where it stood. Higher up there are
still a few remains untouched by fire. There is a little bronze temple,
a perfect gem, which of course escaped, and two little revolving wooden
pagodas full of small gods and images standing in a tower were also
preserved; whilst above all a larger temple, built entirely of the
yellow and green tiles I have so often described to you, shows what a
blaze of glory the place must once have been. But that glory has passed
away now, and so rapidly does ruin work in this climate, that soon even
the little that remains to-day will perish. There is one very curious
device thoroughly Chinese that I must mention. At the end of the
terrace by the lake a sort of jetty stands out, built of huge blocks of
stone, in the shape of a junk being launched into the lake, forty-one
paces long by nine broad. Some of the rockwork is very quaint. When
the Chinese come upon a quaintly-shaped rock or stone they mount it
on a pedestal and make an ornament of it. There are many very curious
specimens at Wan-Shao-Shan.

With regard to the destruction of the summer palace, I believe that,
politically speaking, it was a mistake. It was necessary that some
great reprisal should be made for the outrages committed by the
Chinese; but the destruction should have taken place inside the
city, and not twelve miles off; for so ignorant are the large body
of the Chinese of what passes outside their four walls, that there
are many here in Peking who to this day believe that we had to pay an
indemnity for leave to withdraw our troops, and that we are only here
on sufferance. If this is the case in Peking, in the provinces people
must be still further from the truth, and it is the policy of the
Government to keep up the delusion. Had the Imperial palace in Peking
been destroyed the matter would have been notorious to all, and its
recollection would not have been blown away with the last cloud of
smoke from Yuen-Ming-Yuen.

Here is some more Chinese doctoring which may amuse you. A boy was
brought the other day to the hospital of the London Mission with
slight feverish symptoms. The doctor not being at home, the boy was
taken by his parents to a Chinese practitioner, who prescribed a
decoction of three scorpions, to be taken internally! The boy was well
next day in spite of it.

A recipe for ophthalmia, posted on the walls of Peking, runs as
follows:—Take three bright brass coins of the reign of Tao Kwang, boil
them in water, and use the lotion. Here is our old saw, “A hair of
the dog that bit you,” worked in practice: For a dog bite, catch the
dog, pull out a few of his hairs, and work them into a paste with a
little lime and oil—apply the paste to the wound; of course, the lime
acting as a caustic is the real remedy, but the hair is the one that is
believed in.

The Legation is at present giving hospitality to a certain gentleman
who is accredited by a small state to make a treaty with the Chinese,
as he pompously announces “dans l’intérêt de la Chine même”; if he
does not talk less big at the Tsung-Li Yamên, or Foreign Office, he
will find the Chinese far less tractable than he seems to think it
their duty to be; for they are much too sharp to suppose that anybody
comes out here to negotiate treaties in their interest without having
a still keener eye upon his own; and as for themselves, of course
the mandarins, at any rate, would rather return to the old state of
things, have nothing to do with us and our treaties, and sacrifice
the revenue that accrues to them from their customs. The pressure
put upon them from abroad, and the counsels of Mr. Hart, the Chinese
Inspector-General of Customs, and a very able man, alone keep them
straight, and compel the central Government to assume responsibilities
which they would rather leave to the provincial authorities. Fancy
the difficulty of stirring up into action men whose highest idea of
celestial happiness is an eternity passed in the contemplation of their
own paunches, in the society of Buddha and his Lo-hans.

It is very hard upon our interpreters that they should have to do
the work of other missions besides our own. These ministers of other
states come up here without any staff whatever, and the whole of their
business falls upon the Legation to whose good offices they may be
intrusted.




                               LETTER XII


                                         PEKING, _22nd August 1865_.

Since I last wrote to you we have been leading the most monotonous of
lives, and no news from home has come to cheer us. We have had staying
with us one of the few stray visitors that chance drives up here—a Mr.
R——, an officer in the commissariat, and a very pleasant companion he
was; he came fresh from Japan, and full of stories about Yokohama and
Yedo, but out here we should prefer to hear about London. There really
is little temptation to travellers to come here now, for, thanks to
the misbehaviour of certain of our countrymen, the Chinese have shut
up the principal lions of the town, and the temples of Heaven, and
of Confucius, are not shown, even to members of the Legations. I for
one have not been able to visit them. The great Lama Temple is still
to be seen, and to any one who has not seen a Chinese temple, is a
great show; but they are all very like one another, the main difference
being merely a question of size. It is very provoking to be kept out of
really interesting sights by the brutality of travelling bullies who
will force their way into places where they have no right to go.

All we can do now for our visitors is to show them the panorama of the
two cities from the walls, the top of which forms a ride or walk right
round Peking, and where the wonderful observatory of the old Jesuit
fathers, with its beautiful bronze instruments, still stands, and to
take them through the streets and over the curio shops—braving offence
given to eyes and nostrils. The curio shops especially make up an
amusing day, and I am always glad of an excuse to go there. There is a
bazaar, too, just inside the Chinese city, a sort of Lowther Arcade on
a small scale, where toys, scents, sham jewellery, cheap embroidery,
and other rubbish are sold, and which is quite worth seeing. This is
greatly patronised by the Mongols, who never weary of admiring the
showy trash exposed for sale. The Mongols are to the Pekingese what
the Auvergnats are to the _gamins de Paris_, or a bumpkin come up to
London for the cattle-show to the cabbies and ’busmen. They are the
perpetual butts of jokes, sells, and cheatery, and are done at every
opportunity. The bazaar leads on to the Beggar’s Bridge, with its mass
of rotting humanity, a place that it makes one shudder to think of, and
once past that we are well in the Chinese city. The amount of traffic
is always very great, and it is no easy matter to thread one’s way
through the crowd of mules, carts, horses, and footpads, and the worst
of it is that one is continually hustled up against some unhappy leper,
whose only clothing is dirt and sores. The neatness and nicety of the
shops are a great contrast to the filth and squalor of the streets
themselves. Inside everything is as clean as water can make it; outside
is a dunghill, where the beggars are disputing with the dogs and pigs
the right to water-melon rinds, rotten vegetables, and dead carrion.
The street hawkers are a great feature; of course they all have their
peculiar cries as in Europe; but in addition to this each trade has its
own announcement in the shape of some instrument—one trade carries a
thing like a huge Jew’s harp, another has a tiny gong, a third a drum,
a fourth beats two pieces of bamboo together, and so forth. All these
make a terrible clatter, and the noise is increased by the beggars, who
take up a position opposite some shop—a cook-house for choice—and there
make themselves odious to eyes, ears, and nostrils until its owner can
stand it no longer and buys them off with a copper cash or piece of
refuse food. Among Chinese street characters the _improvisatore_ is
one of the foremost. He is as loud and fluent as his Italian compeer,
and infinitely more energetic. He generally accompanies himself on the
bones, but often has a little boy to beat a drum for him. He works
himself into a regular frenzy, and jumps about like one possessed of
a devil; he dances and gesticulates and raves until the sweat runs
down his face; but nothing tires him, and he never halts nor pauses in
his chant. These men are too nimble of speech and too slang for most
foreigners to catch a word; but I suppose they are generally witty and
entertaining, for they command immense audiences of gaping Chinamen,
and their sallies are received with great delight. Like the Italians,
when they have worked up their audience to a proper pitch of interest
they stop, and refuse to go on with the story without more coppers. At
the approach of the foreign barbarian some little witticism is launched
_à notre adresse_. You may judge whether it is very complimentary;
however, as “it amuses them and don’t hurt us,” that don’t much
signify. Perhaps the hawkers whose wares are the most curious to
Europeans are the men who carry about live crickets and cicadas for
sale, either in tiny wooden cages or tied to bamboo rods. The Chinese
buy them to any amount as pets, and some make the crickets fight like
quails and game-cocks.

We are very often accosted by the more respectable class. The first
salutation is always, “Have you had your dinner, sir?” which is the
Chinese, “How d’ye do?” and then the conversation runs as follows:—

“Your honourable name?”

“My name is Mi. What is your honourable name?”

“My shabby name is Hwang. What are the years of your age?”

“I am twenty-eight” (great astonishment, for I pass usually for
forty-five).

“How long have you been inside the walls?” (at Peking).

“About four months.”

“Do you belong to the great Ying, or the great Fa?” (English or French).

Then follow a string of the most absurd questions about England. One
man asked one day whether it was true that in Europe there were men
with holes through their chests and backs, whom their servants carried
about by passing a bamboo pole through the hole and so hoisting them on
to their shoulders. Such is the Chinese education, that one of their
scholars, deeply read in ethics and Confucian books, would be capable
of asking questions to the full as ridiculous as the above, which,
indeed, was put by an educated man.

After the din, bustle, and dirt of the streets, it is very refreshing
to go into one of the shops, where there is always the civillest
welcome, even though one may buy nothing. In almost all cases the
master of the house gives us delicious tea, sugarless and milkless of
course, but of the most exquisite flavour. The infusion is made in a
small covered bowl; I have hardly ever seen a teapot. The outer shop
is for the most part only, as it were, an advertisement, and contains
nothing but trash: one of the finest shops here exhibits to the street
a front such as a Cheap Jack at a fair might show; but go inside,
and cross a little courtyard into the inner sanctum, and you will be
dazzled by the beauty of the ornaments and trinkets for sale. There
is a certain black _étagère_ made of ebony, carved to represent very
light bamboo stems supporting irregular niches, filled with carved
lapis-lazuli, jade, cornelians, agates, and other rare stones, that I
should like to carry off bodily. Every piece in the collection is a
_chef-d’œuvre_. The prices are, of course, outrageous, but they come
down; indeed, it is curious that a people so proverbially cunning in
trade should act as they do. Supposing that they ask thirty dollars
for a thing, we offer fifteen, which, at first, will be indignantly
rejected; but after perhaps three months of bargaining the man will
come down to our price, thus keeping himself for three months out of
the interest of his money. There is some beautiful porcelain, but very
dear. I have never seen any of the rose-backed plates or cups that
are so much prized at home; and two or three of the dealers, whom
I have asked about them, had never heard of such things. There is
plenty of bad cloisonné enamel about; but the fine specimens came from
Yuen-Ming-Yuen, and the Chinese were obliged to sell them off as fast
as they could for fear of the law. (I take it the natives had a great
hand in the looting.) I only know of two really magnificent pieces, for
which the owner asks £1000! He would probably take £300, and they would
be a great bargain at the price. They are two colossal covered bowls,
without flaw or fault, and would look splendid at Windsor or some very
great house. I have written to a friend to tell him of them.

The best chance of picking up here and there a pretty thing is in
the minor shops, from which the bigger ones are recruited. There is
a street called the Liu-li-chang, which swarms with old book shops
(a sort of Paternoster Row) and curiosity shops, some of which are
hardly more than stalls, where sometimes one may find a piece of fine
porcelain, or other work of art, for an old song.

I start after to-morrow morning for Ku-Pei-Ko̔u, to see the Great Wall,
and I shall return by way of the tombs of the emperors of the Ming
dynasty; so at any rate I shall not have to sing the eternal refrain,
“Peking is very dirty.” I shall be about eight days gone. The trip was
originally to have been undertaken with the Russian Minister, but he is
detained by business, so I go with Murray, and we accompany Saurin as
far as Ku-Pei-Ko̔u, whence he will travel into Mongolia, and Murray and
I shall come back.

One more word about the Beggar’s Bridge: often one of the poor
creatures will die at his post, and I have seen the corpse lie there
for two or three days hardly covered over by a piece of rotten matting.
His troubles and miseries are over. The beggars are, I am told, a sort
of guild with a recognised head, to whom it is not an infrequent custom
to pay a slight annual tribute, by which means their importunities,
such as taking up a position outside a man’s door or shop, and refusing
to “move on,” may be avoided, and their piteous cry, “Ko̔ Lien! Ko̔
Lien!” (Have mercy! have mercy!) no longer heard. Begging throughout
Asia is a fine art.




                              LETTER XIII


                                       PEKING, _5th September 1865_.

I returned on Saturday from my trip to the Great Wall; I must try and
give you some account of it.

We started on the 25th August, as I told you before. Saurin and Frater,
one of the student interpreters, were going to make a journey in
Mongolia, and Murray and I accompanied them to the frontier.

Each party had three servants—a man to look after clothes, bedding, and
things in general, a cook, and a groom; but besides these our people
took with them _their_ servant, a queer little oddity of a Chinaman,
very dirty, in an old English sailor’s pea-jacket, much too big for
him, which earned him the name of the “Skipper.” I never saw such
a merry, willing little creature; he was always at work and always
laughing, as if everything he did were a capital joke, and the very
fact of his being in the world at all something so ridiculous that he
really couldn’t get over it.

I need tell you little of our first day’s journey, as far as regards
scenery. I had never seen that part of the plain which lies north-east
of Peking, but it is exactly like the rest, which I have often
described to you. We breakfasted at a place called Sun-Ho, about
thirteen miles hence; soon after that the country became prettier.
We passed some cosy villages with fine old willows; from these one
is called Ku-Lin-Shu, the “Old Willow Trees,” and here we stopped to
rest during the great heat of the day at the tea-shop. As usual, all
the people were very civil and talkative. One elderly man, whose name
was Ma, a Mohammedan, and evidently the village politician, was very
communicative; he was a great Tory, and _laudator temporis acti_,
abusing the present dynasty, and sighing over the “good old days” of
the Mings. I gave him a cigar, which he took with great delight, and
jumped up on to a little low wall, where he sat perched with his hams
on his heels like an old bird, and went on with his denunciation of
the Tartars. “Ugh!” said he, “they have not got a good officer among
all their mandarins. They brought us into the war with foreign powers,
and then when they saw the big men and the big horses, and heard the
poum-poum-poum of the cannon, what did they do? Why, they ran away and
left us to pay for it all.”

We slept at a place called Niu-Lan-Shan, near which there are some
marshes with herons and wild-fowl. A Chinese inn is very unlike our
notions of an inn. It is generally built round the four sides of
a courtyard; the guests’ house is at the bottom, facing north and
south. East and west are stalls for mules, horses, and donkeys; the
remaining side is occupied by the people of the house. The inn-yard
is very animated—carts, pigs, horses, mules, dogs, flocks of pigeons,
and poultry are crowded into it, besides poor travellers, Chinese and
Mongol. Then there are generally a travelling barber plying his trade
in one corner, a pedlar haggling for a few cash in another, and all the
idle vagabonds who seem to comprise the greater part of the population
of every place in Northern China, and who come in to loaf about and
make remarks about the foreigners. There is no great variety or
originality in these. There is always a fugleman, who makes a remark,
and then the crowd take it up in chorus. The following is really a fair
specimen of the sort of thing they say about us:—

_Fugleman_—“Those boots! They are made of scented cow’s leather”
(Russia leather).

_Chorus_—“Those boots! They are made of scented cow’s leather.”

_Fugleman_—“Those boots! He that wears them need not fear water.”

_Chorus_ (admiringly)—“Those boots! He that wears them,” etc.

_Fugleman_ (to one of us)—“Those boots! How much did they cost?”

_Englishman_—“They cost fourteen taels.”

_Fugleman_—“Those boots! They cost fourteen taels, and he speaks the
mandarin language.”

_Chorus_-“They cost fourteen taels, and he speaks the mandarin
language”—and so it goes on _ad infinitum_. If we are in a good humour
we give the fugleman a cigar, which he puffs at vigorously, and swears
“it is both strong and fragrant”; but it makes him cough violently,
and he passes it on to the next in the crowd, until the whole of them
retire, coughing and declaring that it is “both strong and fragrant,”
into a corner, from which every now and then we hear “those boots” all
over again.

The rooms of the inn are very bare indeed; the only furniture is a
table with two chairs, and the only _vaisselle_ provided is a teapot
and bowls, all guests being expected to bring their own bedding, food,
and comforts. On each door is pasted a print of a god in staring
colours. The lintels and posts of the inner doors are covered with
characters printed on red paper, which are generally moral reflections
from the works of Confucius, such as, “All happiness comes from
Heaven,” “To become wealthy you must have the principle of right.”
On the wall is generally hung a picture. I saw one of a sage with a
forehead like a misshapen pear, lecturing before two warriors upon
the Yang and Yin (the universal principle of nature); another of a
yellow elephant in spectacles, his body, legs, and trunk covered with
characters, with two gentlemen in blue eating their dinner comfortably
under his stomach, while a third was offering a stalk of millet to
a lady in pink, who modestly turned her head aside as she accepted
the present; this was a sort of Chinese farmer’s Moore’s almanack,
indicating the propitious times for sowing, reaping, etc. Besides the
centre picture, the walls are often covered with drawings by poor
travelling artists, who earn a night’s lodging by the skill of their
pencil. Some of their productions, when they don’t attempt figures or
beasts, are very clever. I have seen in the most out-of-the-way inns
sketches of bamboo, grasses, flowers, and birds, that were dashed
off in a way that would have done credit to well-known names. If
the traveller be a poor scholar, as such are always proud of their
caligraphy, he will, instead of a drawing, contribute quotations from
the philosophers or poets, or a few verses in praise of the landlord
and his honesty, and declaring how his (the poor scholar’s) heart had
laughed during the period of their intercourse. Every room has in it
a ka̔ng; this is a large stove about 2½ feet high, covered with a mat
or piece of felt, taking up all one side of the room, and serving as a
bed. In winter the Chinese, like the Russians, bake themselves every
time they go to sleep.

There came on a fearful thunderstorm in the night, with a deluge of
rain, which gave us some uneasiness, as we had several rivers ahead of
us which we feared might become unfordable, as indeed turned out to
be the case. However, the only inconvenience we suffered was in loss
of time, for when we arrived next morning at the first river we found
huge ferry-boats, worked by strapping Chinamen stark naked; it took us
nearly two hours to get our carts, mules, and horses across. We amused
ourselves the while in watching a swine-herd’s vain endeavours to make
his flock swim the stream, the opposition being led by a stubborn
little curly-tail, with a majority in his favour. The consumption of
pork at Peking must be something fabulous. The streets swarm with pigs,
and yet from every direction we saw large herds being driven into the
town. The Chinese who can afford it eat pork at nearly every meal. We
found an encampment of Mongols on the river-bank. They were on their
way homeward from Peking, where they had been selling horses. They
seemed very good-humoured, honest people, simple and primitive to a
degree, as amused as children with our watches, clothes, saddles, and
other belongings.

It is very strange, the farther one gets from the capital, to see
an improvement in everything. The fields are better cultivated, the
houses are better built, and the villages far cleaner than the town.
Fifteen miles out of Peking all the indecencies and filthiness which
are its characteristics disappear entirely; a man would be stoned if
he were to venture upon outraging decency as the Pekingese do; the
poor peasants are more polite and less inquisitive about us, although
foreigners so rarely appear among them, which makes one think that the
inquisitiveness is sometimes only studied impertinence. We saw several
farmhouses with pretty gardens and neat out-houses, which might have
stood in an English shire, so free were they from all stamp of China.
The people seemed well-to-do, and the farmers positively rich. We met
a lady going out to spend the day with her gossip, dressed as smart as
a new pin, and carrying her baby in her arms. She was riding a donkey,
which, as soon as one of our vicious little Mongol ponies set eyes on,
he made a dash at the ass and upset him and the lady and the baby,
happily on to a bank, for had she fallen in the muddy lane there would
have been an end to all her finery. As it was, she was let off for a
good fright. “Ai ya! what manners are these! what manners are these!”
she cried indignantly as she struggled on to her tiny goat’s feet. We,
of course, made all the apologies possible, and she bestrode her ass
and rode off pacified—more or less.

The principal place that we passed on this day (August 26) was
Mi-Yün-Hsien, a walled city. We did not enter the city, but skirted the
walls. Outside the gate there stands a guard-house, and near this there
is a tall blasted tree. It has neither leaf nor sprout, but from its
whitened branches there hang small wooden cages, and in each cage is a
human head, at which the carrion-birds are pecking. A ghastly fruit!

At a little place called Shi-ling I saw the prettiest woman I have ever
met in China. She was a widow, and really looked quite lovely in her
white dress and fillet, which she wore as weeds. She had a clear olive
complexion, abundance of black hair, dark eyes, and regular features.
Women’s dress in this country show nothing of the figure; but we all
agreed that she _must_ have had a good figure; alas! her feet had been
tortured and deformed. This is commonly supposed to be the difference
between pure Chinese women and Tartars. As a matter of fact, I am
assured that it is a question of family custom, some Tartar families
adopting it, while some Chinese families do not. The poor serving wench
who has her feet deformed must be sadly hampered in her work.

We slept at Mu-Chia-Yu. The next morning (August 27) we started in good
time, for we wished to reach Ku-Pei-Ko̔u early that day. Although the
ride of the day before had been very pretty, increasing in beauty as
we drew near to the mountains, I was hardly prepared for such glorious
scenery as we passed through on this day. The road lay over and between
hillocks and rocks covered with ferns, mosses, and wild-flowers, and
before us were the mountains with blue distances and fantastic outlines
for a landscape-painter to revel in. Over the tops of the highest hills
the Great Wall of China traced a zigzag course, like a distant chain.
Rich crops of millet and Indian corn, with undergrowths of beans or
buckwheat, bordered with the castor-oil plant, stood in the valleys
and in the plain. The cottages of the different villages had an air
of comfort and tidiness rare in China; almost every one had a little
flower-garden fenced in by a hedge of millet stalks, trailed over
with gourds, convolvulus, and vines. In some places the people were
gathering in the smaller sort of millet; they were cutting the ears
separately with a small knife, as a gardener would gather a dish of
fruit or vegetables.

The only instance of hostility towards a foreigner on the part of the
people I have met with hitherto happened on this day. Frater and I were
riding about 200 yards ahead of the party when, just as we arrived at
a crossroad, and were doubting which way to take, up came a party of
about a dozen Chinamen with a cart. We, according to good manners,
“borrowed the light of their intelligence,” and asked our way, which
they pointed out, paying us at the same time the compliment of asking
whether we had eaten our dinner. I think I told you that the common
salutation is, “Have you had your dinner?” The literal translation of
the phrase is, “Have you eaten rice.”[8] _Rice_ has passed into the
generic term for all meals. _Early rice_ is breakfast, _late rice_ is
dinner. _The rice is prepared_ is the equivalent of Mr. Bailey Junior’s
“the wittles is up.” In short, amenity and deportment could be pushed
no further. To our surprise a few moments after Saurin and Murray
rode up looking hot and angry, and asking us whether we had had any
difficulty with these same men. It appeared that, as Saurin was riding
past the cart, the man inside, in the most unprovoked way, struck him
in the chest with his brass pipe. Murray was riding just behind him
and saw the blow struck, and from their account of what took place I
doubt whether the man will ever insult a foreigner again. His friends
all took part against him, but interceded for him, crying, “Be calm, be
calm; he has had enough.” At any rate he got a good whipping.

The sun was scorching hot, and it was a great relief to come upon a
pretty village-green, at one end of which stood a small tea-shop,
shaded by a covering of millet-straw and by a broad-spreading tree: our
horses needed a rest as much as ourselves; they had been driven nearly
mad by the flies and by one venomous little insect in particular,
which must have been the original gadfly that persecuted Io. It has
a long sheath in its tail, out of which it shoots a sting into the
horses’ flanks, apparently out of pure mischief, for it never seems to
suck them, and it follows a horse or mule for miles. If one attacked
our horses, the only way to get rid of it was to dismount and kill it.
So sharp is its sting that every time it touched our beasts they jumped
up as if they had been shot. We were all glad of a friendly shelter.

We found a party of Chinamen playing dominoes. They were playing the
game more as we do cards than dominoes, but I could not make out the
principle of it. The landlord was a very jolly, burly fellow, the
picture of a host with whom everything prospered, although he must
have been poor enough, for instead of tea he was drinking an infusion
of dried leaves of jujube that is common on the hills. In some places
where there is no tea to be had the people drink a sort of barley
water, and very good it is. At these tea-shops guests are expected to
bring their own tea-leaves. The house supplies only the pot and the
boiling water.

Almost every man and woman (I am not exaggerating) that we met in
this part of the valley had goitres, not so bad as those one meets in
the Swiss valleys, but far more numerous. In one village we saw eight
fullgrown men and women only—out of the eight seven had goitres.

Overlooking the village-green I mentioned above is a fort commanding
the plain; and on one side of the fort the road has been cut through
the solid rock and arched over with strong masonry, so as to form a
gate, which bears the legend, “The Gate of the Southern Heavens.”
Through this gate there is a most gorgeous view of the different
ranges, the Great Wall, and the approach to Ku-Pei-Ko̔u.

Ku-Pei-Ko̔u is in its way one of the most strikingly beautiful places
that I have ever seen. The valley by which it is reached, with rocks,
ferns, mosses, gardens, and a little rivulet sparkling in the sunlight,
is a gem. The town itself stands in a little nest among the hills which
surround it; on one side of it runs a river, on the farther bank of
which, in a grove of trees, is the yamên or official residence of the
Ti-tu (the general officer commanding the district). There is not a
point in the whole place from which there is not something attractive
to rest one’s eyes on. The streets are clean, the houses well built,
and the shops seem to do a prosperous business. At one end of the town
is the frontier gate of China; it is strongly guarded, and ingress or
egress without passport is forbidden. Besides the walls of the city, as
a guard against Mongol tribes, on the river side are two little ditches
that a man might easily hop over, and two little pieces of cannon which
look more dangerous to friend than to foe. We walked outside the gate
to stand beyond the confines of China proper. The guard were extremely
civil, the sentry politely inviting us into the guard-room to drink
tea! The Chinese attach a great deal of importance to Ku-Pei-Ko̔u as a
border fortress. They keep up a garrison of two thousand men, of whom
ten per cent are Tartars and the rest Chinese.

The inn here is the largest I have been in yet. The enormous traffic
which passes through the town keeps its business brisk. The landlord
was a Tientsing man, and a man of letters, having taken the degree
equivalent to our B.A. Degrees in China are conferred by competitive
examination, only a certain number of candidates being elected each
time. The examinations are held at Peking, and people come from all
parts of the empire to compete. Some time back an old gentleman aged
100 presented himself from the south for examination. He received the
degree of B.A. by Imperial favour, and with it a present of 2 lbs. of
gin-seng, which is a powerful aphrodisiac and tonic. It is from the
successful candidates that the offices of the empire are filled, and
in former days it was the highest ambition of a Chinaman to pass the
schools in order to qualify himself for office. Now, however, a race
has sprung up of men who are indifferent to public honours, and prefer
their private advantage. Of these was our host. Why, he argued, should
he go through all the petty annoyances and humiliations which inferior
mandarins suffer at the hands of their superiors for the possible
chance of rising to distinction, when he could enjoy certain comfort
in trade? Many people deny the existence of this feeling among the
lettered class, but it exists nevertheless. Office, both civil and
military, can also be obtained by purchase.

As I was sitting smoking and reading an old number of a magazine
outside my room, the landlord came up and began asking me many
questions about what I was reading, and why we read from left to right
instead of in columns from right to left. About half an hour after I
heard him in the inn-yard delivering a lecture to an admiring audience
of grooms, muleteers, and riffraff, upon the English language, the
point of which was that we wrote exactly as the Manchus do, who write
in columns from left to right! Seeing me come he borrowed my book and
proceeded to give practical illustrations of what he had said, holding
it upside down. This exhibition of learning was received with awe by
the gaping crowd. He was a great character, this same landlord, a
confirmed opium smoker, and being a man of letters, which is something
more thought of here than being of good birth is in Europe, he had an
immense number of friends and acquaintances of good standing of whom
he was very proud. He took me into his own little house, which he had
papered completely with the crimson visiting-cards of his intimates.

Our first object at Ku-Pei-Ko̔u was to get the seal of the Ti-tu
affixed as a _visa_ to our passports. All over the provinces of China
the central authorities count as nothing in comparison with the local;
a small mandarin who would laugh to scorn the seal of the Imperial
Foreign Office will bow to the earth before that of his immediate
superior. Accordingly, on the evening of our arrival we sent our
Shao-To, the apostle, to the Yamên with our cards to beg the Ti-tu
to grant us his seal. He came back discomfited, not having been able
even to see an official of any rank. The next morning, however, he
proposed to return to the charge, and arraying himself in his best,
with his head shaven and his tail freshly plaited, he ordered out one
of the carts and called upon the skipper to attend him. Here arose a
difficulty: our servants all declared that the skipper must abandon
his old pea-jacket as unbefitting the dignity of the situation; he as
firmly stuck to wearing it, but public opinion was too strong for him,
and he was forced to give up his favourite garment and appear in a
dirty nankin jacket. In spite of the imposing splendour of this embassy
it was fruitless, the authorities declaring that they had received
no special instructions from Peking, and that without them they could
not grant the seal. This was very provoking; the seal was necessary to
us, we had a right to ask for it, and we were determined to have it,
the more especially as if we, holding an official position here, had
foregone our rights, other travellers would necessarily have had double
difficulty in obtaining it in future. Murray determined to go himself
and demand to see the Ti-tu. He was shown into a dirty room full of
soldiers, and the Chinese tried to foist a wretched white-buttoned
mandarin upon him as the Ti-tu. He of course was not to be taken in
by this childish piece of chicanery, and as soon as it became evident
that he knew what he was about the big doors were thrown open, and he
was ushered with due solemnity into the presence of the Ti-tu, who
made many apologies for having kept him waiting, and received him with
much ceremony. Murray had the satisfaction of being served with tea
and sweetmeats by the very impostor who had tried to pass himself off
as the great man! About the question of putting on the seal the Ti-tu
fenced for a long while. He had no orders. He might get into a scrape.
What right had we to ask it? Murray explained the treaty to him, and
he admitted our claim. But no sooner were the passports produced than
he raised another objection. The seal of the British Legation was
in the centre, that of the Imperial Foreign Office on the left, and
there was no more room on the left of that again for his seal—what
could be done? His rank was too high for his seal to be placed below.
“Well,” said Murray, “put your seal on the right of ours, and then we
shall be figuratively between the protection of the civil and military
authorities of China.” This little bit of nonsense was the very thing
to please the Chinese mind, and the seal was set without more delay,
Murray undertaking to explain the matter at Peking. “I know you’ll do
it,” said the Ti-tu, “for when an Englishman promises a thing he does
it.”

I mention this to show you how business is transacted in China.
The most important affairs are conducted with the same amount of
childishness and trickery as our little passport difficulty with the
Ti-tu of Ku-Pei-Ko̔u, who, be it recollected, is an officer of the
highest rank.

We spent the afternoon on the Great Wall. The Chinese name for
this most marvellous work is Wan-Li-Cha̔ng-Che̔ng—literally the
myriad-li-long wall. Calculating the li at a third of a mile, this
name would give it a length of nearly 3400 miles, but the English
books estimate it at 1250 miles. It was built by the Emperor Shih
of the Chi̔n dynasty about 230 years b.c. as a barrier against the
northern tribes, or more probably as an evidence of power. He was the
same Emperor who burnt the books of the sages, thus rendering himself
famous by two works—one of construction, the other of destruction. The
wall near Ku-Pei-Ko̔u is for the most part in very good repair, but in
other places it is little more than a heap of rubbish; where we saw
it, it is built of large blocks of granite, huge bricks and cement,
and the centre filled in with rubble and concrete. It is some fifteen
feet broad and twenty feet high; at regular intervals are quadrilateral
towers about forty feet high, built of granite with embrasures—some
of these are quite perfect, others in ruin; wild vines, asparagus,
bluebells, low shrubs, and other plants grow in profusion among the
débris, and the towers are covered with silver-backed ferns and
mosses. For miles and miles as far as our eyes could stretch, up hill
and down dale, up precipices almost perpendicular, and over the highest
peaks, we traced the course of the wall; when we thought we had fairly
lost sight of it our glasses would light on some distant crag carrying
it on still farther. How so much material could have been got together
in such wild and inaccessible spots is a marvel.

Even without the attraction of the Great Wall, the height on which we
stood would have been well worth visiting. Range above range of hills
rose all round us; on one side were the wilds of Mongolia, on the other
the plains of China. At our feet lay the little town with its absurd
fortification and ditches and cannon, and the river flowing past it.
The mountain view was only bounded by the limits of our sight.

We lingered long on the wall, looking and wondering at the beauty of
the scene. We gathered some ferns and mosses, of which I send you
some, and by dint of hardish work, for it was no light weight to carry
under a broiling sun, I managed to bring off a trophy in the shape of
one of the big bricks. I have got it safe in my room here, after many
vicissitudes, for it was often nearly left behind, and some day I hope
to take it home.

We left Ku-Pei-Ko̔u the next morning, going our several ways—Saurin and
Frater to Mongolia, Murray and I to the Tombs of the Mings, which I
must tell you about in another letter.

[Illustration: The symbol of Yang and Yin]

As you interest yourself about Chinese curiosities and antiquities, I
will add a few words about the Yang and Yin, to which I alluded in the
early part of my letter.

You may have noticed on old porcelain and other ornaments this device.
It is the symbol of Yang and Yin, the universal male and female
principle of creation to which everything is referred. The celestial
principle is male, the terrestrial female; even plants are male and
female, without reference, of course, to the sexual system of Linnæus;
odd numbers are male, even numbers female. Day and the sun male, night
and the moon female. Parts of the body, the lungs, the heart, the
liver, etc., each have a sex. Sir John Davis compares with this the
Egyptian and Brahmin mythologies (_The Chinese_, vol. ii. p. 67).




                               LETTER XIV


                                          PEKING, _25th Sept. 1865_.

In my last letter I told you how we went to Ku-Pei-Ko̔u. We turned
homewards (that I should talk of Peking as home!) on the 29th of
August. I began my backward journey unluckily. My horse had a sore
back, which no nostrum in the pharmacopœia of a dirty old Chinese
veterinary surgeon could heal in time for me to ride him, so I had to
go in a cart. Our first day’s journey was back over the road by which
we had arrived as far as Mi-Yün-Hsien, a distance of five-and-thirty
miles—no great things, to be sure; but the average pace was three miles
an hour; the road was full of deep ruts, and rendered doubly uneven
by rocky passages and big stones. The carts have no springs; at every
jolt I was banged up against the hard sides, and by the evening my
back was as sore as my horse’s. After ten hours of a Chinese cart
a man is fit for little else than to be sold at an old rag and bone
shop. Misfortunes never come single; when I arrived at Mi-Yün-Hsien,
jaded and aching in every bone, the inns refused to take us in; this
was of very small account, for persuasion and threats soon brought the
people to reason. The only cause they had to give for their reluctance
to house us, was that last year some foreigners had stayed there, and
instead of paying for their night’s lodging had beaten the landlord
when he asked for his money; such are some of the travellers who come
to these parts, and who defeat all our efforts to conciliate the
people. However, we convinced the host that we neither wished to cheat
nor to beat him, and he, when he felt safe on both scores, was willing
enough to be civil. But during the altercation, which had attracted a
great crowd, my pocket-book was picked out of my pocket, which was a
serious loss, for it contained a heap of notes, rough sketches, and
plans, that I had made on different excursions, and our passport. We
offered a reward for its recovery, and sent to the Chih-hsien, or
governor of the town, to ask his help, which he sent in the shape of
two officers, who came and knelt before us very humbly, but offered no
suggestions for getting back my book, which I shall now certainly never
see again.

We had two days’ journey from Mi-Yün-Hsien to Chang-Ping-Chou. As the
road lay on one side of the highway, the villages were smaller, poorer,
and more insignificant than any we had come to yet. By the richness of
their crops, the people here ought to be among the most prosperous, but
they are so taxed by the Government, and bled by the mandarins, small
and great, that they have no chance. Wherever we went the people were
complaining of their hard lot; nor was this mere talk, for since our
return to Peking there has been a serious outbreak not far from the
part of the country that we had travelled over. The insurrection, if it
deserved the name, has been happily quelled, but not before the rioters
had done great damage, making themselves masters of two small towns;
and it was even said that they had killed the governor of one town, but
this was afterwards contradicted. The affair was merely an additional
proof of the tyranny of the petty rulers, and the hatred with which the
people regard them. “A town priest and a country mandarin” are the
types of good luck, says the proverb; for the one is the darling of the
women, the other can feather his nest handsomely.

It is very curious in this country to come upon roadside shrines just
like those one sees in the “pious Tyrol” and other Roman Catholic
countries. Those which are erected in honour of the goddess of
mercy, Kwang-Yin, with a babe in her arms, or the Queen of Heaven,
Ti̔en-Hou, are the very counterpart of the effigies of the Madonna and
Bambino. The majority of these shrines are faced by a low whitewashed
blank wall. This often is covered by an allegorical design of great
quaintness, in which the dragon plays a prominent part. The dragon
is the principle of good, and he is engaged in constant warfare with
the serpent or the tiger, who represent the principle of evil. These
battles are a common subject for the decoration of the blank walls of
shrines. Apropos of the dragon and serpent, the Chinese have a quaint
superstition. They believe that thunderstorms are created by the dragon
pursuing the tiger or serpent through the air, hurling bolts and fiery
darts at him. It is very dangerous to stand at open windows or in an
exposed place during a thunderstorm, for the serpent and tiger are very
crafty, and have cunning ways of dodging the dragon’s shots, which thus
fall on an innocent head. The tiger, who is drawn as a vicious-looking
cat, with his back up, lives to a great age; when he has attained his
thousandth birthday, he throws off his teeth and puts on a pair of
horns. The existence of such fables is not to be wondered at, for there
are old women’s tales everywhere; what is delightful here is that some
of the educated men really believe in them.

Chang-Ping-Chou was the scene of the great tragedy of 1860, the death
of the English prisoners from the effects of the barbarities of their
captors. It is a singular fact that the only one of the mandarins
connected with those murders who is still alive has been disgraced and
banished. The others have died miserably; one was executed in gaol
for contumely to the Empress, on the very day on which, expecting his
pardon, he had invited his wives and family to go to the prison and
fetch him away; another was killed, as it is said, by his own soldiers.
The retribution has been complete. The Sikh soldiers who survived the
cruelties to which they were subjected, and who gave the account of
what had happened, described Chang-Ping-Chou as a walled city as big
as Tientsing; but this is a mistake; it is a small walled city, very
prettily situated with hills on three sides of it; on the top of one of
these is a temple which the Sikhs mistook for a fort, as they easily
might. The little town looks prosperous enough, and appeared to be
doing a brisk trade in coffins (I never saw so many in any one place in
my life) and the water-tight wicker-work buckets, which are to my mind
the most ingenious production of North China.

The Shih-san-Ling, or thirteen tombs of the Ming dynasty, are about
five miles distant from Chang-Ping-Chou. It was the burial-place of
those emperors of the dynasty who reigned after the removal of the
seat of the Empire from Nanking to Peking. The first sign that we were
approaching something remarkable was a magnificent stone gateway, built
of enormous blocks of stone and standing isolated in the midst of the
plain. This gateway is the finest specimen of Chinese architecture
that I have seen. Some way beyond this is a second gateway of brick,
roofed with the imperial tiles, also very handsome, and this leads
to a large square granite building, cruciform inside, containing a
colossal marble tortoise, from whose back springs a marble tablet of
great height, bearing an inscription on both sides, the one relating
how the tombs were built by the Ming dynasty, the other how they were
restored in the reign of Chien-Lung. This building is surrounded by
four triumphal columns. Next follows an avenue of colossal figures in
marble,—grim sentries over the approach to the sepulchres. The figures
come in the following order:—Two lions sitting, two lions standing;
two chi-lings (a fabulous beast which appears once in ten thousand
years, and was last seen at the birth of Confucius. Chi-ling is the
same as kylin, which we in England misapply to designate the porcelain
and bronze lions with curly manes which are imported; these latter are
called by the Chinese shih-tszŭ; as you have a pair, I thought this
might interest you), two chi-lings sitting; two camels sitting, two
camels standing; two elephants sitting, two elephants standing; two
scaled beasts with wings and wreathed in flames sitting, two of the
same standing; two horses standing, two horses resting; two warriors
in full armour, prepared for battle, with breastplates that reminded
one of Medusa’s head, and carrying swords and maces; two warriors in
repose, their swords sheathed and their hands crossed on their breasts;
four councillors in their caps and robes of office; four chamberlains.
We passed through this mysterious assemblage, which was very terrifying
to our horses, and then had about a mile and a half to go along a
ruined stone road, with decayed stone and marble bridges, before we
got to the tombs. Each tomb is of itself a palace. The thirteen stand
in an amphitheatre of hills among groves of cypresses and persimmon
trees. The tombs are about three-quarters of a mile apart. The plain
is cultivated now, but evidently it was originally intended that the
whole place should be silent, solitary, and secluded. Nothing can be
more beautiful than the situation. As I told you once before, in this
country the fairest spots are chosen for burying the dead, and you may
suppose that the emperors of the magnificent Ming dynasty would not be
behind their people in this.

The tomb which is generally visited by strangers, and which I saw,
is that of the Emperor Yung-Lo; it is the oldest and _par excellence_
“the Great Tomb.” The Emperor Tae-Tsung, who reigned under the style
of Yung-Lo, was the third of his dynasty; he reigned during the first
quarter of the fifteenth century. It was he who moved the capital
from Nanking to Peking. Of the thirteen emperors of his dynasty who
succeeded him, twelve are buried round him; the thirteenth, who, when
Peking was taken by the rebels, committed suicide in his harem after
killing his wives and children, with the exception of one daughter, is
missing.

The Tomb-Palace is, of course, surrounded by a high red wall tiled with
yellow, the imperial colours. A broad and handsome entrance gate leads
into a large courtyard; on the right is a pavilion containing a marble
tortoise carrying a high marble slab with a commemorative inscription.
Past this court is a vast entrance hall. Two flights of steps lead up
to the hall, and between them is a slant of marble richly carved and
ornamented; I believe that this centre path is for the good spirits to
walk along. A second courtyard contains two beautiful little yellow
shrines, both empty. A triple terrace of marble, with steps and slants
as before, precedes the grand hall, a most imposing chamber. It is 81
paces long by 36 broad, and very lofty. The floor is of black marble,
the walls a dull yellow; the roof, which is fretted and painted like
cloisonné enamel with dragons and other emblems, is supported by
thirty-six huge masts of wood, smoothed but unpolished, and all of
equal size. They are marvellously handsome, and in this country (where
wood is so precious that an empty house is not safe for a night from
thieves, who will strip it of roof, doors, and windows) must have
cost something prodigious. In the centre of the hall is rather a mean
shrine in honour of “our ancestor canonised under the name of Wên.”
Every emperor passes through three names. First he has his own name,
which, after he ascends the throne, is never used nor borne again, for
he then assumes the style of his reign, and at his death is canonised
under a third. So this Emperor’s name was Tai-Tsung; he reigned under
the style of Yung-Lo, and was finally canonised as Wên. After this
grand hall come two more courtyards; in one of these stands a great
sacrificial altar of stone and marble. The top block of marble is eight
paces long; on this altar are placed the five gifts—an incense-burner,
two candlesticks, and two pots of fruits. Inside the altar is a tank of
fresh water, which is got at by passing a stick with a piece of linen
attached to it as a sponge through a hole in the side. This water is
a specific for certain complaints. The last building is a high tower,
with a vaulted passage springing off into two directions. I never heard
such an echo as this produced; we two, as we walked along, made a noise
like that of a regiment. From the top of the tower, which contains a
large perpendicular slab of marble painted red, there is a beautiful
view over the country, with the thirteen palaces of the dead each in
its niche in the hills; it is really a scene of rare and striking
beauty. Just behind the tower is an artificial mound covered with trees
and verdure; this, I believe, is where the body lies—a few old bones to
all this magnificence. There is a Chinese proverb which says, “Better
be a living beggar covered with sores than a dead emperor.”

As we were sitting over our dinner at the inn we both agreed that as
it was a lovely moonlight night we would go back at any rate as far
as the avenue of colossal statues. I never saw anything so weird as
the big beasts and warriors looked; they almost seemed to move in the
moonlight—one half expected one of them to come down from his pedestal,
like the Commendatore in _Don Giovanni_, and punish us for the
intrusion. It is impossible to imagine a wilder or more lonely spot; it
is really the solitude of the tomb.

The next morning at daybreak we rode into Peking, about 25 miles. I
have seen nothing so interesting since I have been in China as the
scenes of which I have tried to give you an idea.




                               LETTER XV


                                        PEKING, _25th October 1865_.

I who so lately wrote to you about blazing sun and scorching heat am
now glad to nestle into the chimney-corner and watch the “pictures in
the fire.” Outside, the rain is falling fitfully and the wind blowing
a hurricane; it moans and howls dismally through the courts and cranky
buildings of the Legation, piercing its way into all sorts of odd
nooks, and routing out old bells that jangle in a harsh and discordant
way from the quaint eaves, as if they were angry at being disturbed
in their dusty dens. Doors are creaking and timbers groaning in every
direction, and the windows threaten to burst in, but the stout Corean
paper holds good, though it gets stretched and flaps unpleasantly like
loose sails in a calm, and on the whole I confess I prefer glass. Every
now and then, as the storm abates for a while, I hear the tap, tap,
tap, of the watchman’s bamboo as he goes his rounds, and can’t help
grunting with Lucretian satisfaction as I look at my fire and think of
how cold he must be. In short, we are working gradually into winter. In
another fortnight the trees will all be bare, and Peking, throwing off
the green clothes which it puts on in summer, in order to delude stray
visitors into the idea that it is a pretty place, will stand naked,
dirty, and ashamed. The last month has been very pleasant—neither too
hot nor too cold; and the early morning rides, before wind or dust has
arisen, and when the evil smells of the town, which are beaten down by
the night dews, have not had time to assert themselves again, put fresh
life into us after the great heats. I have got a new horse. The first
one which I bought in the spring turned out to be possessed of every
vice to which horse-flesh is heir; so I sold him at a loss, after he
had bored my life out for four months, and am now well mounted on a
first-rate Mongol cob.

Talking of horses leads me to dogs. I have had a sad loss in my little
dog Nou-nou, of whom I was very fond. I told you what a little Turk he
was, always getting himself into scrapes about his amours. Well, the
other day he had some words with a big dog belonging to the sergeant of
our escort, which ended in his getting a bite in the back that broke
his spine and killed him. Everybody in the Legation regrets him, poor
little beast; he had been at Peking ever since the foreign Legations
first came here, and was quite a character about the place. I was very
much grieved at his death.

We have been interested lately in the steps taken by the Russian
Government to establish a telegraph from Kiachta to Peking and
Tientsing. The Russians wish that it should be a Chinese enterprise,
but that they, the Russians, should set it up and help in working
it. Accordingly, they have sent an officer of engineers here with a
complete apparatus to show the Chinese Government. It is set up in
the gardens of the Russian Legation. Some four years ago, when Baron
Gros returned to Europe, he sent out to the Prince of Kung a present
of an electric telegraphic apparatus. Such was the horror which the
Chinese then had of innovations, that the Prince not only refused to
accept it, but even to see it. Now, however, the Government is more
ripe for taking impressions from abroad. The members of the Foreign
Office, and afterwards the Prince, have been to see the machine work,
although the Prince took good care not to allow that his visit had any
special purpose, and with that view went the round of all the Legations
the same day. He watched the working of the telegraph without showing
any great astonishment or perception of what was going on; but a few
days afterwards M. Vlangaly, the Russian Minister, who had drawn up
for the Prince a paper upon the subject of the international utility
of telegraphs, received a very satisfactory despatch from the Foreign
Office to the effect that one visit was not enough to enable the
Ministers to appreciate so wonderful an invention, and that they hoped
to be allowed to see it again. M. Vlangaly has had the happy idea of
having some intelligent Chinese lads taught to work the telegraph, so
next time the Prince comes he will see that his own people can learn to
send off and take down messages. This is all a great step in advance.
The French, who are always on the look-out to find that other Powers
are extending their “influence,” as they call it, and in this case
have the additional motive for jealousy in the refusal of Baron Gros’
present, look upon this move of the Russians with great distrust and
dislike. We, on the contrary, are all for supporting any Power who will
help the Chinese to move forwards. The superstitions of the people
would be a great difficulty in the way of carrying out telegraphs,
railroads, or any great engineering project in China. They would view
with the utmost horror anything which might disturb places deemed
sacred, lucky, or unlucky. They have a regular system for determining
propitious places, manners of building, and the like. This they call
“Fêng Shui,” the wind and water system, and it is universally believed
in. No Chinaman, however educated, would inhabit a new house without
ascertaining that it fulfilled all the requirements laid down in the
books which treat of “Fêng Shui.” Some time ago one of our men was
ill; our chief teacher, a man of great learning as Chinamen go, said
quietly to Wade that it must be owing to a new chimney which had been
built opposite to the sick man’s room, but about a hundred and fifty
yards off. Any work which might be undertaken here must be carried out
with all respect to the “Fêng Shui,” or it would run the risk of being
destroyed. Graves and other sacred places must also not be interfered
with. In carrying any engineering project into execution, the best
plan would be for the engineer to lay down his line and employ Chinese
experts in such matters to see how nearly it could be followed.

I have rather a good story to tell you. One of our subjects of
complaint at the Chinese Foreign Office has been our being insulted
in the streets of Peking by the riffraff of the place. Their means of
annoyance is to howl out “Kwei-tzŭ” (devils) after us when our backs
are turned, and then, of course, to look as if they had not done it.
Well, the other day M. de Mas, the Spanish Minister, being about to
leave Peking, exchanged compliments p.p.c. with all the members of the
Foreign Board. Amongst them all Hêng-Chi distinguished himself by his
_empressement_, sending M. de Mas a magnificent dinner _à la Chinoise_.
M. de Mas went to thank him, and after the two old gentlemen had
exchanged banalities to their hearts’ content, the Spaniard knowing
that Hêng-Chi had a little son, the child of his old age, of whom he
was inordinately proud, thought it would be a very pretty compliment if
he asked to see the little boy, who was accordingly produced, sucking
his thumb after the manner of his years. Him his father ordered to
pay his respects to M. de Mas—that is to say, shake his united fists
at him in token of salutation, instead of which the child, after long
silence and much urging, taking his thumb deliberately out of his
mouth, roared out “Kwei-tzŭ” at the top of his voice and fled. Imagine
the consternation of the two old twaddles! Hêng-Chi was horrified, for
after all his protestations of friendship to us, which by the bye took
nobody in, it bored him not a little that we should find out that his
child was brought up in the privacy of his harem to look upon us as
devils.

A French missionary has been murdered in the province of Ssŭ-Chuan,
in the extreme west. It is said that there are 800,000 Christians in
the province. There have been persecutions and disturbances on their
account of late, and the Government of Peking will have to take very
active steps in the matter, or the French will be down upon them. The
central Government are always slow in punishing their provincial
authorities, whom they fear; and in this instance they will be the more
reluctant, as the governor of the province is a man who has done them
good service as an administrator.

We hear rumours of reforms in China. If the present dynasty is to be
preserved and China to remain independent, they must be brought about
quickly, for the moment is critical. Nothing can be more rotten and
corrupt than every branch of the administration, nothing can be more
faithless than the conduct of the Chinese towards foreigners. With
misery and discontent at home, and angry reclamations for breaches of
treaty from abroad, the Government are beginning to tremble for their
existence. If the remedy does not come soon it will be too late.




                               LETTER XVI


                                        PEKING, _5th November 1865_.

I was awakened this morning by such a noise of squibs, crackers,
petards, maroons, bombs, cannon, and all manner of fireworks, that I
rubbed my eyes and was half inclined to fancy that some good fairy
had transported me back to England, where Guy Fawkes’ day was being
celebrated on a scale of unprecedented splendour. Not, however, that
fireworks are a matter of astonishment here—they are going on at all
hours of the day and night; our opposite neighbour, the Prince of Su,
is continually letting off pieces which, to judge from the noise they
make, would make the bouquet at Cremorne look very foolish. Fireworks
and sweetmeats are the favourite dissipation of the Pekingese; the
ladies especially take great delight in them, burning and sucking away
immense sums. To-day Peking out-heroded itself: never was heard such
a fizzing, cracking, popping, and banging; for this is the seventeenth
day of the ninth moon, and although the Gunpowder Plot was never heard
of here, and if it had been would not have produced any extraordinary
sensation, still it is an occasion upon which every devout and proper
Chinaman is bound to burn as many squibs as he can afford, or more;
for the seventeenth day of the ninth moon is the birthday of a certain
little pousa or god, by name Tsai-shên. Now this little god is a
very great little god, being intimately connected with tradespeople,
and especially with their profits; and as tradespeople here are very
numerous, and all have a natural weakness for profits, a great many
crackers and squibs are expended to do this little god honour and
service—of course _à titre de revanche_; moreover, scraps of paper
upon which are written or printed characters of good omen are burnt
and scattered to the winds. Furthermore, this little god having been
during his lifetime on earth connected with the Mohammedan religion,
it is also a matter of decency to eat and invite him to eat mutton
all day, for pork would evidently be an insult to him, while beef
would be a deep personal affront to Buddha, but mutton satisfies all
parties, including the eaters, provided that they have enough of it. I
have mentioned this because it seemed to me noteworthy that at the two
ends of our hemisphere the same day should this year be from different
causes celebrated somewhat in the same way.

The little Emperor leaves Peking to-day for the Tung-Ling, the tombs of
the emperors of this dynasty. He goes to place his father’s coffin in
the tomb which has been prepared for it, and which has taken four years
to build. It is a great state occasion. The Emperor will be accompanied
by the Prince of Kung, and all the court and chief ministers, with
the exception of Wen Hsiang, who is the real Minister for Foreign
Affairs. He remains to take charge of the capital. I shall be able
to tell you nothing about the procession, for on these occasions the
members of the Legations receive an official notification not to show
themselves in certain streets between certain hours. Indeed, the whole
thing is conducted within the city with as much secrecy and mystery as
the Princess Badroulbadour’s procession to the bath in the _Arabian
Nights_; shops are closed and shutters put up, and the streets are
cleared along the line of march, for there is no saying what harm might
happen to the state if a citizen of Peking were to catch a glimpse of
the outside of the chair in which his Emperor is being carried. The
consistency of the Chinese in this as in other matters is remarkable,
for once the cavalcade is outside the city walls any lout may go
and gape at it. The public gains one advantage from these Imperial
progresses. The roads over which His Majesty is to pass are repaired,
for it would never do for Imperial bones to be shaken and Imperial
eyes offended by such roads as are good enough for “the hundred names”
(which is the Chinese expression for the common people).

The Chinese-Mesopotamian treaty was signed on the 2nd instant, and
I must say that the Chinese come uncommonly well out of the affair.
They had already concluded a treaty with Mesopotamia at Shanghai,
and had received no notification that the King of that country had
refused to ratify it, when all of a sudden a gentleman appeared this
summer announcing himself as plenipotentiary sent by the King to
conclude a treaty, nothing being said of the former one. The Chinese,
after some discussion, named two plenipotentiaries, and offered M.
T—— his choice of any existing treaty. He, however, said, “A quoi bon
envoyer un négociateur s’il ne doit pas négocier,” and sat down to
compose a treaty on the principle of an amateur opera, out of four
others. However, as the history of the treaty would not amuse you,
it is enough to say that the Mesopotamian showed himself to be _plus
Chinois que les Chinois_, while the Chinese exhibited a pliability and
a willingness to accept innovations which took us all by surprise. The
treaty is an affair of very small consideration; there has occasionally
been a Mesopotamian ship seen in the Chinese seas, and there is one
Mesopotamian subject in China who was declared bankrupt during the
negotiations. But the conduct of the Chinese, as showing a desire to
amend in their foreign policy, is of the last importance to us. They
have shown in these negotiations that they have read their translation
of Wheaton’s _International Law_ with profit, and they have departed
from old precedents in a way which was enough to make the old
conservatives’ tails stand on end.

The great difficulty with the Chinese has been their foreign policy.
Their internal affairs would right themselves if they would accept our
civilisation and our standard of official probity. But if they are to
preserve their independence they must learn to keep faith with foreign
nations and meet honesty with honesty.

Although in our recent dealings with the Chinese they have shown
better faith and more loyalty than before, we have still many crows to
pick with them. Breaches of treaty are endless. One of the articles
upon which we insist the most is that which provides that a British
subject offending against the Chinese law shall be handed over for
punishment to the nearest consul. The Taeping rebellion has attracted
to its ranks a vast number of rowdies, many of them deserters from the
Imperialist army. If these men were caught and left to the mercy of the
native authorities, it is fearful to think what their fate would be.
We are at this moment trying to rescue one man from their clutches,
and investigating the case of another whom they reported to have died
a natural death while being taken to Shanghai; but as the report was
not made until six weeks after his death, we suspect treachery. The
central Government shows every disposition to help us, but governors of
provinces are strong, and they know it. No stone, of course, will be
left unturned to get back the living man (if indeed he be still alive),
nor to exact retribution for the death of the other, if there should be
proved to have been foul play. It is not yet all rose-colour, you see.


                                                    _13th November._

We have no news yet of the mail of 10th September, which brings out
our new chief, Sir Rutherford Alcock. I was to have gone to Tientsing
to meet him, but I fancied the river journey would be rather cold;
and I am very glad I did not go, as I should have been dangling about
Tientsing all these days, not knowing what to do with myself. In the
meanwhile we are busy preparing for his reception. I am already in my
new house, which is rather pretty, with a great deal of Chinese carved
woodwork, but eminently adapted for catching rheumatism. It will cost
me something to make it wind-tight. I hope, however, by degrees to make
it comfortable and cosy.

I am in a state of philological orphanage. My first teacher, Ku, left
me to go into some small office—office, however small, being dear to
every Chinaman; my second, a most charming person, was caught stealing
a dollar off my table. The man was really such a pleasant companion
and such a good master that I rather wished to ignore the whole
thing; but my servant Chang-Hsi represented that if Hsü Hsien Shêng
remained he could be responsible for nothing that was lost, and so I
had to pack off poor Hsü. He was a perfectly inexhaustible fund of
anecdotes, proverbs, folk-lore, and Chinese small talk, so different
from the ordinary run of Chinese teachers, whose only idea of broaching
a conversation is to ask some preposterous question about one’s
“honourable country.” If he could but have kept his hands from picking
and stealing!




                              LETTER XVII


                                       PEKING, _25th November 1865_.

We are sending off a mail to-day in the hopes that it will yet be able
to leave Tientsing for Shanghai before we are finally shut out by the
frost from communication with the outer world. After this our posts
will be rare and uncertain, going by land to Chihfu and thence on.
The winter has well set in; we have had several sharp frosts, which,
although they are child’s play to what I have seen in Russia, are
aggravated by cutting winds which blow clouds of dust, pricking one’s
face like flights of needles. Nothing can be more bare and desolate
than this city, now that it is stripped of its leaves. Everything looks
gray and black, and the Chinese houses have a poor, pinched appearance
that to English eyes, accustomed to see a cheerful fire blazing in
even the poorest cottages, is very shivery. The natives are already
swaddled up in furs and wadding, and commend me to a cold Chinaman for
looking wretched. Their yellow-brown faces get perfectly livid and
corpse-like under the effect of the cold winds, a great contrast to the
tanned and sturdy Mongols who are beginning to flock into the city.
The life in the streets is changed too by the innumerable droves of
Bactrian camels with double humps that are pouring in long streams of
merchandise.

One great advantage of this time of year is in the improvement of our
larder. In summer we are obliged to ring the changes on tough beef and
stringy mutton; now we have plenty of game—hares, several sorts of
pheasants, wild duck, teal, snipes, and other birds innumerable. Soon
we shall have varieties of venison, amongst them that of an antelope of
Mongolia which the Chinese call Hwang-Yang, “yellow sheep,” said to be
the daintiest venison in the world. Of fruit we have plenty; there is a
certain small apple-shaped pear, by far the best I ever tasted. Grapes
we have every day in the year, so that nature does as much for us as
Mr. S——’s gardener does for him. To be sure, the gardener beats nature
hollow as to quality.

The _Peking Gazette_ has just announced an appointment in the Chinese
Foreign Office (the Tsung-Li Yamên), which is said to be the most
important event, as far as foreign relations are concerned, that has
taken place since the signature of Lord Elgin’s treaty. A mandarin
of the name of Hsü has been named one of the high Ministers of the
Office. This man some years ago was in high office in the province
of Fohkien, and while there, he, with the help of certain American
missionaries, wrote a work on the geography of the world, in which
he examined foreign institutions and men with an interest which no
Chinaman had ever before shown. His two favourite heroes were Napoleon
and Washington. The book was written in a popular form, and had a large
sale. After he had been in office three years he came to Peking to
pay his respects to the Emperor, and during his visit was degraded on
the plea that he had not conducted his government well, but really on
account of the new views put forward in his book, and of his admiration
and intelligence of foreign affairs. Now, for the very qualities
which before brought him into disgrace, he is raised to the dignity
of a red button of the third rank, and appointed to a vacancy in the
Board of Foreign Ministers, which was made this spring by the dismissal
of a mandarin named Hsüeh, who was degraded on account of his being
suspected of attempts to bribe the Prince of Kung at the same time
that His Imperial Highness was also out of favour. Hsü’s acceptance of
office is looked upon as the beginning of a new era in our intercourse
with the Chinese.

Sir Rutherford Alcock has reached Tientsing after a series of
disasters. He came in a man-of-war from Shanghai, disdaining the
regular steamers, and the consequence is that everything has gone
wrong, the last mishap being the loss of the Legation treasure outside
the bar at Taku, with 18,000 dollars. The sailors managed to upset
the chest into the sea as they were transhipping it into the little
steamer which was to bring it up the Peiho. There is a rumour that
divers have recovered the chest; if it is true, I think they deserve
all its contents for their pains. The weather is not exactly suited for
diving. Meanwhile the Legation courtyards are being flooded with carts
and packing-cases containing furniture, pianos, harmoniums, and games
of croquet; the latter will be hard to use, for there is not a blade of
grass nearer than the park round the Temple of Heaven.




                              LETTER XVIII


                                        PEKING, _4th December 1865_.

The messenger who brought us in the welcome mail of the 26th September
also told us that there was still a chance of catching a vessel at
Taku, before the final freezing of the Gulf of Pechili—the river, of
course, is long since closed—so here goes for the last account of us
before we are shut up.

Sir Rutherford Alcock arrived here last Wednesday with his family.
They had a terrible journey of it; three days from Tientsing in sedan
chairs, sleeping in inns without fires, and only paper windows in
different degrees of bad repair.

We are enjoying the _beau idéal_ of winter weather. We have had one
fall of snow, which has left its traces in the shade and on the north
side of the house-roofs; everywhere else it has disappeared under a sun
which at mid-day is always genial; the sharp frosts of the night and
early morning keep the ground as hard as iron; the air is perfectly
delicious, and for many days we have not been visited by our chief
curse, the wind, which comes tearing down from Mongolia to choke and
blind us with dust. This weather, fine as it is, comes very hard on the
beggars, who go about stark naked, livid with cold. The filth of the
furs which the poorer Chinese wear surpasses belief. It is a common
sight to see the sunny side of a wall occupied by half a dozen of the
natives who have deliberately stripped themselves and are eagerly
hunting after the vermin with which they swarm. The principal streets
are crowded with sellers of cast-off clothes, rags that would be
rejected by a respectable paper factory. They toss these about, singing
a sort of monotonous rhythmical chant all the time, after the manner of
Chinese hucksters, and they do a thriving trade in filth.

We had an offer the other day of purchasing a plant that would make a
man immortal if he ate it; as we had no desire any of us to undergo
the fate of Tithonus at the price of 5000 taels, nearly £2000, we let
it slip through our hands. It was brought to us by a drug merchant,
who said that he had found it in the mountains of Manchuria, and he
produced a Chinese botanical work in support of his statements. The
plant was a small black toad-stool; he called it the “tree of life,”
and said that it was only found once in a thousand years. We asked him
why he did not sell his treasure to the Emperor; he replied that he
would do so were it not for the way in which he would be bled by the
palace officials. When, however, we asked where the last man who had
eaten of the tree of life was to be heard of, he left in high disgust
at our unbelief. The Chinese ideas of natural history are always very
curious. Some days ago one of the wandering curio-sellers came to me
with a beautiful little crystal snuff-bottle of what they call hair
crystal, from the black veins like hair which run through it, and he
thought it necessary to explain how the hair got into the crystal. “You
see,” said he, “as your Excellency knows, we Chinese did not always
shave our heads as we do now. In the time of the Ming dynasty our
people used to wear their hair long, but when the Tartars usurped the
throne our people were all forced to shave their heads. Accordingly
they threw their hair which they had cut off into the sea. There the
waves and the rays of the sun, combining their influences, acted upon
this hair and produced the effect which your Excellency admires. But it
was only in rare instances that the influences happened to coincide,
and no man could of his own will, and by cutting off his hair, depend
on its being turned into hair crystal.”

The Emperor’s journey to bury his father has been made the opportunity
of rescinding all the decrees disgracing the Prince of Kung last
spring. They are to be blotted out from the records of the Empire, so
that future ages may know nothing about them.




                               LETTER XIX


                                         PEKING, _1st January 1866_.

The arrival of the mail last night brought the old year to a happy
termination, but, alas! Saurin is to leave us for a German post. My
batch of letters was doubly welcome, it was so long since I had heard
from home, and may be such an age before another mail comes up from
Chefoo; as for the newspapers, they bring such stale news now that they
are hardly worth plodding through. We get the pith of the news by the
Russian post and telegraph to Kiachta, so reading the _Times_ is like
being gifted in a small way with the power of prophecy, and shows what
a very tame affair life would be if we could foresee the future. Our
papers are still speculating on Lord Palmerston’s actions next session,
and three weeks ago we heard the news of his death.

This morning I was awakened by a procession of all the Chinamen about
the Legation, who came to bend the knee before me and wish me joy for
the New Year. I hope all their good wishes, with mine into the bargain,
may be realised for You.

Although it is a long time since I last wrote to you, I have little
enough to say. Sir Rutherford and Lady Alcock have settled down in
their new quarters. I think they are rather disappointed, and no
wonder; but they seem determined to make the best of everything, and to
try and make every one comfortable about them. Sir Rutherford’s first
interview with the Prince of Kung passed off very well. I never saw the
Prince so gracious. The Chinese Foreign Office, the Tsung-Li Yamên, is
almost as bad a place for receiving in as our old building in Downing
Street.[9] In order to be met at the great gates, which on grand
occasions is _de rigueur_, we have to pass into the reception-room
through the back kitchen, where we see all the little dainties which
we are to eat being cooked by very dirty natives. The reception-room
is a sort of octagonal glass pavilion in the middle of the courtyard,
a wretchedly cold place. However, the Chinese are independent of cold
rooms, for they don’t take off their furs (the fur of foxes’ legs is
the official dress), and they wear boots so thick that they cannot feel
the cold stones of the floor. Of course a building so exposed is as hot
in summer as it is cold in winter, so in this climate of extremes a
visit to the Chinese Foreign Office is never very pleasant.

I should tell you that the Tsung-Li Yamên is really a board of high
officials, all of whom hold other functions, which was created after
the treaties of 1860 for the conduct of foreign affairs. There is no
titular Foreign Minister.

One bright cold morning, about a fortnight ago, three of us witnessed
a Chinese execution. The place of execution is at the opening of the
vegetable market in the Chinese city. The market is held in a broadish
street, into which a number of large thoroughfares, at right angles
to it, lead. All these inlets were fenced off, and the street itself
filled with soldiery and officials; such a tatterdemalion crowd! with
nothing resembling uniformity of dress except the Tartar cap, and
that, in many cases, was torn and battered, and tassel-less. The men
were as heterogeneous as their clothes. Old and young, strong and
decrepit, half blind or whole deaf, none seemed too miserable objects
for service. I saw one effective soldier on crutches; hunchbacks and
cripples were in plenty. We left our horses in charge of some of these
poor devils, and walked through the lines, no one opposing us, but,
on the contrary, every one showing us the utmost civility. The whole
of the shops in the street were closed, but the flat, low roofs were
crowded with spectators; among them not a single woman or child was to
be seen.

At one end of the space closed off was a matting shed. Inside this
were the condemned prisoners, who were waiting for the Imperial decree
for their death to be brought on to the ground. We went in, and I
shall not easily forget the scene. There were fifteen criminals, of
whom one was a woman, one was a murderer; two, of whom the woman was
one, had stolen girls and sold them into the worst of all slavery;
the rest were highway robbers. The murderer was to be decapitated, it
being a severe punishment to a Chinese not to take his body out of the
world as his parents gave it to him. (It is this feeling that makes
them so averse to amputation.) The others were all to be strangled.
It is very strange to be talking with men who are to die within a few
minutes. Some of them were perfectly calm and collected, and came up
to talk with us and ask us questions, as if nothing was the matter.
One bright, intelligent-looking fellow came up to me and said, “Well,
I suppose you’ve come to see the fun.” The word he used was the same
that would be employed to signify the fun of a fair. “Do you have
this sort of fun in your country?” another said laughingly. “I wish
you would take me off with you.” We said we should only be too glad;
on which he smiled and said, “Ah! the law won’t let you do that.”
One very old man could not forget his Asiatic politeness, even _in
articulo mortis_. One of our party had asked a guard for a light for
his cigar. The guard either did not hear or did not pay attention; on
which the old fellow touched him and said, “What manners are these?
don’t you see the gentleman wants a light.” All, however, were not
so quiet. The murderer was raving and ranting drunk, howling out
every obscene blasphemy that he could think of against the Emperor.
The woman had been charitably given some drug, which, though it had
made her very sick, had deprived her of consciousness. Nothing could
exceed the kindness of the officials, one and all, to the condemned
men. They were giving them smokes out of their pipes, tea, and wine;
even the wretched murderer, who was struggling and fighting between
two soldiers, was only asked to “be quiet, be quiet,” in spite of all
provocation. The others were walking about the booth, their hands tied,
and a sort of arrow stuck behind their backs, bearing their name and
the crime for which they were to suffer, but otherwise uncontrolled.
They were all from one part of the country. I told you that the woman
had been drugged. This is a constant practice at executions. The most
famous drug for this purpose is the blood from under the red crest of
the crane, called by the Chinese “Ho ting hung.” This, or a medicine
purporting to be such, is sold at an immense price, and is said to be
carried by mandarins in one of the beads of their necklaces, in order
that if they incur the Emperor’s displeasure, they may have the means
of death at hand, for the crane’s crest-blood is a poison as well as
an anodyne. We gave all the cigars we had with us to the poor condemned
criminals, who were very grateful for them, and I was glad to leave so
painful a scene. A little farther down the street another large booth
had been erected. Here sat the high officials in a semicircle, with a
red-button mandarin from the Board of Punishments at their head. On one
side of this booth was a tiny sort of altar on which were displayed
the tools of the executioner—the swords and bloody string, and the
tourniquets and strings for strangling. In front of the altar a small
brick stove had been built, over which was a caldron of boiling water,
like a huge barber’s pot, to warm the swords. The executioner’s men
were huddled round it toasting their hands. The swords are short broad
blades, almost like choppers, with a long wooden handle on which is
carved a grotesque head. They have been above two hundred years in
use, and are regarded as genii and invested with preternatural powers.
They are five in number, and their names are Great Lord, second Lord,
third Lord, fourth Lord, and fifth Lord (Ta yeh, êrh yeh, san yeh, ssŭ
yeh, and wu yeh). When they are not in use they are kept at the chief
executioner’s house, a tower on the wall, where, as my teacher gravely
informed me, they are often heard at night to sing gruesome songs of
their past feats. When they are wanted their Lordships are “requested”
to come out.

The executioners have all sorts of stories and traditions about them.
One is supposed to be younger than the others, and of a skittish,
frolicsome nature, dallying and toying with the heads, not striking
them off at one blow like the others, who are older and more sedate.
There were many false alarms that the decree had come and announced the
fatal moment. But at last the chief headsman (Kwei-tzŭ-shou) came out,
and throwing off his fur coat put on a bloodstained apron of yellow
leather. He was a short, thick-set, but not ill-looking man, with that
curious, anxious, _waiting_ expression on his face that a man wears
with serious work before him. It was horrid to see how completely he
was the hero of the occasion, the soldiers round him treating him with
the greatest deference, and evidently proud of a word from him. The
five swords were carried in line near him. His assistant stripped his
outer coat, and then all was ready. So soon as the decree arrived the
prisoners were led out one by one to the booth where the mandarins
were sitting, and there made to go through the form of acknowledging
the justice of their punishment. They were then handed over to the
executioner. The headsman and his men had to beat back the other
soldiers with sticks in order to clear a space. Nothing could be more
indecent and revolting than the behaviour of the latter. All order and
discipline were at an end; they were like hounds yelling, snarling, and
struggling to tear a fox in pieces rather than men ostensibly employed
to keep the peace. The murderer was the first man brought forward.
Happily he had raved himself into a state of insensibility, so his
pains were over. The decapitation is done with marvellous speed. A
string is passed round the prisoner’s neck, close under the chin, and
his head is thus held up by the assistant so as to offer resistance
to the sword. When a mandarin is executed, the headsman meets him and
says, “Ching ta jên kwei ti̔en,” “I pray that your Excellency may fly
to heaven”—much as our executioners used to ask the pardon of their
victims. The man is made to kneel, in an instant the sword is raised,
the executioner gives a shriek supposed to represent the words “I have
executed a man” (Sha liao jên), and at one blow the head is severed
from the trunk and carried off to be inspected by the mandarins. As
the blow falls the people all cry out, “A good sword” (hao Tao),
partly in praise of the headsman’s skill, but more especially from a
superstitious feeling _um berufen_. The strangling is done with the
same merciful quickness. It is far less lengthy than hanging. Two
pieces of whip-cord are passed round the neck with a loop. The criminal
is placed with his face to the ground, and the two executioners turn
the tourniquet as quick as thought. Apparently there is no suffering.
As I passed the big booth on my way out—for you may imagine that when
I had seen how the matter was conducted I stayed for no more—I heard
a loud voice shout out a name. Immediately out of the shed where the
rest of the condemned were waiting, I saw a tall man walk out between
two others as leisurely and composedly as if he had been going to his
dinner. It was one of the young fellows with whom I had spoken so short
a time before. The last act of this horror is consummated in the _Pit
of the 10,000_ (Wan Jên K’êng) by the wolves and foxes, a pit in the
Chinese city where the bodies of executed criminals are thrown. Rich
people’s bodies are bought back by their families that they may receive
decent burial.

I was glad to see that the execution was conducted far more mercifully
than one is led to suppose by certain writers. It is true that this is
not the “Ling Chih,” or disgraceful slow death, which is the punishment
of parricide[10] and high treason. But an Englishman who has witnessed
that assures me that the criminal he saw so executed was put out of his
misery at once, and that the mutilation took place _after_ death and
not before. I was specially struck by the excessive kindness of the
soldiery to the criminals. The only sign of cruel disposition was the
eagerness with which they pressed forward to see the death. That was
revolting.

Of all the men who died that day not one appeared to be in the
slightest degree affected by the solemnity of his position, or to show
any apprehension for what was to follow. Where there was any emotion it
was simply abject terror of the immediate pain of dying. Beyond that
their thoughts did not seem to penetrate.

I must bring this letter of horrors to an end.




                               LETTER XX


                                        PEKING, _20th January 1866_.

Since I last wrote we have all been leading the lives of vegetables
in our own garden; with a skating rink inside the Legation there is
no excuse for facing the wind and dust outside. We have the greatest
difficulty in keeping up our rink. The wind blows the dust on to
the ice in clouds, and the hot sun melts it in, so that nothing but
constant flooding will keep the ice going. This has been an unusually
dry season even for this driest of climates, so much so that a few days
ago a decree appeared in the _Peking Gazette_ directing five princes
of the blood to proceed to different temples, and offer up incense,
and pray for snow. The Emperor had a cold, or he would have gone
himself. The _Peking Gazette_, by the way, is a very curious little
publication. It appears daily in the form of a small pamphlet, and
is sold for a trifling sum. It is said to have been first published
in the time of the Sung dynasty, about seven hundred years before its
brother of London was born at Oxford. It contains the movements of the
court, Imperial decrees, petitions, memorials and the answers thereto,
appointments, promotions, rewards, etc. Some of the announcements are
very amusing. I give you one or two specimens. Some months ago, at the
storming of a town which was in the hands of the rebels, at the very
moment when a mine had been sprung, Kwan-Ti, the god of war, appeared
in all his majesty (it don’t seem quite clear who saw him), and by his
presence so encouraged the Imperialist troops that they rushed into the
breach with an ardour which carried everything before it, and sacked
the city. In gratitude for this, at the request of the high officials
of Shan Hsi, the Emperor directs the officers of the Han Lin (Imperial
college) and of the Nan Shu Fang (private Imperial library) to prepare
a tablet to be erected in some temple in Shan Hsi to commemorate the
divine interposition. Notice is sent by the authorities of Cheh Kiang
to the Board of Ceremonies and Rites that a widow in those parts,
being in uncontrollable grief for her husband’s death, and resolved
to preserve her fidelity to him, has committed suicide. Posthumous
honours are awarded to her for her great chastity. (To commit suicide
on the death of her husband is the highest virtue which a Chinese wife
can show. The streets of Peking are in many places crossed by wooden
triumphal arches called Pai Lo in honour of these chaste matrons. It
would seem, however, rather as if this extreme chastity were dying
out, for I don’t know one of these arches that is not in the last
stage of decay.) A taotai, governor of a city from down south, has
come up to Peking on business connected with the sulphur trade. Having
finished what he had to do, he reminds the Government that his father
was killed some years ago in the rebellion in Shan Hsi, and his body
never recovered. He represents that the old gentleman’s bones weigh
heavily upon him and make him feel very uncomfortable, and he suggests
that the Government might send him on a special mission to Shan Hsi to
try and recover these same bones, paying his expenses as a matter of
course. The Government, in reply to this, praise his filial piety,
enter into his views about the bones with enthusiasm, encourage him by
all means to try and find them, but positively decline to open their
purse-strings. Posthumous honours, canonisation, or deification, are
often recorded in the _Gazette_.

Old Hêng-Chi is the officer of the Tsung-Li Yamên charged with
negotiating a new commercial treaty with the Russians relative to the
Siberian and Mongolian trade. Whenever he is going to be particularly
obstructive he sends po-po (sweetmeats) to the Legation. Now I suppose
he is going to play the Russians some _tour pendable_, for he sent a
whole feast both to the minister and secretary of Legation. It was
very prettily arranged; the decoration of the dishes and piling of the
sweetmeats in patterns must have cost the cook a world of trouble. I
think I once before gave you an account of a Chinese feast given by the
same old gentleman, and I daresay you don’t wish a repetition of the
account any more than I do of the feast, though the things are not bad
once in a way. The bird’s-nest soup was very good, though it owes its
flavour to the condiments with which it is dressed, the nest itself
being as tasteless as isinglass, which it much resembles.

My teacher the other day gave me some original views as to the
outbreak of cholera which took place a few years ago. Various causes
were assigned for it. Some said that the epidemic was caused by the
exhalations from the dead bodies of those who were killed in the Ta̔i
Pi̔ng rebellion; others, that offence had been given to Wên Shên, the
spirit of pestilence, a deity who is represented with a blue face and
red hair and beard. He carries in his hand a disk, a spear, a sword,
or some warlike weapon. A man who has fallen into misfortune is said
to have met Wên Shên. To be “as ugly as the Lord Wên Shên” is what we
should translate by “to be as ugly as sin.”

We had rather a good piece of fun the other night. One of our ladies
of the _Corps diplomatique_ has started Thursday “at homes,” and all
the Europeans in Peking congregate there. Last Thursday some one or
other sat down and played a valse, upon which a tarantula bit the only
two ladies, and they declared they must and would dance, so Pichon,
the French attaché, and I were told off as partners for them. Just
as we were spinning round the room, in came three or four Chinese
servants with trays of cake and hot wine, which I thought they would
have dropped, so stupefied were they at the sight. I don’t think I ever
saw astonishment so written on faces before. I can fancy them talking
about it afterwards—Ai yah! There was his Excellency Mi (that’s me) and
Pi Lao Yeh seizing the two Ku-niangs (young ladies) round the waist in
the most indecorous manner, and running round and round the room with
them, while O Lao Yeh beat the harp-table. Indeed it was unsurpassable!
Strange people these barbarians!

Saurin and I had a visit from Mr. Thomas the day before yesterday.
He is famous in China as the converse of St. Matthew, having left
the Church to go to the Customs. Mr. Thomas is a linguist of some
pretensions. He speaks several European languages (including Russian),
Chinese, Japanese, and Mongol. He came out about two years ago as a
member of one of the Missionary Societies, but quarrelled with his
brother missionaries because he had the good sense to refuse to preach
in Chinese after being three months in the country. He then entered
the Chinese Customs service, and was stationed at Chihfu when I passed
by there in May last. However, he has now returned to the flock, and
is living with the other missionaries at Peking. Mr. Thomas has just
returned from a trip to Corea, which he undertook for purposes of
linguistic research, and we were greatly in hopes of hearing something
about that _terra incognita_. While Mr. Thomas was at Chihfu he was
able to be civil to two Corean merchants who had gone there to collect
debts. They were Christians, and brought open letters with them from
the Roman Catholic mission at Saoul, the capital of Corea, entreating
any Christians whom they might fall in with to treat them kindly. Mr.
Thomas took them to live with him, and commenced studying Corean under
their auspices. When they were about to return to their own country
Mr. Thomas accompanied them. He appears, however, to have seen little
or nothing. His landings were but for short walks, principally on
islands along the coast. He reached a point of the coast 25 miles from
Saoul, to which he intended to have gone in the disguise of a Corean
in mourning for his father and mother, the face completely covered by
a long veil, loose white clothes hiding the body, the costume being
completed by a hat with a brim about a yard and a half in diameter. The
wreck of his Corean junk prevented his effecting his purpose (possibly
luckily for him), and he was obliged to return to China in a Chinese
junk; so he underwent incredible hardships from hunger and dirt, and
great danger from shipwreck, to little purpose; what he acquired of
the language must have been through his two friends, and he can give
no account of the people, who must be a curious race. Not only are
they so exclusive that they forbid foreigners to enter their country,
but they prevent their own people from leaving it, as the Japanese
did; only certain privileged persons are allowed to come to China with
tribute to the Emperor or for trading purposes. There are plenty of
these in Peking at the present moment; they are distinguished by their
high hats and peculiar type; any Corean not belonging to this guild
who left his country would be decapitated on his return. It is strange
that, notwithstanding this rigid exclusiveness, the Roman Catholic
missionaries seem to live undisturbed at Saoul, where they are said to
have made many converts. They are obliged, however, to wear the Corean
mourning so as to hide their faces, and conform to the habits of the
country.[11]

The most important part of Mr. Thomas’ tale is a report that 250
Coreans have gone over the Amoor, and tendered allegiance to the
Russians. Of course Russia will have Corea sooner or later, but I think
that if this report were true we must have heard of it from other
sources.[12]




                               LETTER XXI


                                        PEKING, _3rd February 1866_.

The mail day has come round again very quickly, so I am in hopes that
you are getting letters more regularly than I had led you to expect.
If the wonderfully warm weather we are enjoying now lasts, the river
must break up soon, and then we shall have regular mails again. On the
30th of January the thermometer stood at 40° Fahrenheit at midnight.
The Chinese are in great glee; after having consumed infinite amounts
of joss-stick in praying for snow, and sent out princes of the blood
to shiver in distant temples, and all in vain, the Emperor went out
one morning to pray on his own account, and on that very morning the
snow came. We took advantage of what has turned out to be the last
of the frost, for the present at least, to make an expedition to
Yuen-Ming-Yuen and skate on the lake. It was such a bright, pretty
scene—the lake was as clear as a sheet of glass, and the ice perfectly
transparent—not very good for skating, though, for the lotus plants do
not quite lie down. However, every now and then we came upon a hundred
yards square of marvellous ice, uncut by skates and free from dust.
A number of Chinese came to look at us; figure-skating astonished
them immensely, especially anything done going backwards. Some of
the natives skate after a fashion, but they are generally contented
with tying a skate on to one foot and pushing themselves along with
the other. It is said that skating used to form part of the Manchu
bannermen’s drill. We picnicked in one of the little pavilions in the
garden, and very jolly we were.

I went a few days ago, for the first time, to visit the Russian
missionary establishment (the head of which is the Archimandrite
Palladius), in the north-east corner of the Tartar city. It is
surrounded by a large open space; the air is fresh; there is no dust,
and above all there is immediate egress into the country without having
to cross miles of filthy streets. It is such a pity that the Legations
were not established up there in 1861. The mission consists of three
priests besides the chief; there is a day-school for twenty-four
children, whose parents are all Christians; indeed, the Archimandrite
told me that the neighbouring population were almost all converts.
The Russians have altogether a large congregation here, an important
element in which are the Albazines. The Albazines were originally a
small colony of Russian labourers, who settled at the little town of
Albazin on the Amoor. In the time of Alexis, father of Peter the Great,
the Chinese made war upon this little colony, and after a desperate
resistance on their part, which lasted about two years, conquered
them and took prisoners those whom they did not kill. On account of
the great bravery which they had shown, the survivors were carried
to Peking and made to serve as soldiers. Here they have lived to the
present time, having become Chinese in everything save in the matter of
their religion, which they have faithfully preserved. From father to
son they have been forced to serve as soldiers, and allowed to select
no other career. It is only recently that a decree has been issued
emancipating them from this rule, and permitting them to follow trade,
labour, or letters. There are probably not more than ten or fifteen
pure Albazine families left; but as they have intermarried freely
with the Chinese and Christianised their women, they largely swell
the Greek congregation. The carrying off of people on both frontiers
has been an old standing quarrel between China and Russia. It was to
settle questions of this sort that Peter the Great sent an embassy
to the Emperor Ka̔ng-Hsi. This embassy was the foundation of the two
Russian missions, that of the south being the present Legation, and
that of the north the Church mission. The southern mission was used
by the merchants of the caravans which used to arrive from Siberia
once in three years, to transact business between the two countries;
it has been recently rebuilt, all except the chapel, which dates from
Peter’s time, and which still bears the marks of an earthquake which
occurred in the middle of the last century. The Archimandrite told me
that when he first came to Peking twenty-five years ago there was no
more difficulty in holding intercourse with the people than there is
at present. The priests of the mission could not go beyond the Great
Wall in one direction, nor as far as Tientsing in the other; but this
was owing to the mandarins, who always were, and probably always will
be, obstructive. The people were friendly enough; those who did not
know them, seeing strangely dressed figures with fair beards and hair
for the first time, took them for Manchu Tartars; so even now it often
happens that we Europeans are taken for Mongols by the Chinese who have
seen neither race.

I was talking the other day to my teacher about Lord Palmerston and
his wonderful strength of body and mind. He was greatly interested,
and cited two instances in Chinese history of statesmen who were
flourishing and vigorous after eighty years of age. The first case he
mentioned was that of the minister Liang, who, in the reign of the
Empress Wu-Tseih-Ti̔en of the Tang dynasty (seventh century A.D.),
obtained the highest literary degree, and became premier at the age of
eighty-two. The second case he cited was more legendary.

Wên Wang, father of Wu Wang, the first Emperor of the Chou dynasty
(and a contemporary of Saul, King of Israel), dreamt a dream, and
in his dream he saw a beast that was like a boar and yet like a man,
and it had wings and flew. Now when he awoke he was sorely troubled
in his heart, because he could not read the meaning of his dream;
so he sent for the court seer, and the court seer told him that the
interpretation of his dream was, that he should have a wise and crafty
councillor. When Wên Wang heard this, he immediately sallied forth in
his chariot to seek for this wise man, and he took with him his two
sons. After many days he came to a river called Wei-Shui-Ho, and by
the side of the river was an old man fishing. The name of this old man
was Tai Kung, and during the reign of the wicked Emperor Chou-Hsin he
had lived in a cave in a mountain, cultivating learning. When Wên Wang
saw the old man he told his sons to descend from the chariot and ask
him the road. But the old man went on with his fishing, and answered
them, saying, “Behold the little fishes have come to me, but the big
fish stops away.” Now when this oracular answer was told to Wên Wang he
immediately knew that this must be the wise man that was promised to
him in his dream, for the old man’s saying was a reproach to him that
he had not himself gone down, as manners required, but sent his sons
instead. So Wên Wang invited Tai Kung to get into his chariot, and he
carried him off and made him his chief minister. At that time Tai Kung
was eighty years old and more. When Wên Wang died Wu Wang treated Tai
Kung with the honours due to a father, for it was by his wise counsels
that the dynasty became strengthened in the kingdom. He lived to nearly
a hundred years of age, and at his death he became a spirit, and many
say that he is now the captain of all the spirits, and assigns to each
his particular place and duties.

The above is a word for word translation of the story of Tai Kung as my
teacher told it me.




                              LETTER XXII


                                        PEKING, _8th February 1866_.

I expect this will reach England with the bag that was despatched last
Saturday; at any rate it will give you a few days later news; I have
but little to say.

The student interpreters gave a second theatrical representation on
Monday. The pieces were “Our Wife” and “To Paris and back for £5.” To
my mind the most amusing part of the entertainment was to watch the
faces of the Chinese servants at the back, who, not understanding a
word, were deeply interested in the performance, and said that it was
very beautiful, especially the first piece, in which the makeshifts
for Louis XIII. dresses charmed them much. The ladies stood on an
average 5 feet 10 inches in their stockings, and had blue marks where
whiskers and beards had been shaved off in the morning; but in spite
of all drawbacks, everybody agreed that there never had been and never
could be such a success—which has always been said of every private
performance I ever witnessed.

No one could believe that we are ice-bound here. Yesterday the
thermometer at 2 P.M. stood at 84° in our courtyard; at eight in the
morning it had been down to 22°, a difference of 62°! The Chinese
complain bitterly of the heat. The Emperor was to go again to pray for
snow to-day, and the _Peking Gazette_ publishes an article from one of
the Imperial advisers, stating that the want of snow must be ascribed
to the anger of heaven on two accounts: 1st, undue severity on the part
of minor officials in the Board of Punishments; 2nd, the number of
bodies killed in the rebellion and still lying unburied.

What thieves these mandarins are! Some, time ago when the Ti̔en Wang
(Prince of Heaven), the chief of the Ta̔i Pi̔ng rebellion, poisoned
himself, his son fled carrying with him his father’s great seal, which,
on his capture, was carried to the Emperor at Peking. The seal was a
huge affair of massive gold with two dragons on the top. Its value
was about £600. When the Emperor had seen it, it was handed over to
the Prince of Kung and the Grand Council, and by them deposited under
lock and key in the council office, the watching of which by night
is confided to certain high officials. When the turn of night duty
fell to one Sa, a man of good family and a mandarin of the fourth
button, the seal was missing. There was a great hue and cry, and all
the wretched servants in the office were carried off to the Board of
Punishments, where they were tortured _secundum artem_, the real thief
Sa being quite above suspicion. Meanwhile he carried off the seal to a
goldsmith’s shop in the Chinese city, telling him that he had received
orders from the palace to have it melted down. The man undertook the
job and put the seal into the melting-pot; but the two dragons, being
harder than the rest of the metal, would not melt, so they were put
on one side to wait till a hotter fire could be prepared. As luck
would have it a friend of the goldsmith, who had heard of the loss of
the seal, came in, and seeing the two dragons, smelt a rat, and laid
an information. Sa was tried, found guilty, and strangled in the
vegetable market. He was a well-to-do man, and his family were rich
people, so the money was not needed. But a little peculation, however
small, is dear to a mandarin’s heart.

Sa was not a master of his craft; he had not sufficiently considered
the eleventh commandment,—most important to a Chinese official.




                              LETTER XXIII


                                           PEKING, _7th March 1866_.

My last letter to you was dated 8th February, on which day the
festivities of the Chinese New Year began with the feast of Tsao, the
god of the hearth. This, of course, is inaugurated with popping of
fireworks and banging of cannon. Tsao is of all the spirits the one
most intimately connected with the family, and every year, eight days
before the New Year, he goes to heaven to make his report. Now as in
every family there must always be some little secrets which it is not
desirable should be known in heaven, it is essential that something
should be done to prevent Tsao’s tongue from wagging too freely, so
offerings are made to him of barley-sugar, that his mouth may be
sticky! At the same time, upon either side of his niche, which stands
in the kitchen, are pasted posters of red paper, the one bearing the
words “Go to heaven and make a good report,” the other “Come back to
your palace and bring good luck.” The niche is then burnt, and the god
rises to heaven to come back on New Year’s Day, against which time a
new niche is prepared for him.

As the New Year approaches, the principal amusement in the streets
is flying kites. These are admirably made, and represent all manner
of birds, beasts, and fishes. There are some which even represent
centipedes, but I have not seen those. In the tail of the kite is
placed a sort of Æolian harp, such as I once told you the Chinese
attach to their pigeons. I cannot tell you what a strange effect these
weird-looking monsters humming high up in the air present. The Street
of Lanterns, too, begins to make a great show. Lamps of every variety
of shape, from a bouquet of flowers to a fiery dragon, are exposed for
sale and bought in quantities.

On New Year’s Eve the houses are cleaned up and put in order.
Characters of good omen are pasted on all the door-posts; from the
window-sills little strips of red paper stamped like lace flutter
in the wind. An altar is erected in the courtyard with candles and
offerings, while crackers and fireworks are let off all night to chase
away all the evil Spirits that have been about during the year, and
especially the Spirit of Poverty.

The 15th of February was the Chinese New Year’s Day. It was a bright,
fine day, and the people were all figged out in the best raiment
available, either from their own wardrobes or those of the pawnbrokers,
whose chests must have been emptied of every article of smart clothing
for the occasion. All the shops were shut, but not empty; for from many
of them there issued the most infernal clatter that ever stunned human
ears. I looked into one, my curiosity getting the better of my manners,
and there I saw a number of respectable middle-aged _bourgeois_ sitting
in a circle, and each with a clapper, gong, cymbals, or drum, beating
for dear life with the gravest of faces. This was exorcising devils,
and, if devils have ears, ought to be a successful plan. The streets
are full of people paying complimentary visits to their friends, a
ceremony which is nowhere so universally observed as in China. Outside
the Chien Mên, one of the gates leading from the Tartar into the
Chinese city, is a small yellow-tiled Imperial temple to Kwan-Ti, the
god of war. This is crowded with worshippers on New Year’s Day. High
and low flock to pay their respects and draw their lot for the year.
Outside the temple were a couple of priests doing a brisk trade in
tracts and joss-sticks. Armed with a bundle of the latter, which are
whisked about in flames, to the great peril of European beards, the
devout advance and perform the ko̔to̔u before the altar with three
kneelings and nine knockings of the head. They then draw nearer to
the altar, and from a sort of cup which stands upon it draw at random
a slip of bamboo with certain characters upon it. This is exchanged
according to its inscription for a piece of paper which is handed to
the votary for a few cash by an attendant priest, and which contains
his fortune for the year. The people who took part in this ceremony
were excessively devout in their demeanour; there was no symptom
of levity or indifference; they were imploring the protection of a
divine being for the coming year, with superstition if not with piety.
The richer worshippers were making offerings of pigs and sheep as
sacrifice.

I don’t recollect whether I ever mentioned to you the Liu Li Chang,
a street of booksellers and curiosity shops, and one of my favourite
lounges here. It is one of the lions of the New Year. A very amusing
fair is held there. It is perfectly thronged with people, and a very
gay scene. Toys and artificial flowers are the best things sold; some
of the former are capital. Lifelike models of insects, tiny beasts and
birds, tops, kites of all shapes, and above all some little figures
of European soldiers and sailors—caricatures of the late war—that
were irresistibly comic. One man was selling a capital toy—two little
figures, jointed, and so contrived that by pulling a horsehair which is
not seen they begin to fight and go through every motion of desperate
wrestling. There were some jugglers, but rather a low lot. One man was
having bricks smashed on his head—a somewhat alarming performance,
for which, however, he seemed none the worse. Then there was a combat
between sword and spear, after the manner of Savile House in old days,
which ended in sword getting a kick in the stomach and a poke in the
ribs, which well earned a sixpence. A peep-show represented views
taken in China and Europe, of which the exhibitor was as ignorant as
his audience: he described St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Bay of Naples
as places of repute in the Lew Chew Islands; and I really should be
ashamed to tell you what was painted on the reverse of the view of
St. Paul’s. A temple of the Chinese Æsculapius in one corner of the
fair was crowded with visitors, who were pressing round the stall of
a venerable gentleman whose stock-in-trade was a bushel or two of
teeth and a picture representing the treatment of every variety of
disease in diagrams. The teeth he had extracted were mostly sound!
Fortune-tellers were casting up chances, and wise men reading destinies
in all the courts, which were piled high with votive tablets from
grateful patients. As to the walls, the tablets on them were three
deep. The crowd were uniformly civil to us, but oh, the garlic of them!
It was high jinks for the beggars, who were more than usually offensive
and pertinacious, especially the women with sick babies, who would
insist on wishing one a Happy New Year in every key. It’s no use being
pitiful, for if you give to one you will have a tail of a hundred at
your heels.

The New Year’s festivities last for a fortnight or so; it is an endless
succession of feasting and fireworks until the Feast of Lanterns,
twelve days after New Year’s Day. The latter is quite a bright scene
with all the lanterns and transparencies, but it sounds much more than
it is.

I must tell you something about the Chinese travellers who are
going to Europe, and whom you will see or hear about. Mr. Hart, the
Inspector-General of Customs, is going home on leave, and the Chinese
Government have ordered his Chinese secretary, with his son and three
young Chinamen, students of European languages, to accompany him. Pin
Chun, the gentleman in question, has been raised to the Clear Blue
Button, third grade, and made an honorary chief clerk in the Foreign
Office on the occasion. His son has been made a clerk in the Foreign
Office. It is a great pity that the Chinese did not choose a more
intelligent and younger man than Pin Chun, who is sixty-four years old,
and a shocking twaddle. He and his son are, from what I have seen and
heard of them, quite incapable of forming just appreciations of what
they will see. Then, for their first mission to Europe, although it
has no official character, they should have chosen a mandarin of more
importance than Pin, whose reports will have but little weight with the
lettered class of Chinese; indeed, these are jealous of his promotion,
and consider that his distinction is too cheaply earned. The reason of
Pin’s having been chosen is that he is a connection by marriage with
one of the ministers of the Chinese Foreign Office. He is said to be
very popular in Pekingese society, so at any rate, when he comes back,
what he has seen will be talked about in the “highest circles”; and
he is personally acquainted with the Prince of Kung, who proposed the
mission to him at a wedding breakfast. Pin has no official character
as envoy. He is told to travel and write down all about the “hills
and streams” of the countries he visits, and he will be trotted about
to every object of interest. I only hope that he will not be too much
lionised. It would be misinterpreted here, where people would say at
once, “See what great people we are; when a private traveller among us
goes to your country he is received with the respect which you know is
due to a superior intelligence, but your barbarian ministers even are
not received here,—of course our Emperor is great and powerful, and you
are only here on sufferance.”

I must leave off. I am just starting to Tientsing to see Saurin off,
alas! and when I come back it will be to almost entire solitude.

Perhaps I have spoken rather too slightingly of Pin Chun’s mission. It
is a small thing in itself, but we all look upon it as the first step
towards permanent missions in Europe and better relations here.




                              LETTER XXIV


                                          PEKING, _12th April 1866_.

I am going to tell you about an entertainment at the house of a Chinese
mandarin. You will have gathered from my former letters to you that we
see nothing of the Chinese in their own houses; their life and habits
are a sealed book to us. We only see the mandarins in full dress and
with the mask they wear in conference. It was a great pleasure to me,
therefore, to make the acquaintance of a Chinese gentleman of good
position, who is so far enlightened above his fellows as to like and
even seek the society of Europeans, and learn what he can from them.
Yang Lao Yeh is a mandarin wearing a blue button of the third grade;
he is nominally on the staff of the officials of the Board of War, but
his private fortune of some ten or twelve thousand pounds a year makes
him independent of his office, except in so far as his social rank
is concerned (for, as you know, in China, to hold office is to be a
gentleman). I became acquainted with him through the Russian Legation,
with which he has had intercourse for some three years or more, and
he invited a party of us to his house at the time of the Feast of
Lanterns. He occupies a large house in the Chinese city. We went to
him at about eleven o’clock in the morning. As he had not expected us
quite so early we spent half an hour in going over the premises. I
had never before seen the interior of a Chinese gentleman’s home; I
imagined, however, that Yang’s would be a very favourable specimen of a
rich man’s house. It is very pretty, with innumerable courtyards round
which the dwelling-houses are built. The principal court surrounds
a small artificial pond, in the centre of which is a sort of glass
summer-house approached by two little miniature bridges with tiny white
lions of white marble guarding them at intervals. Rockeries, which are
a very favourite garden ornament, caves, grottoes, and turrets with
battlements, all on a Liliputian scale, are crammed wherever there is
room, in a most picturesque defiance of order and architecture. The
only attempts at flowers and shrubs are a few of the famous dwarfed
trees, trained so as to represent with their branches characters of
good omen, such as Happiness, Longevity, etc. A broad terrace walk
surmounts the whole. But besides having the most perfect luxury _à la
Chinoise_, Yang is a great amateur of all European inventions. He has
a room fitted up after our fashion, and his whole house is full of
guns, telescopes, clocks, barometers, thermometers, and other foreign
importations. He has even gone so far as to fit up a photographic
studio, and takes lessons in the art, which he practises with
considerable success. He gave us really capital portraits of himself
of his own execution. When we had wandered all over the house Yang led
us into the private apartments where breakfast had been prepared for
us. Here he presented to us his son, a very small boy of sixteen, but
a white-buttoned mandarin, nevertheless (of course the rank had been
purchased; in China both civil and military rank can be bought). The
ladies of the family, resplendent in silks and satins of many colours,
and painted so that not a particle of _themselves_ was visible, were
separated from us by a curtain through which they kept continually
peeping, anxious to see, and not unwilling to be seen. We were joined
by two mandarins, one from the Board of Punishments, the other from the
Board of Revenue, both very cheery and talkative. The breakfast was by
far the highest effort of Chinese culinary art that I have yet seen;
a certain marinade of venison, especially, was beyond praise. Being
asked to eat with chop-sticks always rather reminds me of the fable of
the fox who invited the stork to dinner, and makes me appreciate the
feelings of the stork on that occasion; but Yang had provided forks, so
we were able to eat on equal terms with our entertainer, who, apropos
of chopsticks, told us a story of a courtier who was so expert with
that utensil that when a grain of rice once fell from the Imperial lips
he caught it between his sticks as it fell, for which feat he was on
the spot promoted to high office and emoluments.

The only fault of the breakfast was that there was too much of it, and
as we were perpetually being pledged by our host and his friends in
warm wine of the headiest nature (no heeltaps), matters were beginning
to look serious, when happily the dishes were cleared away and tea
was brought. I thought the eating was all over, but not a bit of it:
it was only a pause in our labours; for in came a huge and delicious
tureen of bird’s-nest soup and pigeons’ eggs with cream of rice in
bowls to drink—excellent, but stodgy,—and so a Chinese feast goes on
all day without a halt. We witnessed an instance of the duty which a
Chinese son shows to his father; for not only did Yang’s son not sit
down to dinner with us, but he waited at table like a sort of upper
servant, handing his father’s pipe, and anticipating all our wants.
Amongst other things which he forced upon us was a bottle of Curaçoa,
which much delighted the Chinese guests. I ought to have mentioned that
before breakfast began, a company of acrobats made their appearance
to perform in the yard. The contortionists were two women and four
little girls. The band, which hardly stopped clashing during upwards
of three hours, consisted of a gong, two pair of cymbals, and a single
kettledrum, beaten by men. The performance was chiefly rope-dancing
and tumbling; the tricks were not in themselves as good as what we see
daily in the streets of European cities, but the difficulty of them
was enhanced by the performers all being small-footed. The elder woman
was amazingly strong. Lying on her back she balanced tables, chairs,
and other heavy objects on her feet as if they had been feathers, and
wound up by taking a large wine jar into which a little girl had been
put, like the forty thieves in the _Arabian Nights_, and tossing it
about on her tiny goat’s hoofs in the most alarming manner. Whenever a
trick was reaching its climax, the band, indefatigable and painfully
conscientious, beat away vigorously, making the morning hideous with
their _charivari_. To rest the women, who then took their places at
the musical instruments, the men began to show off some juggling
tricks. It was a mean performance, however, the tricks being all of
the commonest and most transparent—such as the production of bowls
of fishes, flower-pots, etc. The best trick was the waving of a sort
of whip of paper twelve yards long and four inches wide, attached to
a short stick. This the performer brandished and flourished in all
directions, making the paper assume all manner of graceful shapes:
now it was a snake crawling in huge coils along the ground, now a
spiral column like Donato the one-legged dancer’s scarf, now a series
of hoops through which the juggler skipped backwards and forwards.
This was a very exhausting exercise. During the performances a rather
amusing dialogue was carried on between the old man of the party and
a small boy who acted the part of Mr. Merryman, steadily refusing to
believe in the possibility of the tricks announced. The acrobats were
not paid their fee all at once, but instead of giving applause for
any particularly successful exertion, Yang would send them out money,
and as we, according to Chinese custom, did the same, they received a
plentiful largesse. One point of contrast between rope-dancing in China
and in Europe is its decency. The women all wore their heavy winter
trousers and loose jackets fastened at the waist by a sash—a costume
which shows no outline of the form.

We stayed with Yang until three in the afternoon. I believe he had
expected us to spend the night in his house; but the entertainment was
becoming wearisome; besides, the Chinese do not understand our ideas
of comfort—paper windows, thorough draughts, stone floors, and hard
benches explain why they wrap themselves up in wadding and furs, and
wear boots an inch thick in the soles. They are far behind the Turks in
these respects. I, for one, thought a night in the Chinese city rather
too much of a good thing, and was glad to make my bow. Our host, his
son, and his Chinese guests, who, by the bye, had at an early hour gone
off to a back room to enjoy a pipe of opium, came to the outer gate to
see us off, and we parted with many expressions of goodwill on both
sides.

I have had a deal of talk with Yang; he is certainly by far the most
advanced Chinaman I have met yet. Railways and telegraphs, which are
the bugbears of the Chinese ministers, are to him necessities which it
is foolish to stave off; indeed, he spoke to me about constructing a
tramway and telegraph over his property in Shantung for the convenience
of communicating with his tenants and agents. Any new European
invention which he hears of, instead of shaking his head and saying,
“Ai ya! it is very wonderful!” he sends for and tries to introduce
into the country. Indeed, more than this, if he is not called to high
office next year, he proposes visiting Europe, Russia, France, and
England; perhaps he will go home with me.

The Peking races came off on the 4th inst. They were a great success.
The course was made at a place called Wang-ho-lou, about three miles
outside the city. It is the bed of an old lake dried up; a pretty spot
surrounded by hillocks, and with the mountains in the background. Every
mound was covered with thousands of Chinese who had come to gape and
wonder at the barbarian sports. Two of the ministers of the Foreign
Office, Hêng and Chung, came to the grand stand. Old Chung had brought
with him his grandson, a smart little fellow of eight years old, as
dignified as a judge, and far graver than his grandfather. I made the
little fellow sit by me at breakfast, and plied him with good things,
of which he expressed his approbation with the solemnity of a Burleigh.
Wine I could not get him to touch, not even champagne. Altogether,
considering the means, or rather want of means, at our disposal, we
managed to have a capital day’s sport. Our little ponies are very
fast. An old pony that Saurin gave me, “Kwan-du,” won the half-mile
race, running it in one minute and five seconds, without training,
and with 11 stone on his back. Between our races the two ministers
made the officers of their escort show off their ponies; one, a small
gray pony of Hêng’s, was a regular little beauty, and would have been
much admired in Rotten Row. But I think that the prettiest pony on the
course was a little bay pony that I call “Hop-o’-my-thumb”—a little
fellow that I bought some time ago to replace my cob, which, according
to my usual luck, went lame in the shoulder without hope of cure. The
Chinese on the race day were not so civil as usual; we had much ado to
keep the course, and when we were going away they yelled, shouted, and
shrieked at us like a pack of wolfish fiends. They even went so far
as to throw a few stones, none of which struck any one; of course, in
such a crowd it was impossible to identify all the offenders; however,
one or two got well thrashed. A little while ago I was riding with Sir
Rutherford and a lady to the Temple of Heaven, when at the bottom of
the main street of the Chinese city we were mobbed and attacked with
stones and brickbats, one of which struck our escort. It is no use
complaining to the authorities—we get no redress. I have begun to
think for some time past that the _bonhomie_ of the Chinese, which was
so taking to me at first, is only a mask to cover hatred and disgust,
happily tempered by the most abject terror and cowardice. However that
may be, we are the masters for the present, and they know it—that is
all that is required.

We are enjoying lovely spring weather now, warm and genial, with a
little rain to remind one of home. The town is beginning to show a
little green from the wall, on which dog-violets and vetches, very
much dried up and sapless, are putting their noses out of the crannies
between the bricks.


                                                       _13th April._

Mail-day. No letters from home for a month past, and we hear that the
mail has broken down at Galle.




                               LETTER XXV


                                          PEKING, _22nd April 1866_.

Since I last wrote I have done nothing and seen nothing that I have not
told you about over and over again. However, to-morrow morning I am off
for a three weeks’ trip into Mongolia with Dr. Pogojeff of the Russian
Legation. We shall go out of China by the Nan Ko̔u Pass, and come in
by my former route of Ku-Pei-Ko̔u. I am looking forward with immense
interest to seeing a little of Mongol life for the first time. It
will be a new experience. I am afraid that one mail must pass without
taking you any news of me; but when I return I hope to make amends.
We had a great field-day at the Tsung-Li Yamên last week. Railroads,
telegraphs, violation of treaties, etc., all the old stories that have
been trotted out a hundred times. The Prince of Kung was very nervous
and fidgety. He twisted, doubled, and dodged like a hare. At last
when Sir Rutherford had him, as he thought, fairly in a corner, I saw
a gleam of hope and joy come over the Prince’s face. He had caught a
sight of his old friend and refuge in trouble, my eyeglass. In a moment
he had pounced upon it, and there was an end of all business. The whole
pack of babies were playing with it, and our Chief, who was furious,
saw his sermons scattered to the wind. It does not signify, though, for
these tricksters will promise anything. It is the performance which
is lacking. By the bye, when the Prince of Kung calls at a Legation
he leaves a card in the shape of a slip of red paper with his name
and title upon it—Kung Chi̔n Wang.[13] But he never signs his name to
documents; he subscribes them, Wu ssŭ hsin—“No private heart,” _i.e._
“disinterested.”

A Cantonese named Ma, whom I know and who has come up to Peking on
business, was anxious to buy a little Pekingese slave-girl, and I was
present at the negotiations. The child, a bright little creature eight
years of age, was brought by her parents to Ma’s lodging, and as she
gave satisfaction, the question resolved itself into one of price, and
here the fun began, for the little thing was so keen to go that she
eagerly took part with the purchaser in beating down the vendors; and,
finally, a bargain was struck at 28 dollars. At that price she was
handed over to her new owner, together with a bill of sale, of which
here is a translation:—

“This is a deed of sale. Wan Chêng, of the village of Wan Ping, has
a child the offspring of his body, being his second daughter and his
seventh child, aged eight years. Because his house is poor, cold, and
hungry, relying on what has passed between a third person and his wife,
he has determined to sell his daughter to one named Ma. He sells her
for twenty-eight dollars, every dollar to be worth seven tiaos and a
half. The money has been paid over in full under the pen” (_i.e._ at
this time of writing). “The girl is to obey her master and to depend
upon him for her maintenance. In the event of any difficulties or
doubts arising on the part of the girl’s family, the seller alone is
responsible, it does not regard the buyer. It is to be apprehended that
calamities may occur to the child, but that is according as Heaven
shall decree; her master is not responsible. None henceforward may
cross the door to meddle in her affairs. This agreement has been made
openly face to face. In case of any inquiries being made this document
is to serve as proof.” (Here follow the signatures or rather marks
of the vendor, the middleman, and a third person as witness, and the
date.) “The child’s birthday is the 11th day of the 6th month, she was
born between the seventh and eighth hours.”

Ma declares that as soon as the girl is grown up he shall let her
marry. He says, “My no wanchee do that black heart pidgin.” I believe
he will keep his word—it is a matter of business, and in business the
southern Chinese trader is scrupulously honest.

As for the child, she was simply in a fever of delight at leaving her
parents. I dare say her poor little life had been none too rosy; for
what says the proverb? “Better one son, though deformed, than eighteen
daughters as wise as the apostles of Buddha.”

I wonder whether any European ever witnessed such a transaction before.

I have been spending the last few days chiefly in Paternoster Row,
the Liu Li Chang, sitting at the feet of a very learned little Chinese
Gamaliel, who tells me wonderful stories about the arts and the old
craftsmen of China. He is a bookseller by trade, but being a great
connoisseur, he always has a few rare specimens of cloisonné enamel,
jade, rock crystal, cornelian, or porcelain in his shop. He is never
weary of telling how the Emperor Ching Ta̔i (A.D. 1450) used to work
at cloisonné enamel (like Louis XVI. at locks, and Peter the Great
at boat-building); how some even say that he even invented the art,
to which the Chinese still give his name, calling it Ching Ta̔i Lan,
Ching Ta̔i’s blue; how the great family of potters, the Langs, died out
in the beginning of the seventeenth century, carrying their secrets
with them to the grave, and how ever since that time the Chinese have
been trying to discover their methods—but all in vain—only producing,
instead of a wonderful _sang de bœuf_ of so soft a paste that it looks
as if you might scoop it out with a spoon, the, as he calls them,
inferior imitations, to which the French gave the name of Céladon
Jaspé, and which the great metal workers, such as Caffieri, used to
delight in mounting. Cloisonné enamel, by the bye, went out of fashion
at the end of the last century, and the Chinese ceased to make it; but
when, after the sacking of the Summer Palace, the specimens looted
there and sent home fetched such wonderful prices in London and Paris,
they routed out the drawers in which their forbears had carefully
locked their recipes—for a Chinaman never destroys anything—and soon
the market will be flooded with new work. The first specimen was
brought to me at the Legation the other day, and very good it was.

The rose-backed plates and cups dear to the keen-eyed loungers at
Christie’s can never have been the fashion at Peking, where men chiefly
love the brave colours and bold designs of the artists of the Ming
dynasty, and where purses are opened wide for ever so small a piece
of the thickly glazed ware of the days of the Yuan and the Sung. From
Ka̔ng Hsi’s reign to the end of Chien Lung’s, A.D. 1796, one seems
to feel the Jesuit, or European, influence in the substitution of
arabesques for the old barbaric designs. The great age for art in China
and Japan, as in Europe, was the cinque cento; the meanest, the dawn of
the nineteenth century.




                              LETTER XXVI


                                            PEKING, _23rd May 1866_.

I returned from my Mongolian expedition last Friday, the 18th,
half-starved and burnt to a cinder, but very jolly. I copy my journal
for you.

We left Peking, the doctor and I, on the 23rd April. We took with
us my servant Chang Hsi, groom, and fat cook. We of course rode our
own horses, while five mules carried the servants and baggage. The
doctor’s dog Drujok, a half-bred Russian setter, and my Prince, a heavy
shambling puppy whom I call a Newfoundland, but whose _seize quartiers_
it would be difficult to prove, made up the party. Our cavalcade made
a great sensation in the streets of Peking. “Here’s a game,” shouted
the street—arabs, piggish in many respects besides their tails; “look
at the devils and the devil dogs!” We went out at the Tê Shêng Mên
(Victory Gate). So soon as we had passed the dusty streets and suburbs
obstructed by carts and camels, whose bells and dull tramp irritate
one’s ears, while the dust they shuffle up blinds and chokes one, the
ride became delightful. The fresh green of the budding trees and young
spring crops and the tints of the distant hills were new life to eyes
tired with the monotonous grays of a Peking winter. It was a lovely day
too, bright, sunny, and cooled by a fresh breeze from the mountains.

Former experience of carts had decided me to take mules; but it was out
of the frying-pan into the fire. Carts are slow, mules are slower. If
one takes carts the servants are sure to stow away one ragamuffin at
least to help them with their work and add to the expense. If one takes
mules the muleteer is sure to add a number of mules carrying wares for
trade at the different towns, which creates endless delays. Besides,
the pack-mules cannot keep up with the horses, and it is no joke to
arrive at an inn, tired and hungry, with the choice of ordering a bad
Chinese dinner, or waiting three hours for the cook to come up and
prepare a better one. Being in advance, we always had to find our own
way from place to place; easy enough if one could even get a direct
answer, but you might as well expect that from a Reading Quaker.

_Englishman_—“I borrow a light from your intelligence.”

_Native_—“Hao shwo! You are very polite.”

_E._—“How far is it from here to Sha-Ho?”

_N._—“How far is it from here to Sha-Ho? Oh! you’re going to Sha-Ho,
are you?”

_E._—“Yes! How far is it?”

_N._—“How far from here, eh? What are you going to do at Sha-Ho?”

_E._—“Just going for an excursion. But how far is it?”

_N._—“Just going for an excursion, eh?”

This sort of thing goes on until you thoroughly lose your temper,
seeing which an old man in the crowd holds up his forefinger and
thumb in an oracular manner. This to the initiated signifies that
Sha-Ho is eight (not two) li distant (the li is about one-third of a
mile). The Chinese have a way of counting with their fingers, which
is as necessary to learn as the numerals of the spoken language. They
constantly answer a question of figures by holding up one hand without
speaking. Up to five it is all plain sailing, but beyond that it is not
so easy. The thumb and little finger mean _six_; thumb and two first
fingers, _seven_; thumb and forefinger, _eight_, forefinger crooked,
_nine_; second finger doubled over forefinger, or whole hand shown,
first palm and then back, _ten_.

We passed our first night at Chang-ping-chou, which was a slight
roundabout, but my companion wanted to see the Ming tombs about which
I wrote to you last autumn. We found all the inns full, but a small
beggar boy, who, possibly with an eye to copper cash, took a great
interest in our proceedings, led us to a neat little inn outside the
walls where we were quiet and cleanly lodged.


                                                       _24th April._

We had all the trouble in life this morning to get the mules to start.
Threats of stoppages of pay were the only means of acting on the
muleteers. Even so we only got off by eight o’clock. The doctor and
I, accompanied by my man Chang Hsi, were to visit the tombs, while
the mules, not being supposed capable of deriving either profit or
amusement from the sight, were to precede us to Nan-Ko̔u, and there
wait our arrival. The valley of the tombs was not so bright and rich as
when I saw it with the autumn crops in all their luxuriance, but there
were plenty of wild-flowers, dog-violets, wild iris, convolvulus, and
others, and the persimmon trees were a mass of bloom. The avenue of
monstrous statues appeared tame to me in the glare of day after having
seen their weird and ghostly appearance by moonlight, but the site and
buildings must always be striking. There are plenty of temples and
palaces in and near Peking as large and as magnificent, but none in
such good proportion; they all look like “imitation” by the side of the
Thirteen Tombs.

We had to ride back to within a few hundred yards of Chang-ping-chou
before we could reach the sandy and stony road which leads to Nan-Ko̔u.
It was burning hot, but as the Russians say, “Heat breaks no bones,”
and with fresh, pure air to breathe it does not much signify how hot
it is. In Peking it is another matter. We reached Nan-Ko̔u at 2 P.M.
The little town is prettily situated at the bottom of the famous pass
to which it gives its name. Steep cliffs enclose it on either side; a
stream of clear water—rare sight in these parts—passes through it; and
the cottages in the valley are surrounded by trees and corn-fields.
The hills are wild and bold, with here and there bits of wall, towers,
and perhaps a temple or shrine on the ridges. The constant tinkling of
camel and mule bells testifies to the amount of traffic. Every other
house is an inn, and all seem bustling and prosperous. There was plenty
of movement and plenty of noise in our inn-yard; muleteers, carters,
footpads, poultry, and asses kept up a perpetual wrangling, crowing,
and braying, while an improvisatore in the kitchen opposite was earning
his night’s board and lodging by reciting tales of an unedifying
character for the benefit of the host and his guests of lower degree.
Although we had arrived so early, we thought it better to stop the
night at Nan-Ko̔u and go on in the morning, so we had time for a stroll
among the hills after dinner.


                                                       _25th April._

We started at six, riding donkeys in order to spare the ponies the
rough work of the pass. The Nan-Ko̔u pass is certainly in its way
very fine. The valley, which is a gradual ascent, is bounded on either
side by steep, abrupt hills, as barren and wild as a Scotch glen; a
few trees stud it at intervals, and a narrow thread of water runs
through it. There are plenty of shrines about, and always perched upon
cliffs so steep that one is lost in wonder how they ever got there.
Amongst these I noticed a form of sacred monument that was new to me,
but constantly repeated along this road—five white-washed earthen
cones like sugar-loaves, with bats[14] or other emblems rudely painted
on them; I guess that they represent the five offerings exposed on
Buddhist altars. As an instance of the difficulty of obtaining reliable
information, and to show how cautiously travellers’ statements about
China must be accepted, I asked three respectable Chinese by the road
what was the meaning of these five cones. One said that they were to
keep off foxes and wolves, another that they marked every five li along
the road, and the third that they were Buddhist emblems, but he did
not know what they represented. The pass itself, considering that it
is the highway between Mongolia and China, is a very miracle of bad
roads. It is as if nature had in some stupendous convulsion burst a
passage through the mountains, leaving all the débris in the most
glorious confusion, which man has been too idle to reduce to order.
Huge boulders of rock at every step obstruct a way which is difficult
enough already, and the overhanging cliffs seem as if they were on the
point of throwing down more masses to block up the road. Asses are
far the best mounts for this work. Ours carried us capitally, urged
by constant revilings from their rascally drivers. “Egg of a turtle!
what are you stopping for!” is the mildest of their adjurations, the
turtle not being used as significative of slowness, but as an euphemism
for cuckold. There are plenty of villages in the pass; the inhabitants
do a small trade in tea, hard-boiled eggs, and laopings (a sort of
girdle-cake), which they sell to wayfarers. There is one very pretty
little town, Chu-Yung-Kwan, with a curious old gateway richly carved
with quaint figures and inscriptions in Chinese, Manchu, Mongolian,
and Thibetan, said to be a relic of the Yuan or Mongol dynasty. At
the top of the pass, just before the slight descent which leads to
the plateau on the west, is an old ruined fortified enclosure called
Pa Ta Ling, “the eight great peaks.” It is a curious place, for the
inside is literally a heap of ruins and rubbish, while the walls and
fortifications are almost perfect.

We breakfasted at Cha Tao at the end of the pass, some 15 miles, and
very tiring miles too, from Nan-Ko̔u. After Cha Tao the road lies along
a sandy plain, probably once a lake, to Hwai Lai Hsien, a pretty model
of a Chinese town, with crenelated walls and quaint towers. East of
the town is a small river, spanned by what once has been a handsome
five-arched bridge, now of course falling into ruin and decay. Hard by,
on a low hill, stands a temple like an Italian monastery. We put up for
the night at Hwai Lai Hsien, having ridden some 35 miles from Nan-Ko̔u.
We had some difficulty in finding an inn. The people of the east side
of the town sent us to the west, and the people of the west incited us
to go back to the east. The mules and servants were behind us, and we
were left entirely to our own resources. At last my horse decided the
question by bolting down a courtyard, which turned out to be that of
the best inn in the place, but which, it having no signboard, I had
missed.


                                                       _26th April._

We had a dullish ride to-day to Hsin Pao An, passing a few small towns,
all fortified, probably against Mongol invasions; at one of these, Tu
Mu, we made our mid-day halt. Hsin Pao An is a very pretty little town.
One Chinese town is generally so like another that if you have seen
one you have seen all. Here, however, there is a very curious building
in the middle of the place; it is a sort of compromise between an
English town-hall, a mediæval fortress, and a Chinese temple; it gives
a distinction to the town. It is so very rare to see a drunken man in
China that it is almost worth recording that one rushed into our rooms
here, and was proceeding to lay hands on the doctor, who shook him off
in great astonishment, when the people of the inn came in and turned
him out, with many apologies for the annoyance.


                                                       _27th April._

The main feature in the plain on leaving Hsin Pao An is a steep
mountain, or rather precipitous and jagged rock, perhaps 800 or 1000
feet high, called Nei Nei Shan. It stands at the western end of
the plain, immediately to the east of the Yang Ho, “sheep river,”
which winds beneath it. On the very summit of this rock is a temple,
about which there is a legend which reminds one of Rolandseck and
Nonnenwerth. A prince of these parts had engaged to throw a bridge over
the river in a single night, or forfeit his life. He set about his
task, but when the sun rose in the morning the work was unfinished, so
in despair and in fulfilment of his vow he threw himself into the river
and was drowned. His widow erected this temple that she might pass
her life in mourning in constant sight of the spot where her husband
had disappeared. I have the very worst authority for this legend, of
which, by the bye, Bell gives another version quoted by Michie. The
Chinese about the place have never heard of it; however, I dare say it
is as true as most other legends; at any rate there stand the hill and
the temple, and there live (heaven knows how) five priests, exposed
to the full glare of the sun, and to every cold wind that blows, and
obliged to fetch even the water they drink up an almost inaccessible
height from the plain below. This day’s journey, following the Yang Ho
in a north-westerly direction, was very picturesque and varied, but
often rocky to a degree. However, our little Mongol horses behaved
like goats; they never stumble except on a flat road, where they get
careless and lazy. There is plenty of coal in these hills, which is
worked in the meanest manner and sent to Peking on camels. A geologist
who has examined this part of China, and especially the mountains to
the west, affirms it to be the richest coalfield in the world, but
the Chinese do not take advantage of it. We met plenty of travellers
of all degrees, the richer ones travelling in mule litters, a mode of
conveyance which looks to me as if it might bring on sea-sickness; and
numberless caravans laden with tea for Russia.

We rested at a poor little town called Hsiang Shui Pu, and put up
for the night at Hsuan Hua Fu, a large district city. Here in the
suburbs we found an inn which was a palace compared with those we had
put up in hitherto, though an English labourer’s cottage would not
suffer by contrast with the room I slept in. A certain amount of new
paper in the windows gave a promise of cleanliness and decency within
that was not fulfilled by the broken brick floor and musty tables and
benches; however, there were plenty of shabby, tawdry lanterns, and if
characters of good omen could give appetite and a good night’s rest,
we ought to have eaten like ogres and slept like the Seven Sleepers.
We were a good deal lionised here; indeed, the inquisitiveness of
the people was very troublesome. As I was lathering my face before
dinner, trying to get rid of the deposit of two or three sandstorms,
the curse of travellers in North China, a carter walked coolly into
my bedroom smoking his pipe, and went into fits of laughter at the
sight. I, irritated by the intrusion, flung the contents of my soapy
sponge into his face—which must have very much astonished it, for it
was much in the same state as the fists of the Irish boatman two years
after he had shaken hands with the Lord Lieutenant; and my enemy
fled howling. Presently another gentleman appeared who addressed me
as “Venerable Teacher”—a high compliment—and informed me that his
name was Ma, and that he was a merchant of caps travelling from west
to east; after which he retired, but shortly put his head in again to
ask my honourable name and nation, and I heard him afterwards in the
yard explaining to a knot of carters, muleteers, and loungers, that
I was the English teacher Mi, that I understood good manners, that
my body was all over pockets, and that my years were not few; which
statements the auditors received with many grunts and eructations and
repeated several times, afterwards one by one sauntering up to judge
for themselves. I happened to be emptying my pockets at the time of
Ma’s visit. Pockets are not used by the Chinese; they have, it is true,
purses or pouches at their girdle, but they are very small. The chief
receptacle for miscellaneous articles is the boot. My first teacher
used to pull writing materials and sugar-plums indiscriminately from
his boot, and always politely offered me the latter before tasting
them himself. Old Hêng-Chi, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who is
_malade imaginaire_ and always dosing himself, constantly pulls pills
or other pet remedies out of his boot. European pockets are always
provocative of wonder. The noises of the inn-yard made sleep out of
the question till long past midnight. The worst of all was an old
carter wrapped up in his sheepskin, sitting on the shaft of his cart
and beating a sort of death-watch with a stick on a piece of hollow
bamboo, like a ghoulish old woodpecker. I went out and tried to chaff
him out of his performance, but he took my irony for high praise, which
so delighted him that he every now and then burst into snatches of song
in a high squeaky falsetto, never stopping his eternal devil’s tattoo.
Mules, asses, horses, and quarrelling Chinamen made up a fitting chorus.


                                             _Saturday, 28th April._

Rode through the town of Hsuên Hwa Fu, which, for China, is in
tolerable repair. Though small as “Fu’s” go, it is pretty enough.
There are plenty of trees, chiefly huge willows and poplars, and a
great variety of quaint towers, pagodas, and other buildings. The
plain below is busily tilled, and, I should think, must be fertile;
but the crops are far behind those of the Peking plain, and the first
sowings have not yet put out shoots. Here amongst the numerous by-roads
and water-courses we lost our way, being, as usual, far ahead of our
mules. Seeing a group of boys working a few fields off I rode across
to ask the way; their backs were turned to me, and it was only when I
jumped over a low mud wall into the midst of them that they perceived
me. A shark appearing in Cuckoo weir while the Eton boys are bathing,
could not have produced a greater panic. With one consent the urchins
shouted out, “The Devil! The Devil!” and bolted for dear life. At last
I succeeded in capturing and calming one of them, sufficiently to
discover that we were about an hour and a half’s ride out of the right
road (no joke to men fasting and under such a sun). The deviation from
the regular route accounted for the terror caused by my appearance; the
boys had probably never seen a foreigner before.

Late in the afternoon we reached Chang Chia Ko̔u, which the Mongols
call Khalgan, the frontier town between China and Mongolia. It is the
first great halting-place on the road from Peking to Moscow. Formerly,
when the importation of tea into Russia by sea was forbidden, the whole
of the tea-supply passed from Tientsing through Chang Chia Ko̔u, and
there is still a great traffic, but, of course, it is much diminished.
The Russians have no important export trade to China. They have a
small export trade in cloth, which they manufacture, of a kind and
at a cost with which other producers cannot compete, for their cloth
exactly suits the Chinese, being of pure wool, very broad, and cheap;
but they cannot send it in any large quantity. At Peking, Tientsing,
and some of the large towns in North China, there are also to be found
miscellaneous articles of Russian manufacture, such as samovars,
knives, prints, looking-glasses, etc., but, as a rule, Siberia being
a non-manufacturing country and too short-handed to become one, goods
have to come from too far for their transport to pay. I believe that
the Russians have found their connection with China to be, on the
whole, a losing business. They have to pay silver—paper roubles will
not pass—for their tea, and must continue to do so as long as they
cannot establish an export trade; they are trying to obtain certain
rights of trading in Mongolia, but the Chinese cannot be persuaded
of the justice of transferring a monopoly of their own merchants to
a powerful neighbour. In the far north they have obtained certain
harbours which open the Chinese seas and the Pacific to them; but the
harbours are frozen for several months, and the advantage has saddled
them with huge tracts of country which it is hard for them to rule,
and still harder for want of manual labour to turn to profit. Russia
looks to the days of railways and telegraphs through Siberia, which
are probably not very far distant,[15] to balance the account. The
truth is that the English and Americans are the only people who have a
real commercial interest in China. The Russian interest is at present
simply one of boundaries. With the French the Chinese question is
one of missionaries and jealousy of the _interests_ of other nations
in the Far East,—_interests_ being with French alarmists synonymous
with _influence_. The German nations cannot as yet be said to have
any great stake here, though they have plenty of subjects in China,
principally clerks in great houses or small merchants. Portugal has a
very cleverly worded treaty with the Chinese, who will not ratify it
because it would cede to her the sovereignty of Macao, where she has a
flourishing trade, under the name of Chinese coolie emigration. Spain
has a treaty in an embryo state, and conterminal interests on account
of her Philippine Islands; and Belgium has a treaty, one resident
subject, and a ship trading here once in three years or so. The Danes
have a treaty, but little commerce. Italy two or three years ago
planned a mission hither, but it broke down. Even should the Russians
succeed in obtaining the privileges they are working for in Mongolia,
their Chinese trade would be but a drop in the ocean compared with our
immense commercial interests.


                                                       _29th April._

In spite of the remonstrances and even tears of our head muleteer, who
predicted certain starvation for ourselves and our mules, we decided on
pushing as far as Llama Miao, the great horse-fair in Mongolia, and
returning home _via_ Ku Pei Ko̔u to vary the journey. We accordingly
resolved to stop a day at Chang Chia Ko̔u to rest the horses and lay
in rice, flour, and other provisions, with provender for the cattle.
The delay gave us time to see the bustling little town which trade has
redeemed from the dulness of its neighbours. The streets are full of
animation. Fortune-tellers, improvisatori, and a company of strolling
actors who, gorgeous in stage dresses and burlesque “makes up,” have
taken possession of a small temple, attract crowds of gaping Mongols
and Chinamen. The main street of the suburb resembles a great fair,
lined with stalls like cheap-jack’s booths, at which every conceivable
sort of rubbish is sold. Pipes, rings, ear-rings, sham jewelry and
jade, Mongol knives, purses, cutlery professing to be made by Rodgers
and Son, lucifer matches from Vienna, kaleidoscopes, stereoscopes,
musical boxes and looking-glasses, with reverses quite unfit for
publication, are the chief wares. There is a capital seven-arched
bridge, adorned with lions and apes, across the almost dry river;
and wonderful to say, it is kept in repair, so you may judge how
prosperous the place is and looks. Foreigners excite little attention,
for European travellers are often passing; and besides, there are two
or three resident agents for Russian houses who superintend the loading
of the tea-caravans for Siberia.

One thing necessary before leaving Chang Chia Ko̔u was to get the
seal of the military authorities attached as a _visa_ to my passport.
As I told you last year, the petty provincial officers snap their
fingers at the seal of the Peking yamêns (public offices), but they
respect that of their own immediate chief, whose arm is long enough to
reach them. In the event of meeting with any difficulty on the road I
could not count on getting any official assistance without this seal.
Accordingly, early this morning I sent my passport to the general’s
office, with the request that it might be returned _visé_. At five
o’clock no passport was forthcoming, so I sent to say that I would go
in person to fetch it, and requested an interview with his Excellency.
When I arrived at the Yamên I was told that the great man himself was
ill—the usual excuse—but I was civilly received by his subordinate,
a greasy little blue-buttoned mandarin named Pao, and two others. I
repeated my request to see his Excellency Ah (that is his name), as I
knew how futile it is to treat with subordinate Chinese officials; but
_his_ Excellency only renewed his regrets that he could not see _my_
Excellency, which he hoped was pretty well. As he might be smoking
opium and really unpresentable, I thought it better not to press the
matter further, but attacked Pao on the subject of the seal, which he
fought off granting me on the ground that there was nothing in the
passport saying that I was entitled to it. I answered that the passport
entitled me to expect every aid from him, and that last year the
Ti-tu of Ku Pei Ko̔u had granted us his seal; threatened him with the
thunders of the Prince of Kung’s wrath, and told him (Heaven forgive
me!) how angry our Queen would be if she heard that a member of her
Legation, carrying the passport of the Legation, had been snubbed the
very first time he asked for assistance from a Chinese official. “Would
I like something to eat?” “I was much obliged, but I was not hungry;
I wanted the seal.” “At least a little jam?” “Many thanks, no jam,
but the seal.” “But the seal was really such an unimportant matter.”
“Then why not give it at once as the Ti-tu had done.” (Which, by the
bye, he had not done without a fight.) “Oh, but the Ti-tu lived at Ku
Pei Ko̔u and this was Chang Chia Ko̔u. How could it be done?” “Where
there’s a will there’s a way”—which is an excellent Chinese proverb.
My interlocutors doubled at every moment like hares, now offering
tea, now dinner, now tobacco, anything but the seal. They constantly
consulted together in Manchu, of which of course I did not understand a
word. Every now and then one went out to report, as I imagine, to the
shamming chief what I had said. How obstinate the barbarian was, and
how suspicious, for I took care to let them know that I was not gulled
by the very stale sick dodge. We were more than an hour marching and
countermarching over the same ground. I stuck out for my seal; they
persisted in eluding the question. At last I told Pao that I would
either accept the seal or a separate pass from his Excellency Ah to his
subordinates, but that if they refused to give me one or other I would
write to Peking and complain of their want of courtesy. After some
difficulty they agreed to furnish me with a pass, and even gave orders
for a draft to be written and sent to the hotel for my approval. I
then left them, but with such manifest disgust that they were probably
afraid that I might complain of their conduct, for immediately I
reached the inn a messenger made his appearance, saying that Pao hoped
I was pretty well (which, considering we had just parted, was an excess
of courtesy), and had not quite read my passport to his satisfaction;
would I let him have it back for a few minutes. Ten minutes after this
it was in my hands with the seal attached.

In the meantime our lachrymose muleteers had made off to Peking with
their mules, abandoning their pack-saddles and ropes, and forfeiting
all their earnings, save an advance which I had made them, rather than
face the imaginary horrors of the road to Llama Miao. Here was a pretty
kettle of fish! All hopes of an early start completely bowled out; and
really Chang Chia Ko̔u is a very nice place, but one day is enough of
it.


                                                       _30th April._

The whole of this morning was wasted in fruitless endeavours to get
mules or carts. The carters and muleteers, knowing our anxiety to be
off, demanded fabulous prices, and absolutely declined to start until
to-morrow; we were as determined to make a move to-day. At last, in
despair, the doctor rode off to the Russian agents to see whether
they could not do something to help us. It is no use applying to the
authorities, for their practice in such cases is to be extremely
civil and obliging, at once procure the worst and cheapest beasts in
the place, arrange for a high price, and pocket the difference; and
then when the traveller is a hundred miles or so away from all help
a horse or mule dies of a ripe old age, and the others are so feeble
and decrepit that he does not reach his destination until his stock
of provisions has long been exhausted, and himself has had to suffer
days of needless privation and discomfort. During the doctor’s absence
Chang Hsi, who had gone out as plenipotentiary in another direction,
came back with a treaty for ratification between himself, under the
style of “Chang the great Lord,” and a hirer of carts, who was willing
to convey our baggage to Llama Miao for rather more than double the
proper fare. The doctor’s negotiations were more successful, for he
returned with a wild-looking ruffian, with whom we finally made almost
satisfactory arrangements, though neither promising, coaxing, nor
threatening would induce him to start until the next day.


                                                          _1st May._

A short time since a missionary presented me with a copy of the
_Pilgrim’s Progress_ translated into Chinese, and adorned with
pictures, in which Christian and the other characters appear with
long tails _à la Chinoise_. If any one will produce a similar edition
of _Don Quixote_ for the benefit of the mandarins, I shall recommend
our carter as model for the portrait of the knight. His prominent
nose, lantern jaws, and tall, thin, ungainly figure exactly fit the
character; it is a type I never before saw in China. Any one of his
horses would make a capital Rosinante. We made a late start of it,
not getting off until eight o’clock, and even then our people lagged
behind in the town to buy things. At the gate of the town, where the
Great Wall of China is the frontier mark, we met with no difficulties,
our passports were not examined, and the officials only took down
our names and the number of our party. The day’s march was dull and
monotonous; it lay along a continuously ascending pass, winding between
barren hills, which bounded the view. We met strings of camels, mules,
and bullock-carts, all laden with tea for Russia and Mongolia. The tea
that is imported by the Mongols is of the coarsest quality, and pressed
into large bricks, which look something like cavendish tobacco, only
coarser, and with stronger fibres to bind them together. These bricks
are in some parts the current coin of the country: large transactions
are settled for so many bricks of tea, while smaller payments are made
by cutting pieces off the block as the Chinese cut fragments of silver.
The infusion made from brick tea is coarse and nasty; it often has a
musty taste owing to the damp confined in the cakes, which prevents
their transport by sea.

We breakfasted at Tu-ting, a miserable little village of mud hovels
which at a little distance look like mere holes in the hill; the place
reminded me of a colony of fever-stricken Circassians whom I saw during
their exodus two years ago, burrowing like rabbits in a bank near
Tchernavoda. Barring the fever there was not much choice in appearance
between the two. After Tu-ting the ascent becomes so steep that horses
are kept by the wayside, as on the St. Gothard, to draw up heavy carts
to a ledge on which stands a temple in honour of Kwan Ti, the god of
war, whither pious carters repair to deposit an offering on having
successfully made the ascent. Pa Ta, where we passed the night at the
sign of the “Ten Thousand Perfections,” was hardly richer than Tu-ting.
Our beds were made in the kitchen amid flour-bins, jars of oil, pots of
stinking cheese, and odds and ends of all sorts. It was the best room
of the inn, which was a low hut built of mud and chopped straw, roofed
over, but with the bare ground for a floor. This is not comfort, but _à
la guerre comme à la guerre_.


                                                          _2nd May._

A couple of hours more uphill and we were fairly on the Mongolian
plateau. A branch of the Great Wall runs along the mountains; but
here it is a mere heap of stones thrown together, a wonderful work of
patience, it is true, but lacking the grandeur of the brick-built wall
at Ku Pei Ko̔u; at intervals are rude turrets fallen or falling into
utter decay.

The plateau itself is a vast sea of downs bounded only by the horizon.
It is difficult to conceive anything more desolate; there is neither
tree nor shrub, nothing taller than a few dwarfish buttercups and
campanulas; there is not so much as a stone to sit down upon; for miles
and miles there is no trace of human habitation or handiwork; for miles
and miles one travels without meeting a soul, except by chance a stray
Mongol lumbering heavily along on his camel, or a bullock-cart carrying
tea; of beasts we saw a flock of Hwang-yang antelopes, that scampered
off almost before there was time to recognise them; the dogs started a
fox; a raven was feeding on a dead dog, and a solitary vulture followed
in our wake for hours, as if he expected one or other of us to come to
grief, but for to-day he was disappointed. We rested at Shi Pa Li Tai,
having made an absurdly short day’s journey, but it was impossible to
stir our Don Quixote into anything like activity.


                                                          _3rd May._

We rose long before sunrise, intending to make up for lost time. The
early morning on the steppes is something beautiful. Flocks of larks,
mocking and other birds are singing away as if their throats must
burst, the air is as keen and fresh as possible, and there is just a
sparkling of dew on the ground. On such a morning and on such ground
our little horses, in spite of the journey before them—of which they
always seem to have a sort of instinctive knowledge, for when the
holsters and headstalls are put on, the very worst of them sober down
and behave well—cannot resist a gallop. They lift their heads, and
turning towards the breeze sniff it in by long draughts with a zest
that it is good to see, and spin away like mad things over the steppe
on which they were born and reared. The dogs catch the infection, and
are in the most tearing spirits, careering away far out of sight;
Drujok, whose sporting education has been sadly neglected, setting a
bad example in a wild lark chase, which my puppy Prince is not slow
to follow. Roads across the plateau there are none; and we soon
raced away from all sign of the (at best) puzzling tracks of rare
carts and horses. Here was a pretty mess! Lost on the steppe like
sailors at sea in a cock-boat without a compass! not a landmark of any
sort; a boundless plain with a round horizon! After some while spent
in fruitless consultation, to our joy a speck began to rise on the
horizon; bigger and bigger it grew, until at last it defined itself
into the figure of a very jolly, fat, yellow-robed priest,—a sort of
Mongol Friar Tuck riding on his camel,—who could fortunately speak
a little Chinese. The good-natured fellow, shaking his sides with
laughter at our mischance, put his helm about and rode a mile or two
out of his own way to steer us into ours, so that in the end we found
ourselves at Pan Shan Tu a couple of hours before our people. As we
had started at three in the morning on the strength of a cup of tea
and a couple of eggs, and had been eight hours in the saddle, it was
rather trying to wait until past one o’clock for a meal. Still more
trying was it as the evening closed in, and the gathering clouds warned
us that there would be no moonlight to guide us, to find ourselves 25
miles from our destination, in the middle of the wilderness, and the
cart-horses hardly up to 3 miles an hour. Happily we came upon a group
of Mongol yurts (huts or tents), and their uncouth owners were willing
and able to take us in. Indeed, as I found out afterwards, the huts on
this track are almost available as inns for travellers. We were, as
usual, in advance of our party and unable to speak a word of Mongol;
however, from the yurts there appeared a wild, gaunt figure, which from
its wearing ear-rings and long hair, and from no other sign, I knew to
be a woman; in the kindliest but roughest manner she seized the horses
and led them to a post, to which she tied them, and then opening one
of the yurts, beckoned us to go in and warm ourselves, for it was very
chilly. In this hut were crowded a few men, women, and naked children,
a calf and several lambs, all huddling together round the fire: what an
etching Rembrandt would have made of it! The air was stifling; between
smoke and strong smells it was almost impossible to breathe; however,
the good lady cleared out another hut, which by the time our servants
came up was ready for us.

A Mongol yurt is of the simplest construction. A round, raised floor,
from twelve to fifteen feet in diameter, is made of mud and chopped
straw; round this is built a wall of trellis-work of laths about four
feet high, from which a number of sticks radiate to a point at the top;
a thick covering of pieces of felt tied on with strong cord completes
the hut; even the trellis-work is fastened by thongs of leather passed
through holes made at the point where the laths cross one another. The
whole can easily be taken to pieces and packed on a camel’s back. The
furniture of the interior is not more luxurious than the exterior: in
the centre is an iron fireplace, in which is burnt a fire of horse-
or cow-dung, which is the only fuel to be procured, and is collected
with great pains on the plateau; the smoke, so much at least as does
escape, finds its way through a hole in the middle of the roof; four
iron bars support over the fire the single pan in which all the cooking
of the family is done; round the tent are a few chests and presses of
the rudest Chinese manufacture, and the homeliest of brass pots and
pans from Peking; a few sheep-skins and calf-skins and pieces of felt
represent bed, sofa, and chair; the whole is blackened by much smoke
like a cutty-pipe. A flap of felt serves as door; the hole in the roof
is chimney and window in one, and if it rains that must be covered in.
Perhaps the quaintest thing about the place, and the strongest sign
of the poverty of the land, was the kitchen garden inside the yurt.
A basket or pan and a broken teacup, into which a little mould had
been placed, were beds in which half a dozen carefully-tended heads of
garlic were sprouting! There were no stables; the Mongols do not use
them. When they want a horse they go and catch one out of the herd. Our
horses were tied up to stakes outside. The cattle keep near the camp of
their own accord; the sheep are packed under a shed, so they enjoy a
covering; but the young things—calves, lambs, and kids—are carried into
the yurts and sleep with the other children. Such was our lodging for
the night, and, tired as we were, it did well enough for us. Our dinner
was a more difficult matter; our cook did his best for us, but he was
sorely put to it for saucepans and other requisites. As I said above,
the pan or caldron over the dung-fire is the whole Mongol _batterie de
cuisine_. Into it is thrown a quantity of millet or other grain and
a few lumps of fat mutton or beef, which is stewed in water. When the
solid part of this has been taken out, the greasy water which remains
serves to make the infusion of brick tea. Even the lowest Chinese
cannot stomach this nasty mess, and speak of it with the greatest
disgust. In some parts of Mongolia an infusion of brick tea is made
with boiling milk and salt, and always kept ready in the yurt. This is
said to be very good. I had been looking forward to getting a drink of
fresh milk, but the Mongols all say that their cows have died. Calves a
few days old, and in very good condition, tell another story.

When we had established ourselves in the yurt, the head of the
encampment, introduced by the Meg Merrilies who had taken us in and
done for us, and whom I imagine to have been his wife, came to visit
us. He spoke a little Chinese, which is necessary to him when he goes
to Chang Chia Ko̔u to sell his cattle. He told us he was a military
officer, but without soldiers to command. Of the world beyond Chang
Chia Ko̔u on one side and Llama Miao on the other he knew nothing.
His flocks and his tents were his whole life. The women, young and
old, had no objection to showing themselves; they came to look at us,
and brought their children, whom we made happy with cakes and white
sugar. Round-faced, flat-featured, healthy, dirty, and ugly are the
women; as for the men, sun, wind, and weather have burnt and hardened
them to a degree in comparison with which the most weather-beaten old
sea-dog at Portsmouth or Plymouth is satin-skinned. Men and women alike
are dressed in long sheep-skin robes, with the wool worn inwards, and
round fur caps. Their shapeless dresses and round head-pieces remind
one of the family in the Noah’s arks. The people appear very jolly
and simple, which they are, and very honest, which report says they
are not. Small articles to which they may take a fancy are said to
disappear mysteriously. The Mongolian dogs, several of whom guard
each encampment, to the great discomfiture of Drujok and Prince, who,
on the prowl after water, are constantly attacked by them, are fine
beasts—huge, shaggy fellows, mostly black-and-tan, with glorious tails
curling over their backs; they must be awkward customers. In spite of
the squalor in which our hosts live, they are rich people in their
way, and well-to-do; dirt and wretchedness must be with them a matter
of choice, not necessity, for their thriving flocks find a ready market
at Chang Chia Ko̔u for the supply of Peking. Things which are of the
most ordinary necessity to the poorest Chinaman these comparatively
prosperous people do without. They have not even a teapot or teacup;
and when we suggested washing our faces a rusty old iron basin was
dragged out of some corner where it must have lain unused and forgotten
for months.

It blew a gale of wind in the night, and rain came on, so we were able
to test the comfort of the tent. We suffered neither from cold nor
rain; in fact, nothing could be better adapted than these huts for the
extreme weather of the steppe. If it is fine you can sleep with the sky
above you. If it is cold the felt is a sufficient protection. It was
bitterly chilly outside, but within, although we could not bear a fire
on account of the smoke, we were as warm as toasts.


                                                          _4th May._

A pelting wet morning. We took leave of our friends the Mongols, and
rode to Chang-ma-tsze-chin, a Chinese colony, some twenty miles off, it
being too bad weather to push farther. We made friends with the whole
village through its children. A pedlar happened to be passing that way,
and by investing a few pence in small looking-glasses and such toys, we
made the little boys and girls very happy. To these the pedlar’s pack
of rubbish contained all the wonders of Aladdin’s palace, for had he
not come all the way from Peking? Our door at the inn was thronged with
jolly little urchins for the rest of the day, and we amused ourselves
and them by showing them our watches, pencil-cases, etc. The plains
or valleys here are narrower and surrounded by hills. I climbed one
height, from which I had a fine view over the steppe.


                                                          _5th May._

The beauty of the morning made up for yesterday. We were up by 3 A.M.
The vapours of the night before had settled down in dew on the ground,
the sun was rising brilliantly among fleecy clouds, which continued
all day to throw over the hills lights and shades such as one sees in
Europe—never at Peking, where the sky must either be black with storm,
or deep blue without a speck upon it. We stopped to breakfast at a
Mongol encampment, on the near side of an immense plain. I never saw so
many horses at one time in my life—the plateau was literally alive with
them; they were very shaggy in their winter coats, and did not show to
advantage on the poor commons they had had to put up with during the
winter; but some of them were well built for strength and endurance,
with deep chests, strong quarters, and big barrels. We were received in
the yurt of a widow, named Apakwai, a most ill-favoured dame; however,
her tent was the best in the place, and the cleanest, which is not high
praise. She was rich in furniture, skins, and felt mats, and there was
even some little attempt at decoration about her habitation, a few
Chinese prints of the rudest kind and most defiant of perspective being
pasted on the trellis walls; they were coloured in the garish style so
pleasing to Mongols, who are far more Oriental in this respect than
the sober Chinese. A Mongol swell, riding over the plain, gorgeous in
yellow and vermilion, and with his jolly moon face beaming out of a
yellow cap, red-buttoned and trimmed with sables, is a sight to see.
The ladies are great customers with the Peking jewellers for coral,
pearls, and jade ornaments. A woman, be she never so poor, is sure to
have some piece of finery in the way of ear-rings or head-dress from
Peking. If she cannot afford real jewellery she buys sham.

The widow Apakwai could speak no Chinese, but as every one about the
camp came in to idle away an hour, we had no lack of interpreters.
The chief personage spoke Chinese fluently. Apakwai lost her husband
in the war of 1860, where the Mongols were always sent to the front
to be shot at, and really, with such a wife, he was lucky to get out
of the world. She had a most villainous expression of countenance,
only exceeded in ugliness by her familiar spirit, a little dog of
preternatural hideousness, with a hunch on his back and a revolting
human face. I tried to conciliate him with “po-po,” Chinese cakes,
which he accepted with avidity, and even condescended to sit up and
beg for like a Christian dog, but so soon as my store was exhausted he
snapped at me as spitefully as ever. The old lady had other familiar
spirits even more disgusting, of whose presence she gave evidence by
much unbuttoning of robes and scratching. The widow was very eager for
cigars and white sugar, which we could not spare her, and as she sat
smoking her pipe and grumbling over the money our servants had paid her
for the use of her yurt, she was the picture of greed and avarice. I
added to her gains, but even that did not satisfy her. Altogether, if
I had a pound of cigars, a loaf of sugar, and a purseful of money, I
should be sorry to sleep alone in her yurt. I should dream of Jael and
Sisera all night.

At about two or three miles, at a guess, N.W. of the camp stands a
large temple, Ma Shên Miao, the temple of the horse spirit, most
appropriately placed and dedicated; with my field-glass I could see
large trees, leafless as yet, in its enclosure, the only trees that
we have seen since Chang Chia Ko̔u. Their size shows that the temple
is old, for of course they must have been planted there by the monks.
Between the camp and Shang-tu-ho, where we slept, the plain was
boundless in length, and confined at the sides by picturesque heights
coloured by every variety of light and shade. The distance gave us the
most perfectly deceptive mirage I ever saw. It was exactly like a vast
lake, the hill spurs running out into it like promontories, and forming
bays and creeks. Near Shang-tu-ho we passed by the roadside four stakes
driven into the ground, to each of which was attached a cage containing
the head of a man in a frightful state of decomposition. The tail of
one had escaped from between the bars of the cage, and was dangling to
and fro mournfully in the wind. They were the heads of four Chinese
highwaymen, once the terror of the road; now, poor wretches, they can
only frighten the horses, who may well shy at so ugly a sight. We saw
large flocks of Hwang-yang antelopes, but they disappear like white
clouds into space, and there is no chance of getting a shot at them.


                                                          _6th May._

By way of a change, and to spare my old pony Kwandu, whose turn it
was for duty, I walked the first stage, some sixteen miles or more,
to Ta Liang Ti. Two miles to the west of the road we passed the
Wang-ta-jên-Miao, the temple of his Excellency Wang, the burial-place
of a Mongol chieftain of that name, where, as the carter told me,
reside the officers in charge of an Imperial establishment for breeding
horses. A little excitement was added to the second half of the day
by our being warned of a band of “chi-ma-tseih,” horse brigands, who
infest the neighbourhood. The Mongols of a large encampment near Ta
Liang Ti have been waging war against them; yesterday they caught
four, the day before eight, all of whom will be sent to Chang Chia
Ko̔u for trial. The heads we saw yesterday belonged to four of their
troop. The ground is admirably adapted for their operations. The track
skirts a number of low hills, among which they hide, pouncing out upon
travellers who are too weak in numbers to offer resistance. The people
about are really panic-stricken, and no single cart ventures on the
road. An additional cause of fear is that these brigands are Shantung
men, who have the reputation of being very terrible. The deuce a tail
of a robber did we see, but we met a Mongol armed to the teeth and
carrying his long pole and rope for horse-catching—a most powerful
engine against a mounted robber—who asked me, in what the Mrs.
Malaprop of Peking used to call “broken china,” whether I had seen any
brigands, saying that he was one of a party out on the war-trail after
them. I could only wish him “good luck with his fishing.” We slept at
Ha Pa Chiao, where, as at Ta Liang Ti, the people were especially civil.


                                                          _7th May._

To-day we “received bitters unsurpassable,” as the Chinese say when
they come to grief—thirty-five miles’ ride at a foot-pace, for we
could not leave the baggage in a storm of wind, rain, thunder and
lightning, which regularly pursued us. The sandy soil was so heavy that
the cart-wheels could hardly turn; the horses were quite exhausted.
About two miles from Llama Miao, where the storm had lashed itself to
its greatest fury, we came to a small plateau surrounded by low hills.
Here we witnessed a phenomenon, new to me, and which I certainly never
wish to see again. The thunder, which seemed to circle round the hills,
roared savagely and cracked with deafening peals, while the lightning
ran along the ground criss-crossing in every direction until the
little plain was covered with a perfect network of blue liquid flames,
from the meshes of which escape seemed impossible. The effect on the
horses was indeed electric. Mine stood still and shivered with fear,
breaking out into a white lather of sweat, while the doctor’s, with
a scream, bolted madly into space, fortunately taking the direction
of the town. It was a weird scene, befitting a witch’s Sabbath. A
thunderstorm in Mongolia is indeed a trial to one’s nerves. To put the
finishing touch to our misery, when we arrived at Llama Miao drenched,
cold, and hungry, inn after inn refused to take us in, and we were for
near an hour riding through the wet streets, the people howling at us,
and a whole pack of curs yelping and snapping at our dogs. At last we
found an asylum in a large but wretched inn; the last tenants of the
rooms we occupied had been horses, and my bedroom was also used as a
cart-house. We were a good deal mobbed; a foreigner here is a _rara
avis_, and we created no small sensation, every dirty ragamuffin in the
place crowding into the yard. What excites the greatest astonishment is
that we are travelling for no business. To leave all one’s comforts
and ride four hundred miles for pleasure beats their comprehension, and
the Chinese are convinced that the barbarian has a bee in his bonnet.


                                                          _8th May._

Llama Miao is a large Chinese colony in the midst of a sandy desert,
four or five thousand feet above the level of the sea. The Mongols call
it Talonoru, which the Russians have softened into Dolonor. The Chinese
name, which means “llama’s temple,” is taken from two huge monasteries
of llamas, “the old temple” and “the new temple,” which stand by the
side of a small stream outside the town. They are rather villages than
temples, however, and contain, as the landlord and other natives told
me, several thousand llamas. We were unable to go into them, for the
river, swollen by the rain, was impassable; but we did not much regret
this, for all the temples have a strong family likeness, and we have
both had our fill of big Buddhas and dirty shaven monks with idiotic
faces (the llamas are by far the lowest type in China), out of whom
there is not even any information about their fraternity to be got,
for if you ask them some question touching their order, it is ten to
one that they will reply by another about your clothes. We contented
ourselves with a distant view of the Miao. In size, but in nothing
else, they reminded me of the Troitzkaia Lavra near Moscow, which is
also quite a small city.

The Mongols flock to Llama Miao to sell their horses, cattle, wool,
and raw hides to the Chinese, who, in return, supply them with corn
of all kinds, and such simple manufactured necessaries as the Mongols
require for their camps, at between three and four times Peking prices.
A measure of corn, which costs 100 cash in Peking, costs 3½ times that
amount here. This trade, for the landlord says there is no other, has
been sufficiently attractive to convert Llama Miao into a town, 6 li
(2 miles) long by 4 li (1⅓ mile) broad, and densely peopled. We passed
a dreary day, shivering in our fur coats. We saw no good horses for
sale, but one fine little gray pony, private property, was brought to
a farrier’s opposite, and bled in the street. I have since heard that
there is a great business done in bronze idols.


                                                          _9th May._

We had a better chance of seeing the town and horse-fair as we rode
through to-day. Yesterday the rain had made business dull, but to-day
there were hundreds of little horses for sale; their owners were
leading them about, strung together in packs, or galloping them madly
about, to show off their paces, to the great danger of the mob, and
especially of the small boys, who were scattered from under one horse’s
feet to another’s, but always escaped by a miracle. The show was bad
in quality, for the best horses are not brought in until the summer or
autumn. Our horses, from their superior grooming and feeding, were much
admired, but our saddlery received an ovation. “Ai ya!” said an old
Chinese horse-dealer, passing a dirty thumb over my saddle, “a man may
grow old in these parts over the border, and never see such a saddle as
that! Unsurpassable!” Besides the horsey gentlemen, there is a large
population of craftsmen, such as ropemakers, basketmakers, shoemakers,
and the like. With the exception of a few large well-built places of
business, which have even some pretension to ornamental architecture,
the houses are small and poor. Altogether, Llama Miao is not a place
worth a visit on its own account; we merely took it as a good point to
reach and turn back from. If it had not been for the fact that we were
riding back to Peking, I should not have been sorry to leave it.

We stopped at a small roadside inn for breakfast. The people were
such a contrast to the town-folk, who are always impertinent and
obstructive. The villagers are simple creatures, and so civil and
obliging. Sitting on a bench outside the inn was a very small boy,
dirty to a degree, but excessively pretty, feeding his younger brother
of three years old with a sort of macaroni, which he was stuffing down
his throat with chop-sticks; the father, a good-humoured countryman,
was sitting hard by, resting and smoking his pipe. I gave the little
fellow a sixpence, which he so sweetly made over to the younger child.
As I sat chatting with these people up rode a well-dressed Chinese,
followed by his servant also on horseback. He stopped, called for a cup
of tea, drank it, and went off without paying. I saw that my friends
loved him as a mouse does a cat, and asked who he was. He turned out
to be a customs officer. “A terrible fellow,” said one; “if travellers
don’t bribe him, he stops them, and takes their luggage, swearing that
they are smuggling.” The respect which the Chinese have for their
rulers is truly touching. Our charioteer made me promise to-day to give
him a pass from the Legation when we reach Peking, without which, and
perhaps in spite of which, he, being a countryman, would be mulcted at
the gate on his return home.

About twenty miles from Llama Miao, at a place called Shui-Hsien-Tszŭ,
the sandy plain ends, and the character of the scenery changes
completely.

The road winds down a steep ravine between hills and rocks of every
variety of shape; a tiny torrent follows the same line. There are a few
trees, leafless as yet, and here and there the lower hills are tilled.
Cottages are plentiful, and the number of travellers shows that we are
on the high-road to Peking. We passed the night at Kou Mên Tzŭ. The
people were as civil as possible, but very inquisitive, examining all
our belongings with childish curiosity. They were above all delighted
with my field-glass, through which they begged to be allowed to look.
They took the greatest care of it, and if any one was too eager the
others shouted, “Don’t snatch, don’t snatch.” It was given back to
me by the elder of the party, who said with the greatest gravity,
“Venerable teacher, you have opened our eyes,” and then proceeded to
lecture upon us for the benefit of a party of new-comers. “What are
you come to sell?” said one, interrupting the lecture. “Sell things!”
shouted my exhibitor indignantly; “what thing are you? He don’t sell
things; he’s an officer like our chih hsien!”—which office is promotion
for a brass-buttoned mandarin of a rank about equal to a parish beadle.
Popular enthusiasm reached its height when I pulled out an old number
of the _Saturday Review_ and began to read. I can now realise the
feelings of a giant in a caravan, travelling from place to place and
being shown wherever he goes.


                                                         _10th May._

Below Kou Mên Tzŭ runs a mountain stream, over which there is a rude
bridge supported on fascines filled with rubbish and loose stones. The
village, from the left bank of the river, looks very picturesque,
and there is a temple on the hillside that is a little gem in its
way. After ascending the river for some little distance we dived into
another mountain gorge, more beautiful and wild than that of yesterday.
The rocks are bolder and more striking, and the hillsides are covered
with a dwarf wild fruit tree bearing a pink flower as brilliant as the
wild rhododendron of the Alps. There are a few tender shoots, too,
on the stunted trees and shrubs, which, with the mosses and lichens
covering the different strata of rocks, add colour to the landscape.
As the road is a perpetual zigzag one is constantly coming upon fresh
surprises and new forms. To-day’s ride would have been perfect had it
not been for a storm of wind and sand which destroyed our pleasure. We
rested at Hung Tu̔ng Tien, and our abode for the night was at Lao Wo
Pu̔, a quiet little place, where the inn, which stands at a turn of
the road, is perfectly circled by hills, as if it were in a devil’s
punch-bowl. As we sat in the pretty inn-yard we agreed that in spite
of bad weather and cold (we had found ice in several places) we had
seldom enjoyed a day more. One advantage gained over our previous days
was that by loitering on the way and stopping to “sit a sit and rest
a rest” in different cottages, where we were always made welcome, we
managed to arrive at the inn after our servants instead of before. It
is such a bore having to look after the cleaning of the rooms and the
stabling of the horses in the midst of a gaping crowd of wonderers.


                                                         _11th May._

Descending the pass the valley widens; the mountain streamlet becomes
quite a river, which we have to cross over and over again; it is very
rapid, and at the fords the water reaches to the horses’ girths. The
ground here is carefully tilled, and well irrigated as it is, must
be fertile. I saw a jolly old couple cultivating their little field
together: the old man was painfully working out furrows with a hoe,
while his wife, stumping along on her small feet, sowed the seed out
of a wooden vessel, with a spout like a watering-pot, which she tapped
with a stick to let the grain fall out by degrees. I hope they may have
a good harvest. Our two resting-places were Kwa Ti Erh and Kwo Chia
Tu̔n, a large village with particularly disagreeable inhabitants,
whose practice it is to eat much garlic and then breathe in the face of
travellers. The sand-storm this afternoon was one of the worst I have
seen. It blinded us and threw a yellow pea-soup fog over scenery that
is as beautiful as mountains and river can make it.


                                                         _12th May._

We were warned last night to be on our guard and look out for brigands,
but nothing came of it. This morning we turned off into another pass
steering south-west. Here we had a change in the landscape, for the
hills were covered with trees and brushwood, showing more green as we
got farther south. The people cried wolf again about robbers, but they
do not seem to fancy attacking Europeans; the bore of it is that we
are bound to do escort duty and stick to the cart, which would not be
safe without us and our revolvers. The Chinese are in mortal terror
of them, so a bumbailiff from the Chih-hsien’s yamên at Fêng Ming
Hsien begged us to let him travel with us for company and protection.
He had been all the way to Kou Mên Tzŭ on foot to claim a debt of
six taels (£2). He told me he was between fifty and sixty years old,
and had been a confirmed opium-smoker for twenty years and more,
smoking regularly twice a day, once after each meal. He was as hale
and hearty as need be, walking his thirty miles a day with a heavy
pack on his back, for, with an eye to the main chance, he was going to
combine with his official business a little peddling trade on his own
account—a fresh proof that opium if not taken in large quantities is
not so enervating after all. As for its effect on the mind, some of the
cleverest Chinese are habitual smokers. I must say that I have never
seen anything which bears the faintest resemblance to the horrors of
opium-smoking described in books. This man told me that opium still
gave him delicious dreams, but said he regretfully, “It’s all folly,
they never come true.” Our first fifteen miles lay along very broken
ground—terrible work for the horses—but so picturesque, that if any
brigands had appeared I should have expected them to come out decked
in ribands and tall hats like Mr. Tupman. A common crowd of Chinese
ragamuffins would have been sadly out of tune. One descent that we
had to make was so abrupt that I fully expected our heavy baggage-cart
to come down with a run; however, the carter showed his ingenuity,
and improvised a drag with a huge log of wood which he lashed behind
the cart, fastening it to the axletree with a tourniquet; this made
an effective but not very lasting break; as the wheels wore through
the wood he tightened the tourniquet, and so brought the cart safe to
the bottom. From the top of the pass we had a magnificent panorama of
mountains, range rising above range, north and south, in huge fantastic
masses, with dark foreground and melting blue distances. Beneath us
to the south lay a little hill-girt valley green with young wheat and
trees almost in full leaf, a little Eden in the wilderness. At the
farther end of this valley is a pretty hamlet called Niu Chuên Tzŭ,
where we breakfasted in a clean, tidy inn. We had now travelled over
a hundred miles through narrow mountain passes, but soon after we had
left Niu Chuên Tzŭ our road opened out into a valley so broad as to
be almost a plain. The sun was setting and lighting up the mountains
that separated us from China as we rode into Fêng Ming Hsien, a
pleasant town to look at, but to us very inhospitable; the best inns
rejected us, and we were so mobbed and persecuted after we had found a
resting-place, that I was obliged to appeal to the executive to get the
inn-yard cleared. The executive made its appearance in the shape of a
large and very dirty gentleman with an unkept tail, who by dint of a
deal of threatening and bad language procured for us peace and quiet.


                                                         _13th May._

Of course, because our inn was particularly dirty and bad, the
innkeeper was proportionately extortionate. He was evidently a bad
character and rather fallen in the world, and had taken us in, in spite
of prejudices which he shared with the rest of his fellow-townsmen,
in order to make a profit out of us. We were glad to be quit of him,
the inn, and the town. Our mid-day halt was at a very different sort
of place, a little village called Shou Hu Ying, which takes its name
from a tradition that the famous Emperor, Káng Hsi, once came here
a-hunting, and killed a tiger on the spot where the village now
stands. There was only one inn, humble enough, but very clean, and a
few pots of flowers in the principal room gave it an air of smartness.
The guest-room also served as village school, of which all the
paraphernalia were scattered about. There was the magisterial chair and
scholars’ stools covered with bits of felt or sheep-skin,—more luxury
than we had at Eton,—well-thumbed copies of the San-tzŭ-ching,—three
character classic,—the Chinese boy’s primer, a few cheap
writing-materials, and a copy-book in which some little urchin had been
making laborious attempts at copying the numerals and other simple
characters. By way of ornament there was a picture of four little boys
representing the seasons, dancing round a basket of impossible flowers
with the most grotesque contortions, with the superscription, “The
four seasons when prosperous beget riches.” In the cause of letters it
was satisfactory to know that we were not interrupting studies, for
the dominie had given himself and the boys a holiday, and had betaken
himself to a fair at the neighbouring village of Po Li Nao, in order to
go to the theatre. It is very funny to hear a class of little fellows
droning out the classics, of which they don’t understand a word,
in chorus, the tones of the language making a sort of cadence. The
system of teaching a boy a lot of characters without their sense, each
character simply representing a meaningless sound to him, could only
exist in China. We passed Po Li Nao, some fifteen li farther on, and to
the great astonishment of the sightseers did not stop to hear a play by
a troupe of poor strollers. “What! been to Po Li Nao and didn’t go to
see the theatre! Ai ya! that’s strange!” said a footpad of whom I asked
the way. At any rate we saw what was better, Po Li Nao itself, one of
the most picturesquely situated little places I have seen in China. It
stands at the foot of a bend of low hills, above which rises a towering
range of dark, jagged peaks, and beside it winds a clear pebbly stream,
breaking here and there against large stones; add to this a few quaint
Chinese buildings, plenty of trees, and all the bustle of the fair. We
had a difficult sandy track again for the heavy cart; we were 13½ hours
on the road, stopped two hours at noon, and only accomplished about
thirty miles. We put up at Kwa Yo Erh, where, as at all small places,
the people were civility itself, our landlord even turning his family
out of his own house in order to lodge us comfortably.


                                                         _14th May._

We took care that our host, who combined the profession of military
officer with that of innkeeper, should not lose by his civility, and
we parted with mutual expressions of goodwill. We had a climb of it up
a steepish hill, on the top of which is a temple to the god of war,
and then descended on to the valley of Ku Pei Ko̔u by a winding road
cut in stages over a precipice such as one finds on a large scale in
Switzerland and the Tyrol. More than once on our journey through these
mountains I have been put in mind of the Alps, not only by the scenery
which, if it were not for the absence of snow and glaciers, would stand
the comparison well, but also by the goitres and cretinism which seem
to be the curse of mountainous districts. The other day at a cross-road
I asked the way of a man who was collecting dung for fuel; he turned
round and said very simply, “I know nothing, I’m only an idiot; ask
him,” pointing to a man ploughing, “he knows everything.” Deafness,
too, seems rather common, probably owing to the very hard weather which
prevails during some seven months of the year. The old people seem
hearty enough, barring their hearing. I came across none of a very
advanced age, but one old fellow of seventy-nine was very hearty, and
to all appearance likely to remain so, but he was by many years the
_doyen_ of all I met, and anything past seventy seems to be looked upon
as extraordinary.

We had a scorching ride to-day: there was a good deal of electricity in
the air, which told upon us when we had been some hours in the saddle.
As we were a full hour ahead of our baggage we turned the horses to
graze, and sat down by a brook to smoke a cigar. As luck would have
it we had no matches; however, there was a house not far off, so the
doctor volunteered to go and beg a light. On arriving at the cottage
he found forty or fifty people engaged in a “white affair,” which is
the euphemism for a funeral, because white is the colour of mourning. A
dozen or so of the relations, friends, and neighbours were seated round
a bier weeping and crooning officially, while the others, waiting
till their turn came for grief, were smoking their pipes and retailing
country gossip. They were very civil, and presently—for apparently the
attraction of seeing the foreigners was superior to that of mourning
by commission for a poor old woman—all, except those actually on duty
round the coffin, were crowding about us as merry as possible; even
the women with their heads bound up in white cloth as if they had
the face-ache turned out to have a peep at us from behind the house,
grinning and giggling as if they were assisting at a marriage.

We did not go into the town of Ku Pei Ko̔u, but stopped at an inn just
outside the gates; so we had all the advantage of the fine view over
the Great Wall of China, with pure air to breathe, instead of the
garlic and muck-stained atmosphere of the town.

During the whole of our journey from Llama Miao to Ku Pei Ko̔u we did
not see a single Mongol, much less a camp. The ground is not suited
to their nomad and pastoral habits; it is colonised exclusively by
Chinese, principally farmers from the province of Shantung. Europeans
have very rarely followed this route; so far as I can make out they
have been seen here once, or at most twice.


                                                         _15th May._

This day week we were shivering in furs at Llama Miao. To-day a gauze
shirt was too much; the flies were a perfect pest. It was too hot to
do anything but sleep, which they put out of the question. It was not
until after dinner that we could venture out. We went up a hill behind
the inn, from which we had a fine view of the sun setting behind the
heights which the Great Wall scales. In the valley beneath wayfarers
were hurrying to reach the town before the closing of the gates;
the rear was brought up by a herd of about a hundred pigs, the last
travellers who entered China this night by the gates of Ku Pei Ko̔u.

About Ku Pei Ko̔u and the road back to Peking I wrote to you last year,
and this letter is too long already. Three days brought us home to the
Legation.

_P.S._—By the bye, although the part of Mongolia we visited is set down
on the maps as belonging to the province of Chi Li, which it is so far
as its government is concerned, I have spoken of _China_ as bounded by
the Great Wall. No Mongol living beyond it would consider himself as
an inhabitant of China, and the Chinese themselves speak of the places
which are “Ko̔u-wai,” outside the mouth or frontier, as Mongolia. In
Stamford’s large map of China and Japan you will see how Chang Chia
Ko̔u, Dolonor or Llama Miao, and Ku Pei Ko̔u are placed—some of our
other halting-places are also given, but you would hardly recognise
them from their spelling.


_May 20th—Sunday._—Went round some of the curiosity shops, where I was
shown, among other things, a wonderful ewer and cover of rock crystal,
about a foot high. I have seen nothing finer of its kind than the
carving. In the days of Chien Lung the Magnificent, himself a great
patron of art, when a fine piece of rock crystal, jade, or cornelian
was brought in from the western mountains as tribute, a committee of
taste decided the shape to be given to it, and fixed upon the artist to
whom it should be entrusted by Imperial Command.

_May 21._—The pious Chinese are all off these days making a pilgrimage
to a holy shrine among the hills, called Miao Fêng Shan, to burn
joss-stick as a sovereign prophylactic against disease and misfortune
of all kinds.

_May 22._—The thermometer standing at 100° in the shade. The heat
frightfully oppressive. Happily on the following day there came a great
thunderstorm, with hailstones as big as pigeon’s eggs. This cooled
the air. The formation of the hailstones was curious: a nodule of ice
surrounded by a coating of frozen snow, which in its turn was encased
in ice. Bad for heads!

_May 27._—An outbreak of the “Heavenly Flowers,” or smallpox, causes
general consternation and vaccination. Any one who is opposed to
vaccination had better see the ravages of this horrible disease in
an Eastern city; so common is it that no Chinaman who has not “put
forth the heavenly flowers” is considered quite complete. It is like
distemper with dogs in Europe.

_May 29._—Dined with Dr. and Mrs. Wells Williams at the American
Legation, a handsome and delightful couple now entering middle age.
Dr. Williams, the author of a Chinese dictionary, and that most
encyclopædic book _The Middle Kingdom_, is one of the most learned
of sinologues. He began his career in China as a missionary in the
south, but his great talents rendered him necessary to the American
Government, and he is now _chargé d’affaires_ here. He was very
interesting, talking, among other subjects, on the paper currency.
Bank-notes, it seems, were first introduced in the days of the Sung
dynasty, during the reign of Shao Hsing (A.D. 1170). At that time
copper was scarce, so the Government issued great notes (Ta Chao) of
the value of 1000 to 5000 copper cash, and small notes (Hsiao Chao)
worth from 100 to 700 cash. Officers were appointed everywhere to issue
and receive these notes. They were to be renewed within seven years,
and fifteen cash in every thousand were deducted for the expense of
making them. They were said to be “kung ssŭ pien,” “convenient both for
the public and for private individuals.” Marco Polo mentions them with
praise.

_June 1._—My new colleague, Sir Eric Farquhar, arrived from England.
An old schoolfellow. He was accompanied by Mr. Brenchley, a most
accomplished traveller, who seems to have been all over the world, and
being a great naturalist and profound observer, is a charming companion
to boot.

_June 10._—The last few days have been occupied in showing Brenchley
the lions of Peking. To-day we went to breakfast at a fashionable
Chinese restaurant, “The House of Eternal Prosperity,” in the Ta Shih
La Erh, which we call Curio Street. In order that we might make a
genteel appearance and observe the ten thousand proprieties, my servant
Chang Hsi insisted on our going in carts. Walking is so vulgar! We were
jolted and bruised over the indescribable ruts and paving-stones to a
horrible degree, but our dignity was kept up. We found the House of
Eternal Prosperity very shabby and dirty, and we should have had a much
better breakfast at home.

_June 15–20._—Two more parties of travellers arrived. More work as
“intelligent guide.”




                              LETTER XXVII


                                                TA-CHIO-SSŬ,
                                         THE TEMPLE OF GREAT REPOSE,
                                             _23rd July 1866_.

The last mail took you no letter from me because I was far away in
Mongolia. My first intention had been merely to go as far as Chang
Chia Ko̔u, to accompany Brenchley and make the arrangements for his
journey across Siberia to Russia. Ultimately, however, the party
increased to four, of whom one was a lady, and our programme grew in
proportion. We started on June the 21st. We were detained four or five
days at Chang Chia Ko̔u, owing to the chicanery of a faithless Mongol
camel-owner who did not keep faith with us. However, it is a bright,
cheerful little town, so I did not much mind. It was gayer than ever
too, for on account of the great drought, morning, noon, and night,
the town was being paraded by processions of distressed agriculturists
praying for rain. Preceded by squeaky clarionets, drums, and gongs,
a crowd of men and boys with wreaths of willow round their heads and
middles, above which their sunburnt bodies were naked, some wearing
fillets of red paper, others doing penance with their necks enclosed
in the heavy board used as a punishment for prisoners, escorted a
sedan chair with a tiny god in it to the Lung Wang Miao, the Temple of
the Dragon Prince, whom, being a water-god, it is well to propitiate
in cases of drought.[16] Some of the votaries were armed with spears
and rude guns, which from time to time they fired off, and altogether
there was din and clatter enough even to please a Chinese crowd. “Ah!
these agriculturists!” said a Chinese gentleman who was looking on
with the most supreme contempt, and whom I asked for an explanation
of the affair; “they are never content! It’s always too much rain or
too little, or something the matter. Unsurpassable!” The prayers of
the worthy people were heard, however, and the Dragon Prince took a
favourable view of their case, for the first day of my stay at Chang
Chia Ko̔u there came a thunderstorm, with a downfall of rain, such as
one seldom sees out of the tropics, and there was more or less rain all
the time we were there. The coincidence will not improve the chances
of an American missionary who has been physicking the natives of Chang
Chia Ko̔u for rather more than a year, but in spite of the drastic
arguments of blue pill and black dose, has not yet made a convert.

There are three main passes leading from China into Mongolia, Chang
Chia Ko̔u, Ku Pei Ko̔u, and between them Tu Shih Ko̔u, which is
smaller and less important, but which I had not seen. The plan which I
proposed, and which my companions accepted, was to make a tour of the
three, following a line outside, but in some parts parallel with the
Great Wall.

We left Chang Chia Ko̔u on the 30th of June. It was frightfully hot,
but I had provided a refuge against the scorching sun, which at
mid-day would have been unbearable. We each had with us a mule litter,
a sort of long carriage in which a single person can almost lie at full
length, with shafts behind and before which are borne on mules’ backs.
This sounds rather a comfortable and luxurious way of travelling,
seeing that one’s bed and pillows are placed inside. As a fact it is
horridly jolty and sea-sicky; then no sooner has one established one’s
self in a tolerably easy position and dozed off (which is inevitable,
and makes one very hot and uncomfortable), than one is called upon by
the muleteer to trim the boat: “Your Excellency! please sit a little
more to the south. Your Excellency’s weight is all to the north!
The north side of that mule’s back is becoming terribly galled.” My
muleteer was a very original character. He had a prodigious talent for
screaming out Chinese anacreontics at the top of his voice, and for
dramatic recitations and imitations of popular actors. He was always
the last of the muleteers to get up in the morning, and when at last I
took to waking him with the crack of a hunting-whip, he only grumbled
good-humouredly and said the “old lord,” meaning me, was very hard
upon him, but none the more did he get up to feed his mules. He had
been to Mongolia once with Sir Frederic Bruce, to whom he applied the
most glowing eulogy that a Chinaman can bestow, holding up his thumb;
words could go no further. Altogether Cha Mai Chu—that is his name—was
the merriest, grinningest, and most laughable devil that I have ever
come across here. When we arrived at the inn, and the six muleteers,
having acquiesced in the landlord’s civil proposal, “You six gentlemen”
(if you could but see the six gentlemen!) “will dine together, I
suppose,” had sat down to the coarse fare, a sort of macaroni with
garlic and pickles, which they allow themselves, Cha Mai Chu used to
keep the other five in a roar of laughter, and I rather think that
by that means he contrived to suck up the lion’s share of the white
strings.

As the first part of our road, as far as Chang-Ma-Tzŭ-Chin, was but
a repetition of the same journey which I wrote about in my last
long letter describing my expedition to Llama Miao, I spare you the
repetition. Farther on we followed a route new to me, and in some
places not visited before by foreigners. This may interest you. After
leaving Chang-Ma-Tzŭ-Chin on the 3rd July, instead of pushing on
northwards across Mongolia, which at this season is far more worthy
of its Chinese name, “The Land of Grass,” than it was two months
ago, we steered south-east back towards China, across a sandy plain,
richly cultivated with potatoes and other crops. In the midst of this
sandy tract stands a little tumble-down Chinese village called Lien
Hwa Tan, “the lotus-flower fountain,” from an old tradition that
there once stood there a temple in which was a fountain flourishing
with lotus-flowers. Now it is a case of _lucus a non_, for temple,
fountain, and flowers have all faded away together, and as for anything
flourishing, there was barely a roof for us to eat our breakfasts
under. We were making for a ridge of green hills, from the top of which
I expected to come in sight of the Great Wall, which, however, did not
appear until we had reached the bottom of an emerald-green valley,
with luxuriant vegetation, lying between rugged and bare rocks. Hard
by Tu Shih Ko̔u the great brick monster showed itself again, but in
ruins, undermined and sapped by continual watercourses. The rocks here
are very fine, picturesque and astonishing in their shapes. Tu Shih
Ko̔u itself is a queer little old town. The fortifications and walls
are falling into decay, uncared for and unrepaired. In a few years, I
should think, its quaint gables and towers and useless fortifications
will have crumbled away; but on the other hand, inside the walls there
are shops, neat and tidy, and houses showing signs of some prosperity.
Perhaps, after all, there is some method in the apparent madness of
letting the old remains of protection against border warfare go to
the dogs. I have often told you how bothered travellers are here on
arriving at an inn by gapers and starers. The nuisance was multiplied
a hundred-fold on this excursion by the fact of our having a lady
with us. I was armed with special letters of recommendation from the
Ministers of Foreign Affairs to the high mandarins along the road, and
as soon as these last heard that we were annoyed, they hastened to send
us “po-po” (sweetmeats) and protection, but before this arrived I had
been obliged to take the law into my own hands, for three dirty, old,
gray blackguards had actually, using their wet thumbs as centre-bits,
made holes in one of our paper windows, at which they were playing
peeping Tom, and so interested by what they saw that they did not
hear Retribution stealing up on tiptoe armed with a hunting-whip.
Retribution, that is myself, tied their three nasty old tails together
and packed them off howling, to the great delight of their friends and
relations, who quite recognised the breach of Tao Li of which they had
been guilty. An appeal to Tao Li, good manners, or propriety, is always
a trump card to play when in difficulties with a Chinese crowd.

We only stayed one night at Tu Shih Ko̔u, and then rode back through
another pass to the fresh air of the steppe. We passed the night at
a little hamlet called Chang Leang. There was but one inn, and that
was full, and we should have had to pass the night _al fresco_ if a
good-natured Bachelor of Arts returning from Llama Miao to Tu Shih Ko̔u
had not consented to push on and give us up his room for the lady of
our party. The rest of us managed to huddle up somehow. Never in all my
wanderings here have I had to sleep in such queer places as I did on
this journey. The villages were poor, the inns worse; and instead of
having the high place, we males were bound to put up with holes such
as the very beggars in England would back out of. However, the game was
worth the candle so far as scenery was concerned, and then the air of
Mongolia makes up for everything. Even the Alpine Club do not know what
fresh air is; they must come to the steppes.

The next day we breakfasted at a felt manufactory, at a village called
Ta Tan. The way the Chinese make their felt is very rude and primitive,
but the result beats Manchester and cogwheels. A quantity of wool
is carded and weighed and scattered evenly over a rush mat. When a
sufficient quantity has been laid, the wool is carefully flattened
down with a sort of wickerwork fan and sprinkled with boiling water;
the mat and wool are then rolled up and tied, and the roll being laid
on the ground is kicked backwards and forwards by six men from foot
to foot for five minutes. A second layer completes the felt, which is
excellent. I wish I could give you an idea of the extreme beauty of
our afternoon’s ride. After we had left our felt manufactory, the road
lay through low hills, along a valley that was perfectly enamelled
with wild-flowers, principally yellow ones, a real blaze of gold—wild
roses, ranunculus, amaryllis, peony, daphne, potentilla, pinks, purple
iris, gorgeous tiger and Turk’s cap lilies, and poppies which pay the
Emperor of China the compliment of wearing his colours, besides a host
of others—a mass of beauties. A violent contrast to the richness of the
pasture are the herds of camels, who at this time of year, coatless,
mangy, emaciated, and so weak as hardly to be able to move along, are
turned out to get rid of the sores on their backs and recruit for
their hard work in autumn, winter, and spring. Poor brutes! pitiable
as they look, this must be the happiest season of their year; they
well earn their rest. Along this wild garden we gradually ascended—so
gradually that it was not until we had reached the top of the pass
that opens out between two rocks on a panorama of high hills, range
upon range lying at our feet, that we had any idea how high we were.
I think this view as I saw it, with the sun setting in the distance
and the remains of a storm rolling away over the mountains, is one
of the finest I have ever seen. The mountains themselves are savage
and barren, and in the valleys clusters of trees mark where Chinese
homesteads stand, so poor that not even eggs are to be bought there.
In one of these, at a place called Pa Ti, half farmhouse, half inn, we
slept, I in a sort of barn, my bed on the ground, my dressing-table a
nether millstone, and my washhand-stand the carcase of an old cart. The
sun was rising when we started down the valley, which really is the
grandest thing I have seen in China, and barring the attractions of
snow and ice, it seems to me the Alps have nothing finer to show. Rocks
more grim and uncouth there cannot be. They take every conceivable
shape—men’s heads, tigers, lions, citadels with turrets and battlements
of living rock, are easily conjured up. Then there are huge boulders
that look as if a breath would blow them down, so delicately are they
poised upon points apparently quite unfit to bear their weight. It is
a valley which makes one think of old fairy tales about giants and
dwarfs and ogres’ castles. The poor commonplace Chinese drudges who
inhabit it are ill-suited to their home. The best part of the scenery
ends some fifteen miles down the valley, at a hill called Llama Shan
(“The Llama’s Hills”)—two enormous pyramidical rocks, at the foot of
which is a village to which they give their name. On one rock, high
upon a flat surface hard to climb to, is painted a rude picture of
Buddha, with a glory round his head and his finger and thumb held up
in orthodox form. The painting is of old date, but pious hands have
recently restored it. In the other rock is a cave in which a rather
hazy tradition says that in old times a llama or llamas used to retire
from the world, and pass their time in the pious contemplation of their
own navels. Their reverences showed their taste in the choice of their
abode, for it is a lovely spot. We were spoilt for the lower half of
the valley by the beauty of the upper half, but we had still before us
a fine jagged hill, at the foot of which is Ta Kao, our halting-place,
a largish town, rich in gardens. And what would Exeter Hall say if it
heard that there are places in these parts which actually cultivate
their own poppies? We found a famous inn at Ta Kao, with large rooms
freshly papered; but strange to say, on the 6th of July, the stove-beds
or kangs were all heated. We, coming from the cool mountain breezes,
found the atmosphere of itself close and stuffy, though in comparison
with Peking it was freshness itself; the heated kangs were perfectly
insupportable. We wound up a long day with the usual exhibition to a
rather tiresome crowd.

We travelled next day along a poverty-stricken but picturesque valley,
through which flows a mountain torrent swelled almost to a river by
the recent rains. We had to ford it twenty-two times in the course
of the day. At one ford one of the mule litters broke down and was
smashed to pieces. No great damage was done, and the mule litter was
patched together with bits of string and an old nail or two. The way
in which the muleteer abused his beasts for the mishap was very funny.
Treating the mule as if it had been a human creature, he proceeded
in his wrath to take away its younger sister’s character. Be it man
or mule, horse or pig, or what not, that sins against a Chinese, he
immediately tramples on the fair fame of the younger sister of the
offender, heaping upon her every foul abuse that he can lay his tongue
to. Mingled with his revilings, the muleteer addressed the most humble
petitions to me not to dock his pay, passing from prayer to abuse with
wondrous facility. If that mule’s younger sister was guilty of one-half
the enormities ascribed to her, the punishment has not yet been devised
which would be equal to the occasion. The list of her crimes is not
fit for publication. When we arrived at Chai Ling the only room that I
could have was perfectly untenable from stuffiness and a hot kang which
took up a good half of it, so I slept in my litter in the inn-yard,
_sub Jove_, which was very cool and pleasant.

The following morning, 8th July, we were awakened by a most glorious
sunrise; it was so fresh and nice that I walked the greater part
of the day’s journey, to the undisguised wonder of the muleteers,
who could not in the least understand it. They hold up their thumbs
in admiration, and loudly express their high respect for such
prowess. “See the old lord! how he walks!” “He has obtained to walk
unsurpassably.” “This body! Our lords here have not such bodies!”
It was but a ten-mile walk; but no Chinese gentleman would dream of
attempting such a feat. We all went beetle-mad this day, one of our
party being an entomologist. Under one jujube-tree we found so many
varieties of insects of different kinds that it became perfectly
exciting; even the muleteers caught the fever and began to take a
certain interest in the hunt, but were rather afraid of the quarry. At
the end of a very pretty mountain walk we found the “Inn of Flourishing
Righteousness,” with a large yard full of picturesque groups of
half-naked drovers and muleteers. We were well lodged and very
comfortable.

The next morning we came down the pass on to Ku Pei Ko̔u, which I
found as attractive as ever. I put up at my old quarters outside the
town. Of course we rested a day to let the travellers have a ramble
on the Great Wall. While they were busy picking up bricks and ferns
and other souvenirs of the Great Wall, I fell in with a curious
character. He was an old Chinaman, by name Li, by trade a herbalist
and naturalist, by adoption a poultry-fancier, and by inspiration a
professor of palmistry. He began by telling me a lot of curious facts
and properties about different plants and roots, but as their English
names were unknown to me I cannot repeat them. Certain of them were to
cure the hot, others to repel the cold influence. Lizards he pointed
to as a deadly poison (internal) to horses and cattle. After he had
discoursed to me some time, he asked to look at my hand; and then he
really surprised me. He told me things about myself and family which
are certainly known to few people but ourselves; that they should have
become known to a poor cottager living on a hillside near a little
out-of-the-way town at the farther extremity of Asia is impossible.
We shall see if what he said about the future is equally correct. The
lines in the hand from which he gathered his auguries were different
from those which used to be read in Europe; he explained his science
to me, but as he did so in verse, and in the jargon of the trade, I
could not make much of it. He invited me afterwards to his cottage—such
a pretty little spot, with a glorious vine trained so as to make a
covered Pergola in front of it. He passes his life here contentedly,
seldom going to the town but when he needs to sell his herbs or his
chickens. As soon as he made his appearance with me a whole pack of
dirty little brats, all stark naked, came trooping out to welcome him
and salute their father’s guest according to manners.

I had hoped to have pushed so far as Jo Hol, the imperial palace and
hunting forest, but one of my companions struck work, and I was obliged
to return to Peking, having been within two days of my goal, which I
hope, however, to reach another time.




                             LETTER XXVIII


                                     TA-CHIO-SSŬ, _4th August 1866_.

When I returned from Mongolia three weeks ago I found that all the
world, that is to say, the three or four diplomatists who compose
our world, had very wisely taken itself off to the country. So early
as last February I had secured this “Temple of Great Repose,” and I
lost no time in coming out here. It is too far from Peking to be very
convenient; but it is well worth the extra ride, and the advantage
of being fifteen miles from the other temples inhabited by Europeans
is incalculable; one is not subject to perpetual interruptions by
people who, being bored themselves, come in and inflict their boredom
upon others. It is a great undertaking moving out to the hills. We
are obliged to take absolutely our whole _ménage_, and almost all our
furniture with us. I think you would have laughed at my procession;
there were fourteen carts full of every kind of movable—our whole
poultry-yard clucking and cackling out of coops and baskets, and a cow
with her calf. This must seem strange to you, who would certainly not
dream of taking your hens, ducks, and cows with you from town to the
country: it is only another instance of the universal topsy-turviness
of things in China, again demonstrated by the fact that the farther one
gets from town the dearer everything becomes, there being no market and
no competition, so that the owner of a leg of mutton can just charge
what he pleases for it, knowing that you must either buy at his price
or go without it altogether. It is a beautiful ride out here, past
Hai Tien, a little village with a smart inn at which the Pekingese
may be seen by scores, naked to the waist, and enjoying an outing,
after their fashion, with chopsticks and rice, tea and infinitesimal
pipes, past Yuen Ming Yuen and Wan Shao Shan, or rather its ruins,
past flourishing cornfields and picturesque hamlets, past temples and
shrines innumerable, along stony roads which the rains have turned into
canals so deep that the carters are obliged to cast lots for which
shall strip his very dirty body and go in to see whether the carts can
pass or not. It was quite dark before I reached the temple, after eight
hours’ ride under the hottest sun I ever remember to have felt. Indeed
I had a sad proof of its strength the next day, for my brown pony,
Hop-o’-my-thumb, who had carried me so well over so many hundred miles,
died of sunstroke after a few hours’ illness. Poor little beast! He was
a great pet, and as fond of me as a dog. When I went down to his stable
shortly before he died he put his head on my shoulder and looked so
piteously in my face. The Chinese veterinary surgeon (they are rather
clever at that) declares that he was struck by the sun the day before
while he was being led. He was the strongest, stoutest little beast you
ever saw, never sick nor sorry, and used to trot into Peking after a
700-mile journey as if he had just been out for a morning’s exercise.
He is the third horse that I have lost from one cause or another since
last September. Bad luck, is it not?

This is certainly the prettiest temple and the most charming summer
residence that I have seen near Peking. The temple stands in a nest
of trees—cedars, pines, firs, and poplars—a perpetual fountain runs
through all its courts, and there seems always to be a cool breeze
blowing. While our friends are complaining of being roasted and baked
in their temples, we here are revelling in fresh air. Here is a
translation of an account of Ta Chio Ssŭ by a Chinese gentleman:—

“Seventy li (23 miles) from the walls of Peking there stood in the
time of the Liao a temple called Ling Chuan Ssŭ, ‘The temple of the
Spiritual Fountain.’ In the reign of the Emperor Hsuan Tê of the Ming
dynasty it was restored, and the name changed to Ta Chio Ssŭ, ‘The
temple of Great Repose.’ There are four shrines: the first is to the
Prince of heaven; the second to Ju Lai Fo, the Buddha who reigns in the
western heaven; the third to the Yo Shih Fo, the Buddha who presides
over medicine; and the fourth and last shrine has an upper story, and
in it is the Pu-sa (god of the second class) of Great Compassion.
Behind the shrines is a pond with a fountain. In this is a dragon’s
head carved in stone, out of the mouth of which the spring issues. In
front of the pond is a pagoda, on the left and right hands of which
are old fir-trees, one on each side, about which an old tradition
says that they never can overtop the pagoda, hence the spot is called
‘Sung ta chi,’ or ‘The firs and pagoda level.’ Besides this, outside
the shrine of the Prince of heaven, on either side there is a stone
called the dragon stone and the tiger stone, from their resemblance
to those animals. In front of these there is a stone bridge with a
pond of water on each side, and in the ponds there are a fountain and
lotus flowers and gold fish. By the side of the ponds is a dragon’s
claw tree, in the shape of lions playing, whence it is called the Lion
Tree. The temple is built on the west, facing the east; on its south
side is an imperial residence called Ssŭ Yi Tang, ‘The Hall of the Four
Proprieties.’ In the hall stands an imperial throne. In the garden are
four trees—peonies and two Yu Lan Hwa trees, magnolias. Behind this
hall is the ‘Pavilion of the Reposing Clouds,’ ‘Chi Yün Hsuan,’ in
front of which are bright bamboos and dark green firs interlaced like
a forest, a capital refuge from the heat in midsummer, with plenty to
see.”

My friend Liu, who wrote the description which I have translated
above, has left out one of the greatest charms of the place. Just
behind the “Pavilion of the Reposing Clouds,” in which we live, is a
most beautiful rock work, all covered with tufts of feathery grass,
mosses, and ferns, and lycopods: down this and into an artificial
basin, which is screened from the sun by a network of fir branches,
comes tumbling a deliciously cool fountain scented with pine needles,
which gives us a famous shower-bath twice a day—a real luxury. Close
by my fountain is a little summer-house, in which the Emperor Chien
Lung was transacting business one day with his ministers, and feeling
inspired by the influence of the place got through his work greatly to
his satisfaction, so he called the summer-house “The Pavilion of the
Understanding of Important Matters.” I wonder whether I have given you
an idea of what a very pretty place this is? It is almost enough to
tempt a man to turn Buddhist priest, and abstracting himself from the
unrealities of this life, pass his hour on earth in reflecting upon the
beauties of the hopelessly unattainable Nirvana (I don’t suppose you
know what that is—so much the better. It will be like that “blessed
word Mesopotamia” to the old woman at church). The only pity is that
mosquitoes and sand-flies sound such a lively recall to the reality of
the disagreeable.

The monastery is richly endowed with lands, so much so as to be
independent of the assistance from Government, to which, as an imperial
temple, it would be entitled. The place looks richer than most of the
temples about here. There is no magnificence, but it has a comfortable,
well-to-do appearance, the grounds and buildings being properly kept
up. All over the gardens there are notices to “relations and friends”
who may visit the temple to abstain from damaging buildings and trees,
plucking flowers or cutting down the bamboos, a notice the spirit of
which, as it says, “all respectable persons will observe of their own
accord, and those who do not will be fined.” First and last, monks and
laymen, there are some fifty persons employed about the temple. The
abbot himself finds it dull, so he remains at Peking enjoying himself.
His second in command is a charming monk, very clean in his person
and especially natty about his boots. He is very intelligent, too,
and comes and sits with me by the hour talking Buddhism. This is an
extremely religious temple—prayers, liturgies, drum and gong beating,
seem to be going on very constantly. But except on the 1st and 15th of
every moon and other holidays the novices are put on active service,
the monks enjoying an unbroken idleness; they are apparently cursed
with an unquenchable thirst, but as a fountain of perennial tea flows
for them they are not to be pitied. I suppose you would ask the name
of my friend with the neat boots; this would be an arch mistake and
violation of good-breeding on your part. When a man shaves his tail
and turns monk he cuts himself off from the whole world, including his
family, whose name even he no longer bears. To remind him of this would
be quite ill-bred, but as it is inconvenient that a monk—who, however
much he may renounce the vanities of this life, must occasionally be
brought in contact with that extremely unreal idea, the world—should
have no designation at all, he adopts two words or characters as his
appellation, which on no account must you call his name. You ask him
what is his “honourable above and below”; this refers to the two
characters, one of which is written above the other. My friend’s
“honourable above and below” is Fo Kwo. As a Buddhist monk must not be
asked his name, so a Taoist monk must not be asked his age, although it
is one of the complimentary routine questions in China.

The neighbourhood round about here is as charming as the place itself.
The fields are richly cultivated; there is plenty of hedge-row timber,
and the villages are very picturesque and well shaded. The hills are
beautifully shaped, and take fine colours of an evening. The one
thing wanting is water, which is missing all over this part of China.
Nothing can be prettier than the cottages of the villagers with their
long, low eaves; each has its little garden hedged in by a fence of
tall millet, over which are trained gourds and other creepers. There
is generally, too, a millet-straw shed with a vine creeping about it,
and under this the labourers sit of an evening and drink their tea,
a picture of contentment. The temples, both Taoist and Buddhist, are
numerous. Yesterday I scrambled up to a very pretty one on the top of
a great eminence so steep that it is called by the Chinese the “Wall
Mountain.” I found a most charming little monastery built in tiers, I
should have said terraces had it not been so tiny, which reminded me
of the tiers of the Rhenish vineyards. Their reverences the monks had
all gone off to Peking on a lark, but I was hospitably entertained with
tea by two lay attendants, for whose benefit I in return emptied my
cigar-case. What a queer existence these people lead perched up on the
top of a high hill! They are so stay-at-home that they hardly seem to
care even to go down on to the plain. And as to going to Peking, none
but the better-to-do monks dream of such dissipation. You may imagine
what a state of crass ignorance they live in. For faces expressing
brutal stupidity there is nothing to equal the Chinese monks, except
the Thibetan llamas, between whom and drivelling idiotcy there is no
missing link. My friend here, Fo Kwo, is a brilliant exception. Monks
and laymen alike—all our neighbours—vie with one another in civility
to us. They all stop one to have a chat, and as for tea, I might drown
myself in a butt of it if I had a mind. The women, however—and in one
village there are some very pretty ones—are as _farouches_ as wild
deer. As I ride in at one end of a village I see them scuttling off
into their houses, with their babies on their backs, as fast as their
poor deformed feet will let them. If by chance I overtake them, they
scowl at me as if I really were the devil they call me. During the
whole time I have been in China, I do not think that I have three times
been addressed by Chinese women; the rare exceptions have always been
wrinkled old hags—of course I do not count beggars. _Ces dames_ don’t
love us. They are always the first to get up the cry of “Kwei tzŭ”
(devils) against us, and I almost think that they verily believe that
there is something uncanny about us, or at any rate that there is no
villainy of which we are not capable. However, I think that last year I
told you some of their beliefs with respect to us.

Farquhar joined me on the 20th July, bringing with him Dr. Pogojeff
from the Russian summer quarters at Pa Ta Chu—a group of temples nearer
Peking, where most of the Legations spend the hot season. They are
delighted with the beauty of this place. Farquhar, who is a very clever
artist, has made some lovely sketches. July the 25th was the fifteenth
day of the Chinese moon, a high day with our Buddhist friends. On
ordinary days the novices do the drum and gong beating, and intone the
prayers (which indeed never seem to cease), but on the 1st and 15th of
each moon the higher priests—whose everyday duties seem to be confined
to smoking infinite and infinitesimal pipes of tobacco, and sipping cup
after cup of amber tea—buckle to the work themselves, leaving their
ease and dignity to don their black and yellow robes, and perform
service with the rest.

One day out walking we were accosted by a man who told us that he was
out for a holiday, and insisted on taking us with him to a village
where there was “Jo nao” (fun) going on. We could not resist, so we
went with him, and in a by-lane of the said village, on one of the
threshing-floors, we found a small raised stage. After we had waited
some time, during which the whole village had time to turn out for a
good stare at us, a man made his appearance with a very small drum,
three pairs of castanets, and three gongs. He was followed by three
ladies—one old and two young, and all hideous—and then the performance
began with an instrumental overture by the whole strength of the
company, a rattling and jangling which lasted five minutes, and sent us
off with our fingers in our ears. We gave the poor people a dollar and
were glad to escape; but the villagers were highly delighted, for were
not these real actors come all the way from Peking, and, therefore, of
course eminent? Mario and Grisi, starring in the provinces, never gave
more pleasure to a country audience.

Frightfully hot weather. Do you remember the old quatrain written with
a diamond on a pane of glass in the old Foreign Office in Downing
Street:—

    Je suis copiste,
    Affreux métier,
    Joyeux ou triste,
    Toujours copier!

Copying despatches with the thermometer at 100° in the shade, with
a basin of water and a towel at one’s side for very necessary
hand-wiping, and a pad of blotting-paper over the blank part of one’s
paper, is indeed an _affreux métier_.

I find that Englishmen who can’t speak the language are a little
capricious as to exchanging courtesies which the Chinese press upon
them. Sometimes it amuses them immensely to stop and talk twaddle with
the natives through an interpreter, while at others, especially if
there is just a touch of headache in the case, the Chinamen get short
answers. To-day as we were walking we passed a group of peasants, one
of whom as usual called out civilly, “Hsie yi hsie pa?” (Won’t you sit
down a bit?)

_F._—“What the devil’s he saying?”

_Chinaman_ (thinking to be intelligible by being still louder)—“Hsie yi
hsie pa!”

_F._—“Don’t make that damned noise!”

_I._—“He’s only asking you to sit down.”

_F._ (savagely)—“Well, he needn’t make such a confounded row about it!”

_Chinaman_ (to his friends)—“The gentleman is not very quiet,” as if he
were speaking of a restive horse.

_Friends_ (assenting)—“Ah! these foreigners! they are indeed terrible
people. Unsurpassable! unsurpassable!”

The poor villagers would have been too civil to utter their opinion if
they had thought they were understood, but I had held my tongue to hear
what they would say.

On the 16th of August we had a delightful addition to our family party
in the shape of my old friend Dick Conolly, who has come out as second
secretary—the cheeriest of companions.[17]

Next day he and I rode over to see a very famous temple, Hei Lung Tan,
a shrine dedicated to the Black Dragon, which was built in the Ming
dynasty and repaired in Ka̔ng Hsi’s reign. It is an imposing edifice
built in three tiers with roofs of the imperial yellow tiles. Here the
Black Dragon Prince rests in great dignity. He is surrounded by six
satellites—a monster who presides over the thunder, a woman who rules
the lightning, a clerk with pen and book who writes down orders for the
rainfall, and three others whose functions are not so clear. Of human
attendants there was visible but one priest, very dirty and saturated
with garlic. The Black Dragon being, like all dragons in this country,
a water deity or spirit, there is of course a pond in which he may
disport himself. If his priest would only do the same!

The country people are really very civil and kind. The other day we
were wandering through a village nestled away among the hills, when
several of the peasants came out and brought us delicious pears. One
old gentleman, a personage evidently, was just preparing a great
sacrifice outside his house to ward off the devil. He had erected an
altar on which were placed various fruits and grapes, and in front of
it was a great paper boat with dolls in it. This was to be burnt, and
with the letting off of many crackers would complete the sacrifice.
This, it appears, being the 15th day of the 7th moon, is the feast of
departed spirits—a sort of All Souls’ Day. It is the anniversary on
which the pious Chinaman worships and burns incense at the tombs of his
ancestors—the custom over which the Dominicans and Franciscans on the
one side, and the Jesuits on the other, started their great feud in the
days of the Emperor Ka̔ng Hsi.[18] There are also on this day great
ceremonies in honour of the tutelary saints of towns, some deceased
minister or warrior appointed by the Emperor as guardian over each
town or part of a town. Great honour is paid to one of these patron
saints, and men will flock to his shrine to dedicate themselves to his
service, so that a man, for instance, who is a groom in this life,
will go and offer himself to be the saint’s groom in the next world.
The effigy of this “Lord of the Walls,” as he is called, is paraded
through the town where he is supposed to search out evil-doers. There
is also a Prince of departed spirits whose shrine is largely attended
on this day. A stage is raised and priests are engaged to read prayers
and distribute food for the spirits, that those who have died a violent
death may be released from Purgatory. At midnight huge paper images,
placed in a boat in order that the spirits may pass the river Nai-ho, a
sort of Styx, are solemnly burnt, and the feast is over. The feast is
called Yu Lang Hai, “The assembly of the Bowl and Flower.” My teacher
explains this, saying that on board the boat there is a Buddhist god
called Ti Tsang Wang, who gives the ghosts of the departed a bowl and
flower as a token of release from their sins, so that they may cross
the river which is a gulf between them and Paradise.




                              LETTER XXIX


                                       PEKING, _7th September 1866_.

Some time ago I was invited to go to the play by the great curio
merchant here—Han Chang-kwei-ti. As the Pekingese theatres have a great
celebrity, I ought to give you some account of them.

There are a great many theatres in the Chinese city, their situation
being marked by a few masks, lay figures, images of tortoises or
dragons, or other queer beasts; though indeed no sign is necessary to
indicate their whereabouts, for the infernal din which comes from them
the whole day long would guide any one to them. The theatres are the
property of restaurateurs, who engage a company of actors to come and
play for so many days, so that the troupes are constantly changing
quarters. You go in by a long passage, which leads into a lofty and
spacious hall, lighted from the top, and surrounded by a gallery.
In the pit, or body of the hall, are tables at which the people sit
drinking tea, eating sweetmeats, or with papers of fried melon and
gourd seeds before them. This is the place of the poorer people; the
rank and fashion go to the gallery, part of which is divided into
private boxes. At one end of the hall is a raised platform, without
scenes or appliances of any kind, open at the sides, and separated
from the dressing-room by two doors with curtains; at the back of the
stage sit the orchestra, five or six performers, all of whom play
upon several instruments, which they take up in turn, according to
the character of the music. The chief instruments are fiddles, lutes,
clarionets, flutes, a sort of mouth organ, and any number of variety of
gongs, drums, and cymbals. I talk of fiddles, etc., for simplicity’s
sake, but you know a Chinese fiddle is no more like a European fiddle
than a Chinaman with his pig-tail is like a European in a chimney-pot
hat.

Nothing could be more rude or primitive than the state of the drama.
The tragedies are all strutting and mouthing; roaring in a bass
voice that seems to come out of the actor’s boots, or squeaking in
a falsetto shrill enough to set your teeth on edge. The whole of the
words are declaimed in a sort of recitative, which is more than half
drowned by the drums and gongs. The language of tragedies is the old
literary style and very obscure, and as if to make it still more
difficult to the Pekingese, the actors all affect the Soochow dialect
as the mother-tongue of the stage. The consequence of this is that even
a well-educated Chinaman will make a very poor guess at the plot unless
he has read the tragedy beforehand. Not understanding what is going
on does not, however, seem to affect the enjoyment of the audience,
nine-tenths of whom could no more tell you what the play is all about
than I could.

As there is no scenery or stage appliances a great deal must be
supplied by the imagination. A lady coming in with an attendant in the
plain clothes of a Pekingese coolie, holding horizontally on each side
of her two flags on which are painted wheels and clouds, is a fairy
entering in her chariot of clouds. A warrior brandishes a whip to show
that he is on horseback; to dismount, he makes a pirouette on one leg
and throws down his whip; to remount, he makes a pirouette on the other
leg and picks it up again. But let me tell you the plot of the tragedy
I saw, as Han Chang-kwei-ti explained it to me.

A warrior in white has an everlasting feud with a rebel in red, who
always gets the better of him, and performs the most astounding
_pas seuls_, making quite appalling faces (heightened by streaks of
red, blue, and white paint) to the terror of the whole empire, as
represented by five old men and two little boys in white. The warrior
in white, after a series of stage combats with the rebel in red, which
it would break the heart of our best pantomimists to imitate, sits down
in an arm-chair and tucks up one leg under him, by which the audience
are to understand that he has gone to sleep in a lonely forest. He
then dreams that the ghost of his father appears to him to teach him
a trick and give him a sword, by the aid of which he may circumvent
the rebel in red. The dream is represented by his getting up from his
chair and acting through the scene with his father’s ghost, after
which he sits down in the same posture as before. During one of his
dead father’s speeches, which may have struck him, as they did me,
as rather tedious, the actor felt a little thirsty, so he called for
a cup of tea, which a coolie brought to him, and he drank it with his
face to the audience, gargling his throat and spitting out the last
mouthful without the smallest regard for the situation. Well, the
father having stalked out, the warrior tucked up his leg again and then
awoke. A final combat of many rounds then terminates in the victory of
the warrior, obtained by the grace of his father’s sword. The rebel is
slain and walks out, and the victorious army, consisting of four wheezy
old men, make a triumphal entry into the gates of the capital, which
are signified by two coolies holding up two poles with a blue cotton
curtain in which a hole has been cut.

The dresses of the tragedians are magnificent. They are stiff with gold
and embroidery, and immensely valuable. The masks and painting of the
faces are to the last degree grotesque and hideous. The beards and wigs
are coarse and clumsily contrived.

After two or three historical pieces have been played a farce follows,
and indeed it is time that the proceedings should be enlivened a
little. The farces are not difficult to follow (though I cannot say
that I understand writers whom I know to be ignorant of Chinese, and
who say that the acting of the Pekingese comedians is so good that
the whole play is quite intelligible; I know I was out of my depth
often enough, in spite of the admirable acting, and of my being able
to understand a great deal of the dialogue). The dialect is the pure
Pekingese vernacular, and the dialogue is spoken with the exception
of a few songs. The women’s parts are played by boys, who imitate to
perfection the mincing gait and affectations of the Chinese women—“the
carriage as graceful as the weeping willow”—sham small feet are
attached to their own boots in order to carry out the illusion, which
is quite perfect. These boys are bought in the south and trained up as
apprentices. They receive no pay from the head of their troupe, but
they earn largish sums by attending the banquets of the Chinese men
about town; when they are not actually playing, they go up into the
private boxes to the richer visitors, whom they amuse with the last
gossip of the green-room.

The farces are too indecent for me to do more than give you a mere
sketch of one. Medea does not stop short of doing anything _coram
populo_, so I give you a sort of Bowdler’s family edition of the plot
of one that I saw.

A young gentleman of great wealth of the name of Wang has been ruined
by a mistress named Yu Tang Chun, who, strange to say, although his
money is all spent, still preserves a hankering for him. He, on the
other hand, finding himself without a penny, is ashamed to go near her,
so he retires to a temple to live by his wits. The scene opens with Yu
Tang Chun bewailing his absence and her solitude in a long recitative
and song (rather pretty for Chinese music). To her enters the low
comedy man—such a good actor, and so full of fun!—who tells her where
her lover is, and all about his deplorable state. She determines to
go and see him, and take him a present of 300 taels (£100) to enable
him to go to Peking and pass his examination. Accordingly, she sets
out, and a table with the five offerings is placed upon the stage to
represent a temple, to which she goes under the pretence of burning
joss stick. As soon as she sees her lover the two set up a wild shriek,
and rush into one another’s arms. Over what follows it is absolutely
necessary to draw a curtain. The play ends by her giving Wang the
money. He starts for Peking, and returns in a second or two, having
passed a brilliant examination and obtained high office. Sometimes,
but rarely, girls are present among the audience, and when this is the
case, it is only fair to say that these pieces—the grossness of which
passes all belief—are not given. On those occasions the playbill is
made up of military and historic dramas, the propriety of which is as
undeniable as their dulness.

The price of admission to the best theatres at Peking is one tiao
(about 8d.) to the pit, something more to the gallery, and a private
box costs twelve tiaos. As the whole thing is, as I said before, a
speculation of the _restaurateur’s_, refreshments are hawked about
during the whole performance. There is a man who carries about a long
pipe (like Herr von Joel with his cigars at Evans’s), who is very
persistent in seeking custom. If it is hot weather the people in the
pit take off their coats and lounge naked to the waist, sitting out the
whole performance from noon till seven P.M., after which they pack up
what remains to them of their fruit and melon seeds, and go off home,
not having had near enough of it.

I have been three or four times, and find that a couple of hours of the
din and smoke are as much as I can stand, besides which I find that
eating po-po out of politeness interferes with one’s dinner.

My time here is drawing very short. When I told my teacher that I was
going away he hummed and hawed, and shifted about uneasily. At last
he summoned up courage and said, “Sir, I have one last favour to ask
of you. The teachers of the West are very cunning in medicine; they
possess many secrets. I have no child, and it is a great sorrow! Bitter
is the life of the man who is childless! In vain have we addressed our
prayers to the goddess Kwan Yin, my wife remains barren. Sir, if you
could give me some drug or some charm to remove this evil, for small
favours one can find thanks, but for so great a favour none!”

Dear to man is the fame for abstruse learning! But I was obliged to
confess myself at fault.

I start for Japan on Monday week, and then good-bye to Peking!




                                APPENDIX

                         HOW MANDARINS ARE MADE


The literature of no country is so abundant in noble sentiments as that
of China. Happy, indeed, would be the people who should be governed
according to the precepts of Confucius, of Mencius, and of Lao Tsŭ! The
highest moral and political principles are in every mouth, at the tip
of every pen. From the first day of his entering school the Chinese boy
learns unctuously to recite the most virtuous precepts of the sages,
yet learning is the one road to fortune through robbery, peculation,
and extortion in their most refined shapes. With every rise in rank
the opportunities of robbing the “Hundred Names” and defrauding the
state are multiplied in a ratio increasing like the value of carats
in diamonds: the wealth amassed by some of the great mandarins must
be something fabulous. Take as an instance the war with Japan. The
Chinese soldier, when properly led and fairly treated is an excellent
fighting man. It is difficult to believe that the sons of the braves
who under Tsêng Kwo Fan and San Ko Lin Sin, so stubbornly defended the
bridge against the French and English in 1860, could have been driven
from an impregnable position like Fort Arthur by the Japanese some
thirty years later. But what troops could fight without food, arms,
ammunition? Food, arms, ammunition, and pay had all found their way
into the pockets of the mandarins. Would the brigade of Guards itself
have stood to be mown down without being able to fire an effective shot
in return? I was told on high authority that at the famous naval battle
of the Yalu, which some experts have quoted as an object lesson in the
naval warfare of the future, on the Chinese side only three live shells
were fired, one of which disabled the Japanese flagship, and sent her
steaming away into space. The comparison of the bankers’ books of some
of the great mandarins before and after the war would be an interesting
study.

The mandarins—one is compelled to use the old Portuguese word for want
of a better—are recruited from two classes: the hereditary nobility,
and those who obtain office nominally by examination, but often by
purchase.

The hereditary nobility is composed of the members of the Imperial
family with the five ranks, Kung, Hou, Po, Tsŭ, Nan,—which it has been
the fashion to translate by duke, marquis, earl, viscount, baron.

The highest rank in the Imperial family is that of Chin Wang—“related
prince,” or as we should say “Prince of the Blood.” In some cases this
title is continued from generation to generation; in others there is
a sliding scale downward through the ranks of Pei Lo and Pei Tsŭ to
that of Kung or duke, below which members of the Imperial family do not
descend.

In the same way with subjects, the rank of Kung is sometimes
transmitted; in others the son of a Kung becomes a Hou, the son of a
Hou a Po, and so on. The inheritor of a title must be the eldest son
of the one legitimate wife, and not of a secondary wife, for although
polygamy exists in China, there is, except in the case of the Emperor’s
family, only one legitimately married wife, nor in her lifetime can
there be another. The younger sons of nobles, even of the Imperial
family, have no rank either by right or by courtesy; but the latter are
generally raised to rank by being appointed general officers. Patents
of nobility cannot be bought, at any rate not in theory.

The representative of the eldest branch of a family can, in the event
of his being childless, adopt the child of a younger branch, and the
child so adopted inherits the title. It sometimes happens that a
younger brother who has become rich will bribe his eldest brother to
adopt his child to the exclusion of the lawful heir and his issue.

The sovereign is, as with us, the fountain of honour, and it is he who
confers these titles of nobility, which are accompanied by grants of
land. As a general rule the land assigned to a Kung or a Hou would not
exceed a circumference of 100 li = 33 miles, to a Po 70 li, and to the
two lesser ranks 50 li.

Conspicuous among the nobles of China are the Pa Ta Chia, “the Eight
great Families.” These are the descendants of the eight Princes who,
waiving any claim to the throne, followed the reigning dynasty from
Manchuria. Their rank remains unchanged for all generations. The
representative of one of these, the Prince of I, was famous in the
war of 1860. A year later, at the time of the Prince of Kung’s _coup
d’état_, he fell into disgrace, and was “presented with the white
kerchief” (made to commit suicide).

But the Imperial family and the hereditary nobles at Peking, valuable
instruments of obstruction as they doubtless are, form but an
infinitesimal portion of that colossal octopus of fraud and corruption
which strangles the whole vast empire in its tentacles. The myriads of
officials, from the exalted viceroys down to petty bloodsuckers of a
rank about equal to that of a parish beadle, are either drawn from the
so-called graduates of the examination halls, or have obtained their
promotion by purchase—of the latter mode of reaching distinction there
is nothing to be said; it is beautifully simple. But the examination
system is very complicated and deserves some notice.

The following account of how mandarins are made is based upon an
article of mine, for the most part translated from a paper by a native
graduate, and published in _Macmillan’s Magazine_ in 1871:—

At the age of from six to eight years the Chinese boy is removed from
the petting and pampering of the women’s apartments and is sent to
school, where he receives his first lessons in reading and writing
as purely mechanical processes. He is taught to read by droning out
passages from the classics in hideous unison with his schoolmates,
and to write by painting over characters printed on thin whitey-brown
paper. This preliminary process of education lasts for some two
years or more, at the end of which the young student is looked upon
as sufficiently advanced to be instructed in the meaning of what he
reads. The books now put into his hands are, of course, the famous Four
Books and the Five Classics, every passage in which, with its hidden
obscurities and doubtful interpretations, is diligently and painfully
explained to him, until not only the text itself, but also every note
and commentary with which successive ages of scholars have overlaid it,
are familiar in his mouth as household words. Having accomplished this
end the youth is allowed to try a flight upon his own wings, and begins
to write essays and poetry, which, by useful and assiduous reading,
he must model upon the best patterns. “Poetry of the Tang dynasty,
handwriting of the Chin dynasty, essays of the Han dynasty,” says the
proverb; these, with all humility, should the student endeavour to
follow at however great a distance.

As soon as the young man’s compositions begin to take some sort of
shape, and to satisfy the keen criticism of his master, when his
language is neatly fitted to his thoughts, and he does not use so
much as a particle out of its place, he may look forward to preparing
himself to undergo his examination for the degree of Hsin Tsai, or
Bachelor of Arts.

The examiner for this degree is an officer from the Han Lin (lit.
Forest of Pencils), or Imperial Academy of Peking, and is specially
appointed by the Emperor; one examiner is appointed for each province
throughout the country, and he holds his examinations from town to town
in the chief places of the province to which he is accredited.

We will suppose the examination to be taking place at Shun Ti̔en Fu,
the provincial capital of Chih Li (the province in which Peking is
situated). The examiner, having arrived with no small arrogance of
dignity, takes up his abode in the Examination Hall inside the town. On
an appointed day the undergraduate candidates from the various Chou and
Hsien, or lesser towns which are dependent upon Shun Ti̔en Fu, crowd
into the hall, and take their places each according to the township
to which he may belong. As soon as his flock is gathered together, the
examiner gives out two themes selected from the Four Books to serve
as texts for essays, and one subject for an exercise in verse. Each
candidate is expected to produce two essays and one set of twelve
verses in rhyme; but he has plenty of time to perform his task, for the
examination begins at four o’clock in the morning, and the papers are
not given in until between five and seven o’clock in the evening. On
the third day the examination list is given out: the examiner writes
out the names of the successful candidates in order of merit, and gives
it to the overseers of the hall, who, carrying it respectfully on their
heads, go out and paste it on the wall fronting the entrance gate.
Then follows a scene of excitement when the undergraduates besiege
the gate to search for their names on the list. (Oxford over again!)
“Should they have been successful,” says a native account, “they are
now entitled to call themselves Hsin Tsai, and are so delighted that
in their joy everything in heaven and earth seems lovely to them,” and
they look forward to the day when they will receive the much-coveted
official button.[19] The unhappy plucked ones must make the best of
it and try again. Even now the Hsin Tsai’s troubles are not over;
for there is a second examination, in which they are divided into
three classes—the first class being privileged graduates eligible
for honorary degrees entitling the possessors to become candidates
for bettermost civil appointments. There is yet another distinction
open to the privileged bachelors. Once in twelve years the degree of
Pa Kung is given to a representative of each petty township: it is
also conferred on the successful competitor in an examination held of
privileged bachelors, in which case it is awarded to the cleverest,
most respectable, and youngest of his class. When certain official
appointments of an inferior grade are about to be made, the Emperor
summons the bachelors of the grade of Pa Kung to court, where they
are again made to go through an examination, and divided into three
classes. The members of the first class are employed as brass button
mandarins (officials of the seventh, eighth, and ninth classes); those
of the second class are sent to be Chih Hsien, or magistrates of
small towns; while the remainder are only eligible for employment as
assistants in the public examinations.

Such, briefly, are the honours and offices open to a man who has passed
his first examination. The degree of Chü Jên is a much more serious
affair.

This examination takes place in fixed years; and when the appointed
time comes all bachelors ambitious of promotion, together with a class
of graduates called Chien Shêng, who have purchased their degree,
prepare in fear and trembling for the ordeal.

On the 6th day of the 8th month of the year an Imperial decree is
issued, appointing the officials who are to conduct the examination.
There are three chief examiners and eighteen assistant examiners, with
a whole number of subordinates, who search the candidates as they come
in, to see that no books, or memoranda, or other aids to intelligence,
are smuggled in; besides these there is a strong _posse_ of Imperial
informers, who watch all that goes on, and keep up a sort of secret
police in the hall. The whole of the compositions of the masters
expectant are handed over to copyists, who transcribe them, lest the
handwritings of the candidates being recognised by the examiners
there should be any foul play, and the copies so made are compared
with the originals by clerks appointed for the purpose. Besides all
these persons, there are 180 minor officials who superintend all petty
details. The examination is divided into three parts. On the 8th day
of the month the first part begins. The candidates are divided into
four companies, to each of which is assigned a door. At each of the
doors stand two Imperial informers—the one a Manchu, the other a
Chinese—whose duty it is to mark off the names of the candidates, and
to distribute to each a roll of paper, giving the number of the cell
allotted to him, to which he carries his provision of food and bedding,
for he will be locked up in solitary confinement for three days and
nights. In the evening, when the candidates have all been pricked
in, every door is sealed, and all coming in or going out is rendered
impossible.

The exercises set for the first part of the examination consist of
three essays from the Four Books, and one composition in verse. The
first subject is selected, or supposed to be selected, by the Emperor
in person, and the remainder are chosen by the chief examiners. The
_Cycle_, an English newspaper published at Shanghai, once gave the
texts chosen for such exercises at an examination held at Wu Chang.

I. From the _Lun Yu_, the _Analects of Confucius_:—“Tsŭ Yu, being
governor of Wu Ching, the master said to him, ‘Have you got such a
thing as a real Man in the place?’ He answered, ‘Here is Tan Tai Mieh
Ming, who does not in walking side off by a short cut, nor come to my
office except on public business.’”

II. From the _Chung Yung_ of Kung Chi, the grandson of Confucius:—“He
only who is accomplished, learned, profound, and critical, has
wherewith to exercise sound judgment.”

III. From the _Shang Mang_ of Mencius:—“When any one told Tsŭ Lu that
he had a fault he was pleased with him. When Yu heard anybody say a
wise thing he bowed to him.”

Each of these essays was required to contain not less than three
hundred, nor more than eight hundred words.

The theme for the poetical exercise was “An observer of the beauties
of Nature being so absorbed as to forget the march of a whole round of
seasons.”

Such are the proofs of superior wisdom and learning in which if a man
excel he is qualified to rule others! Chinese scholarship is very
difficult of attainment; perhaps if it were impossible the world would
hardly be much the poorer.

When the subjects have been selected and approved by the Emperor, they
are sealed up in a box and given over to the care of a chief eunuch of
the palace, to be handed to the chief examiners, who cause them to be
engraved on wood and printed. On the 10th day of the month the essays
are handed in, and the candidates leave the building.

The officers having received the exercises, examine them carefully to
see whether there be any informality in them: if they should discover
anything like an infringement of prescribed custom the papers are
rejected, the peccant candidate’s name is struck off the list, and
he is incapacitated from taking part in the second examination. If
the papers are in due form they are sent into the copying department,
where they are copied in red ink; thence into the comparing department,
and sealing department, where the mottoes borne by the originals are
pasted on to them. They now find their way into the superintendent’s
office, and he forwards them to the eighteen junior examiners.

With pain and care, measuring every word and weighing to a nicety the
fitness of every particle, these learned men apply themselves to the
criticism of the papers before them. Those that find favour in their
eyes are docketed as good, and given back to the superintendent, who
passes them to the three chiefs. Should they fail to satisfy these they
are thrown into the waste-paper basket, but the candidate still has the
credit of having passed the first test. Should they satisfy the chiefs
they are marked with the character Chung, signifying that they have hit
the mark; but only a limited number of candidates are admitted to the
degree at one examination.

The second examination takes place on the 11th day of the month,
and consists in writing five essays upon texts taken from the Five
Classics; the third test, which is held on the 14th of the month, is
devoted to the propounding of five sets of questions on the subject
of literature, political economy, or general science. According to
the _Cycle_, “the first question asked at Wu Chang was of the nature
of criticism of the classics; the second question was on historical
matters; the third on military colonisation. (The Chinese Government
hoping to save their western provinces by allotting land to soldiers
on the frontier line, requiring them to keep themselves in readiness
for fighting.) The fourth question entered into the various plans
adopted by previous dynasties in the selection of suitable persons to
hold the offices of government. The fifth question referred to the
ancient and modern geography of Ching Chan Fu, the course of the waters
of the Han and the Yangtze, and the history of the Tung Ting Lake.” The
answers to each of the five questions were to contain a minimum of five
hundred words.

It occasionally happens that after the list of successful candidates
has been made up, the work of some new bachelor is recommended to the
notice of the examiners. Should the essays which he sends in show
pre-eminent ability, their fortunate author is rewarded with the degree
of Fu Pang, or assistant master; and if the list of Fu Pang be already
full, then he is appointed Tan Lu, a distinction bringing with it no
advancement in rank in the state, but rendering its possessor eligible
for certain offices.

During the examination at Wu Chang a subordinate official of the
examination hall was convicted of having passed manuscripts to one of
the candidates. The punishment was summary. The official was beheaded,
the candidate banished to the frontiers, and the graduate who wrote the
forged essay was sentenced to be executed when captured. As the writer
of the article in the _Cycle_, from which I have quoted, observes, “It
is interesting to find the Chinese authorities so prompt and just in
punishing the guilty. If some unfortunate foreigner had been murdered
by these precious literati, the governor would have declared it to
be impossible to touch the offenders in the presence of a myriad of
members of their order.” More probably he would either have declared
that he could not find them, or have executed a certain number of
jail-birds as substitutes.

Perhaps the candidate was a foolish candidate, and hush-money was
either wanting or insufficient. But in that case it was as it should
be, for by not bribing he clearly showed his incapacity for holding
high official position. He did not recognise the privileges of the
class which it was his ambition to enter, and he gave the officers of
the hall an opportunity of showing a little cheap zeal in the execution
of their duty, to his great discomfiture.

When the three tests are ended and the degrees have all been conferred,
the superintendent of the examination hall addresses a petition to
the Emperor, praying that a day may be fixed for publishing the names
of the successful candidates. This generally takes place on the
10th day of the following month. On the first day of the ceremonies
of publication a table is ordered to be set out in the hall called
Chih Kung Tang, the Hall of Justice unsurpassed. The three chief
examiners, with the two chief superintendents, solemnly take their
places at the table, and on either side, spread out diagonally “like
a goose’s wings,” as the Chinese writer puts it, are the eighteen
junior examiners, all clad in their official robes. All this galaxy of
learning and wisdom is gathered together to witness the breaking of
the seals of the exercises, and to hear the calling out of the names
which are written on the list. Next morning, before daybreak, the list
is rolled up and placed inside a palanquin of honour, richly decorated
with coloured silks; a procession is formed, headed by standard-bearers
carrying emblems, as at a wedding, and the whole heaven is filled with
the sound of drums and of delicate music, gongs being beaten to clear
the road. Immediately behind the palanquin containing the precious
list march the chief examiners and their subordinates, who accompany
it outside the Dragon Gate. This gate of the examination hall is so
called allegorically, because in the same way as the fish rose from
the sea to heaven, and became perfected into the heavenly dragon, so
the successful candidates have, by the grace of learning, cast off the
grosser clay of which they were formed, and have risen to the heaven of
rank and fame. The superintendents of the hall escort the list as far
as the outer gate of the provincial capital, where it is hung up on a
high platform specially erected for the purpose.

When the list has thus been finally published, etiquette requires
that the new Masters of Arts should go and pay their respects to the
chief and junior examiners. At these visits much wine is drunk, and an
adjournment to the theatre takes place, where the party witness the
deadly dulness of an historical piece, relieved, it is true, by the
performance of grossly indecent farces, and by the consumption of the
usual refreshments of fried melon-seeds, sweetmeats, cakes, and tea.

In spite of all the pains taken nominally to insure fairness and
exclude any possibility of trickery, Chinese ingenuity would belie
itself if it did not find means of giving the slip to all law and rule,
and of satisfying greed thereby. Though the candidate’s name is not
known until the papers have been examined and judged, they will be
framed in such a way as to let the examiner know who is the author—as,
for instance, by agreeing beforehand that the briber’s essay shall
begin and end with certain words. On the other hand, if the officers of
the copying and comparing departments have not received their fee, they
can throw any candidate’s work all out of tune with the greatest ease.
Nor is there any appeal. The copy in red ink which is sent in to the
junior examiners stands as the _ipsissima verba_ of the writer. By one
slip a spiteful copyist may spoil the best essay.

The examination for the third and highest degree, that of Chin Shih, or
Doctor, does not differ materially in character from that of Chü Jên
or Master of Arts, except in the fact that whereas the latter is held
in provincial capitals, the former is held only at Shun Tien Fu, at
which city the candidates from every part of the empire have to attend.
The expense and difficulties of what may be a very long and expensive
journey naturally tend to limit the number of aspirants.

After the publication of the list of successful candidates a last
examination is held at Peking in the Imperial palace. According to
their performances in this final test the doctors are divided into
three classes. The first class consists only of the three best men in
order of merit, who are called respectively Chuang Yüan, Pang Yüan, and
Tan Hwa, which might be translated Senior Wrangler, Second Wrangler,
and Golden Spoon; the second class contains from seven to ten names;
and the third class is made up of the remainder, and may consist of two
hundred men or more. At the second part of this examination the doctors
are presented to the Son of Heaven, who in person appoints them to
various offices in the state. The Senior Wrangler is usually employed
as a writer of records in the Forest of Pencils, while the Second
Wrangler and the Golden Spoon are appointed to be correctors. All the
doctors are sure of obtaining some appointment, but not of keeping it
unless they show official capacity, of which the most infallible proof
is the liberal opening of a long purse.

“In the olden time,” writes a native author, “a man need only pass the
degree of Hsin Tsai, or Bachelor, to be sure of obtaining some office
in the state. But nowadays there are too many who buy their rank, so
that a man’s merit is measured by the capacity of his purse, while the
right men are pushed out of the right place. Hence it comes that many a
ripe scholar, if he have but enough means to keep the life within him,
and be a man of spirit to boot, will rather remain in obscurity as a
private individual than be mixed up with such men as hold office. Good
men holding aloof, the officials of the country are but a sorry lot
after all. How can we be surprised if discontent and treason are rife?”

These are the words of a modern scholar, savouring somewhat of sour
grapes, it is true. Yet as early as five hundred years before Christ,
Lao Tsŭ, the founder of the Taoist sect, pointed out the vanity and
hollowness of the system of education and government into which the
country was drifting. “If some men,” said the sage, “would abandon
their learning and cast away their wisdom the people would be benefited
a hundred-fold.” Of all the Chinese philosophers Lao Tsŭ was probably
the one whose teaching of simple virtue approached the nearest to the
Christian standard. Confucius himself, after having had an interview
with him, said to his disciples, “I know how the birds fly, how the
fishes swim, how the beasts run, and the runner may be snared, the
swimmer may be hooked, and the flyer may be shot by the arrow.[20] But
there is the dragon. I cannot tell how he mounts on the wind through
the clouds and rises to heaven. To-day I have seen Lao Tsŭ, and can
only compare him to the dragon.”[21]

It can hardly be said that matters have improved since the old days of
Lao Tsŭ.


[Illustration: PLAN OF PEKING

By permission of “The Times.”


REFERENCE.

  1. British Legation.
  2. Russian    ”
  3. American   ”
  4. German     ”
  5. Spanish    ”
  6. Japanese   ”
  7. French     ”
  8. Austrian   ”
  9. Italian    ”
  10. Imperial Maritime Customs
  11. American Mission and Hospital Buildings.
  12. British    do.         do.
  13. French Eastern Cathedral and Mission Buildings.
  14. French Southern Cathedral and Mission Buildings.
  15. French Northern Cathedral and Mission Buildings.

London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.

_Stanford’s Geog^l. Estab^t. London_]




                                 INDEX


Acrobats, 233

Agriculture, soil, etc., 87, 109, 137, 261, 298, 318

Albazines, Russian colony in Peking, 212, Pref. li.

Alcock, Sir Rutherford, at Peking, 177, 182, 184, 189, 240; municipal
    system established by, at Shanghai, 40

American commercial interests in China, 263

Ancestor worship and religious rites, 171, 222, 345, Pref. xxix.–xxxiv.
    (See also Monks.)

Anti-foreign feeling in China, 29, 39, 238, Pref. vi.–viii. xi. xiv.
    xli.

Anting plain, 75

Apakwai, widow, 284–286

Arithmetic, Chinese method of counting on fingers, 248

Army, Chinese, inferiority of, 83; review, 75; war with Japan, 357

Astrology, belief in influence on health, 94


“Beggar’s Bridge,” Peking, 95, 127

Belgian interests in China, 264

Boat women, 2, 18

Books on China, Pref. v. xvi. xli. lviii.

Boots, Chinese pockets, 70, 259

Brenchley, Mr., 312, 313

Brick tea made for Mongolia, 272

British Legation, Peking, described, 66

Bruce, Sir Frederic, 71, 317

Buddhism, Pref. xiii. xiv. xix.

Buildings described—
  British Legation, Peking, 66
  Hong-kong houses, 3
  Interior of a Peking mandarin’s home, 230
  Shih-san-Ling, Ming tombs, 156–162, 249
  Temples (see that name)
  Theatre in Peking, 347
  Yuen-Ming-Yuen, Imperial summer palace, 111–116

Burmah, Pref. li.

Business methods, 147


Caffieri, 244

Camels, 322

Candida, Christian convert in seventeenth century, 22, 36

Canton, description of, 17–32; bombardment of, in 1856, 24; population,
    24; prosperity of, 29; Shah-Meen, English quarter, 30; temples, 25;
    gardens, 30

Capital city, advisability of change, Pref. xliv.–lvii.

Cavagnari, Sir Louis, murder of, at Cabul, Pref. viii.

Céladon, Jaspé, 244

Cemeteries, beauty of sites for, 87, 158

Cha Mai Chu, muleteer, 317

Cha Tao, 254

Chai Ling, Mongolia, 326

Chang Chia Ko̔u, frontier town, Mongolia, 261, 265, 313, 315

Chang Hsi, Mr. Mitford’s servant, 178, 246, 249, 270

Chang Leang, Mongolia, 320

Chang-ma-tsze-chin, Mongolia, 283

Chang-Ping-Chou, scene of tragedy of 1860, 153, 155, 249

Chang-tu-ho, Mongolia, 286

Chien-Lung, Emperor, 65, 100, 101, 335

Chien Mên, gate in Peking, 222

Chien Shêng, class of graduates, 365

Chih Hsien, magistrates of small towns, 364

Chihfu town, 45

Chihli, province in which is Peking, 362, Pref. li.

Chi-ling, or Kylin, 157

Chin Shih, degree, 372

Chinese characteristics, etc.—
  Anti-foreign feeling, 29, 39, 238, Pref. vi.–viii. xi. xiv. xli.
  Clothing, 185, 190
  Country folk, civility of, 96, 129, 294, 304, 345; exception, 138
  Dirt of, 34, 95
  Domestic life, unknown to foreigners, 229
  Ignorance of European life and customs, 124
  Inquisitiveness, 96, 123, 258, 295
  Noise, love of, 102, 122, 260, 341
  Superstitions, a bar to progress, 167
  Sweetmeats, fondness for, 171
  Thieves, cleverness of, 9
  Traders, ability as, Pref. xxxix.

Chinese Mesopotamian treaty, 174

Ching dynasty (the present), Pref. xxiii.–xxv.

Ching Ta̔i, Emperor, 244

Cholera, 204

Chopsticks, 78, 232

Chou-Hsin, Emperor, 214

Christianity (see under Religion)

Chü Jên, degree, 364–372

Chu-Yung-Kwan, town, 253

Chung, Minister of Foreign Office, 237

Chung Ch’êng, Emperor, Pref. xxv.

Chwang Yuen, Chinese senior wrangler, 373

Civilisation of China, ancient _v._ modern, Pref. ix.–xi.

Clement XI., Pope, important decision of, Pref. xxxiii.

Climate and temperature, 80, 87, 106–108, 163, 179, 184, 200, 209, 217,
    239, 282, 308, 310, 315, 342; Hong-kong, 12; rain and snow prayed
    for, 88, 209, 217, 314

Cloisonné enamel, 126, 244

Clothing, Chinese, 185, 190

Coalfields, 257

Confucius—
  Enlightened teaching of, Pref. x. xxxii.; worship of, Pref.
    xxix.–xxxiv.; eulogy of Lao Tsŭ, 374

Conolly, Dick, 344

Cooks, Chinese, ability of, 20, 114

Corea, expedition to, by Mr. Thomas, 206–208

Country folk, civility of, 96, 129, 294, 304, 345; exception, 138

Crealock, Mr., 57

Currency, 311

_Cycle_, the, Shanghai paper, quoted, 366, 369


Davis, Sir John, referred to, 150, Pref. v.

Degrees (see under Education)

Denmark, interests in China, 264

Dirt of Chinese, 34, 95

Diseases and medicine—
  Chinese doctors and remedies, 93, 107, 116
  Cholera, 204
  Deafness, 305
  Goitres, 305
  “Ho ting hung,” poisonous drug, 193
  Ophthalmia, 117
  Smallpox, 71, 310

Dogs, 23, 82, 96, 164, 246, 275, 281, 285

Domestic life of Chinese, unknown to foreigners, 229

Dominicans, Pref. xxvi. xxx.–xxxiv.

Dragons, myths concerning, 154, 314

Dust storms, 63


Education, early, 361; degrees, 142, 362–373; village school, 303;
    morality taught, but not practised, 357

Elgin, Lord, 68

Emperors—
  Chien-Lung, 65, 100, 101, 335
  Ching Ta̔i, 244
  Chou-Hsin, 214
  Chung Ch’êng, Pref. xxv.
  Dynasties of, Pref. x. xxiii.
  Hsien Fêng, 73 (note)
  Ka̔ng-Hsi, 212, 302, 345, Pref. xxv. xxvii. xxxi.–xxxv.
  Kwang Hsu (reigning), Pref. xlix. lvi.
  Ming dynasty established, Pref. xvii.; Ming tombs, 156–162, 249
  Ming Ti, Pref. xiii.
  Names given to, 160
  Shih, builder of the Great Wall, 148
  Shun Chih, Pref. xxv.
  Tao Kwang, 74
  Tung Chi, 73 (note)
  Wan Li, Pref. xx.
  Wu Wang, 213
  Yung Chêng, Pref. xxxv.
  Yung-Lo, 159

Empress Tsŭ Hsi (reigning), history of, 73 (note); choice of capital,
    Pref. xlvii. xlviii. l. lii.

Empress-dowager, honours paid to, in China, 73 (note)

England, commercial interests in China, 263, Pref. li.; Lord
    Salisbury’s policy, Pref. liv.

Execution, Chinese, described, 190–199


Farquhar, Sir Eric, 311, 340, 344

Feet, women’s, 137

Felt, Chinese method of making, 321

Fêng Ming Hsien, Mongolia, 301

“Fêng Shui,” wind and water system, 167

Fireworks, 171

“Flower-boats,” 19

Fohkien, province, 181

Food, ability of Chinese cooks, 20, 114; daily meals in Hong-kong,
    13; feasts given by Hêng-Chi, 77–79, 203; breakfast given to
    Europeans by a mandarin, 232; restaurant in Peking, 312; in Mongol
    yurts, 279; difficulty of obtaining in the country, 331; game,
    180; sweetmeats, or “po-po,” 171, 203; brick tea in Mongolia, 272;
    “Rice,” term for meals, 138

France, China question and, 263, Pref. li.

Franciscans, Pref. xxvi. xxx.–xxxiv.

Frater, Mr., 128, 150

Funeral, Chinese, 306


Game, 180

Gardens, private, in Canton, 30

Germany, China question and, 263, Pref. xlvii. l.

God (Christian) controversy concerning Chinese name for, Pref. xxvi.
    xxix. xxxi.–xxxiv.

Gods and goddesses—
  Kwan-Ti, god of war, 201, 223, 273
  Kwang-Yin, goddess of mercy, 154
  Ti Tsang Wang, 346
  Tsai-shên, god of commerce, 172
  Tsao, god of the hearth, 220
  Wên Shên, god of pestilence, 204

Goitres, 141, 305

Gordon, Gen., 84

Government, Chinese—
  Foreign policy, 85, 118, 169, 174–177, 181, Pref. xlvii.–l.; dread of
    reform, Pref. xi.; corruption of officials, 360, 370; over-taxation
    in the country, 153

Government, foreign, past and future policy, Pref. xliv.–lvii.

Great Wall, 137, 148–150, 273, 318

Gros, Baron, 68, 165, 167


Ha Pa Chiao, Mongolia, 289

Hai Tien, village, 331

Hailstones, formation and size, 310

Han Chang-kwei-ti, merchant, Peking, 347

Hart, Sir Robert, 118, 226

“Heavenly Flowers” (smallpox), 310

Hei Lung Tan, temple, 344

Hêng-Chi, Minister of Foreign Affairs, 69, 72, 75–79, 168, 203, 237, 260

Ho Nan, province, Pref. xiii.

“Ho ting hung,” poisonous drug, 193

Hong-kong—
  Landing at, 1–3; general description, 3–15; life in, 12; mixed
    population of, 5

Horses, 51, 164, 257, 275, 284, 332; horse brigands, 288; horse-fair,
    292

House-steamers between Hong-kong and Canton, 16

Hsi an Fu, intended creation of, as capital, by Empress Tsŭ Hsi, Pref.
    l. liii.

Hsiang Shui Pu, town, 257

Hsien Fêng, Emperor, 73 (note)

Hsin Pao An, town, 255

Hsin Tsai, 363

Hsü, Minister of Foreign Affairs, 181

Hsü Hsien Shêng, Mr. Mitford’s teacher, 178

Hsüeh, Minister, degradation of, 182

Hsuên Hwa Fu, town, 260

Hsuan Hua Fu, city, 257

Hung Tu̔ng Tien, Mongolia, 297

Hwai Lai Hsien, town, 254


I, Prince of, 360

Inns and lodgings (see under Travelling)

Inquisitiveness of Chinese, 96, 123, 258, 295

Insects, 91, 101, 123, 139, 326

Intemperance, rarity of, in China, 255


Japan, war with China, 357; civilisation of, Pref. viii. x.

Jesuits, history of, in China, Pref. xvii.–xxxvi.

Jews in China, Pref. xii.

Jo Hol, palace in Manchuria, 101

John of Monte Corvino, Pref. xv.

Jugglers, 234

Junks, 18


Kai Fêng, Jewish colony, Pref. xii.

Kambaluk, ancient name for Peking, Pref. xv.

Kang (stove), 133

Ka̔ng-Hsi, Emperor, 212, 302, 345; Pref. xxv. xxvii. xxxi.–xxxv.

Kites, 221

Kou Mên Tzŭ, Mongolia, 295

Kowloon, peninsula, 14

Ku, Mr. Mitford’s teacher, 81, 178

Ku Pei Ko̔u, frontier town, Mongolia, 141–150, 307, 315, 327

Ku-Lin-Shu, village, 129

Kung, Prince of, 67–72, 165, 187, 189, 240

Kwa Ti Erh, Mongolia, 298

Kwa Yo Erh, Mongolia, 304

Kwan-Ti, god of war, 201, 223, 273

Kwang Hsu, Emperor (reigning), Pref. xlix. lvi.

Kwang—Yin, goddess of mercy, 154

Kwei Chao, town, Pref. xlvii.

Kwo Chia Tu̔n, Mongolia, 298


Language—
  “Pidgin” English, 4; how Mr. Mitford learnt Chinese, 81, 91;
    difficulties of, incident, 342; accurate knowledge of, necessary to
    missionaries, Pref. xxxvi.

Lao Tsŭ, founder of Taoist sect, 374

Lao Wo Pu̔, Mongolia, 297

Li, governor of province, 84

Li, herbalist at Ku Pei Ko̔u, 327

Li Hung Chang, Pref. xi. xlix. lvii.

Liang, minister, 213

Liang Kung Fu, British Legation, Peking, 66

Lien Hwa Tan, Mongolia, 318

“Ling Chih,” punishment by slow death, 198

Literary style, importance of, in China, Pref. xix.

Liu, account by, of Ta-Chio-Ssŭ, 333

Liu-Li-Chang, street in Peking, 126, 224

Lizards, 110

Llama Miao, Mongolia, 290–294

Llama temple, Peking, 119

Llamas (see Monks)

Longobardi, Father, Pref. xxii.

Lung Wang Miao, temple, 314


Ma, merchant, Canton, 241–243

Ma Shên Miao, temple, 286

Macao, 32, 264

Maigrot, Bishop, Pref. xxxi. xxxiii. xxxiv.

Manchuria, reigning dynasty from, 360;
  Russia and, Pref. li.

Mandarins—
  Attainment of rank, 358–374; unprincipled character of, 217, 357;
    hostility to foreigners, Pref. vi. xi. xiv. xli.

Martin, Dr., Chinese translation of Wheaton’s _International Law_, 86

Mas, M. de, Spanish Minister, 168

Medicine (see Disease)

Mezzabarba, papal legate to Ka̔ng Hsi, Pref. xxxiv.

Miao Fêng Shan, shrine, 309

Military review, 75

Ming dynasty, Pref. xvii. xxiii.–xxv.

Ming Ti, Emperor who introduced Buddhism, Pref. xiii.

Ming Tombs, Shih-san-Ling, 156–162, 249

Missionaries—
  History of early missions, Pref. xv.–xxxvi.; religious dissensions
    amongst themselves, Pref. xxix.–xxxiv. xliii.; qualifications
    necessary to succeed in China, Pref. xxxvi.–xxxviii.; French, 169;
    unwise championship of converts, Pref. xlii.; Russian Mission in
    Peking, 210, 212; China Inland Mission, Pref. xliii.

Mi-Yün-Hsien, city, 136, 150

Mobbing Europeans, 258, 319

Mohammedanism, Pref. xiii. xiv.

Mongolia—
  Chai Ling, 326
  Chang Chia Ko̔u, 313, 315
  Chang Leang, 320
  Chang-tu-ho, 286
  Chinese boundary of, 308
  Chinese colonies in, 283, 307
  Dogs, 281
  Fêng Ming Hsien, 301
  Food eaten in yurts, 272, 279
  Ha Pa Chiao, 289
  Horses (see that name)
  Hung Tu̔ng Tien, 297
  Kou Mên Tzŭ, 295
  Kwa Ti Erh, 298
  Kwa Yo Erh, 304
  Kwo Chia Tu̔n, 298
  Lao Wo Pu̔, 297
  Lien Hwa Tan, 318
  Llama Miao, 290–294
  Mongols, 120, 134, 281, 284
  Niu Chuên Tzŭ, 301
  Pa Ta, 273
  Pan Shan Tu, 276
  Passes into, from China, 315
  Po Li Nao, 304
  Shi Pa Li Tai, 274
  Shou Hu Ying, 302
  Shui-Hsien-Tszŭ, 295
  Steppes, 274
  Ta Kao, 324
  Ta Liang Ti, 287
  Ta Tan, 321
  Tu Shih Ko̔u, 318
  Tu-ting, 272
  Yurts or huts, 277–282

Monks and llamas, 27, 88, 104, 291, 336–339, 341, 344, 345

Morales, Spanish Dominican, 31

Morrison, Dr., quoted, Pref. xiii. xli.

Mu-Chia-Yu, 137

Mules (see under Travelling)

Murray, Mr., 146, 150

Musical instruments, 121, 222, 233, 348


Nanchang, school established by Father Ricci, Pref. xix.

Nanking, meaning of name, 61; suggested as capital in place of Peking,
    Pref. xlv.–liv.

Nan-Ko̔u, town and pass, 250–254

Nei Nei Shan, mountain, 256

New Year festivities in Peking, 220–226

Niu Chuên Tzŭ, Mongolia, 301

Niu-Lan-Shan, 130

Nobility of China, 358–360

Noise, Chinese love of, 102, 122, 260, 341


Ophthalmia, 117

Opium smokers and trade, 300; Pref. xxxix.–xli.


Pa Kung, degree, 364

Pa Ta, Mongolia, 273

Pa Ta Chia, “Eight great Families,” 360

Pa Ta Chu, Russian summer quarters, 340

Pa Ta Ling, ruins of, 254

Palikao bridge, 57

Palladius, Archimandrite, 210

Palmerston, Lord, 188, 213

Palmistry, 107, 328

Pan Shan Tu, Mongolia, 276

Pang Yuen, Chinese second wrangler, 373

Pantoja, companion of Father Ricci, Pref. xx.

Pao, mandarin in Chang Chia Ko̔u, 267–269

Parkes, Sir Harry, 38

Partition of China, Pref. l.–liv.

Passport difficulties, 266–269

Peiho river, 48–50, 55

Peking—
  “Beggar’s Bridge,” 95, 127
  British Legation, 66
  Chien Mên gate, 222
  Chihli, in province of, 362, Pref. li.
  Division into two cities, 61
  Dust in, 63
  “House of Eternal Prosperity,” restaurant, 312
  Kambaluk, ancient name for, Pref. xv.
  Llama temple, 119
  Liu-li-chang (street), 224
  Outrages of 1900, Pref. xliv.–lvii.
  _Peking Gazette_, 200
  Races, 237
  Size and population, 64
  Street of Lanterns, 221
  Tê Shêng Mên (Victory gate), 246
  Theatre, 347–355
  Unsuitability of, as capital, Pref. xliv.–liv.
  Walls of, 59, 61

Peter the Great, 212

Pi Yün Ssŭ, summer quarters of British Legation, 80, 87–94, 99, 102–111

Pichon, M., French attaché, 204

Pigs and pork, 134

Pigtails, 7, 34

“Pilgrim’s Progress,” Chinese translation, 271

Pin Chun, mission to England, 226–228

Po Li Nao, Mongolia, 304

“Po-po” sweetmeats, 171, 203

Po-Ting-Qua, Canton merchant, 30

Pogojeff, Dr., Russian Legation, 240, 340

Pok Fo Lum, 15

Polygamy, 359

Population, Peking, 64; Hong-kong, 5; Canton, 24

Portugal, interests in China, 264

“Psalm of Life,” Chinese translation, 70

Pu-ta-jên, Chinese for Sir F. Bruce, 71


Races at Peking, 237; at Tientsing, 50

Rain and snow, prayers for, 88, 209, 217, 314

Rebellion, Tai Ping, 37, 40, 83, 98, 176, 217, Pref. vi.

Religion—
  Ancestor worship and religious rites, 171, 222, 345, Pref.
    xxix.–xxxiv. (see also Monks)
  Buddhism, Pref. xiii. xiv. xix.
  Christianity, history of, in China, Pref. xiv.–xliv. (see also
    Missionaries)
  Mohammedanism, Pref. xiii. xiv.
  Monks and Llamas (see that name)
  Taoism, 374, Pref. xiii.
  Toleration of other creeds, Pref. xii. xxxviii.

Ricci, Father, life and work of, Pref. xviii.–xxii. xxix. xxx. xxxvi.

Rice, term for meals, 138

Roads, 57, 253, 300, 331

Rocks, curious shapes, 323;
  painting on, 324

Ruggiero, Father, Pref. xviii.

Russia, trade with China, 262, 264; partition question, Pref. li.


Sa, mandarin convicted of theft, 218

Saint François Xavier, Pref. xvii.

Salisbury, Lord, policy of, Pref. liv.

San Ko Lin Sin, General, 105, 358

Sangkolinsin, Mongol chief, 59

Saoul, Corea, 206, 207

Saurin, Mr., 50, 91, 128, 150, 188

Scenery—
  Hills near Peking, 86; Hong-kong, 14; between Peking and Great Wall,
    137, 141, 149; Nan-Ko̔u and Pass, 250–254; Mongolia, 274, 286, 295,
    297, 299, 301, 305, 318, 320, 322

Schall, Father, life and work of, Pref. xxiv.–xxvii. xxix. xxxvi.

School, village, 303

Scorpions, 91, 108

Servants, number of, necessary, 92; ability of cooks, 20, 114

Shah-Meen, English quarter of Canton, 30

Shan Hsi, town, 201, 202

Shang Chuen, where St. François Xavier died, Pref. xvii.

Shang Ti, Christian God, Pref. xxvi. xxix.

Shanghai, general description, 37–41; municipal system established by
    Sir R. Alcock, 40

Shantung, insurrection, 83, 98, Pref. vi.; partition question, Pref. l.
    li.

Shao Ching Fu, first Jesuit church established at, Pref. xviii.

Shao-To, 110, 114, 145

Shi Pa Li Tai, Mongolia, 274

Shih, Emperor, builder of the Great Wall, 148

Shih-san-Ling, Ming emperors’ tombs, 156–162, 249

Shi-ling, village, 136

Shops and street life, Peking, 120–126, 309; Canton, 21–24, 31;
    Tientsing, 52

Shou Hu Ying, Mongolia, 302

Shrines, 154, 252, 309

Shui-Hsien-Tszŭ, Mongolia, 295

Shun Chih, Emperor, Pref. xxv.

Shun Tien Fu, town, 362, 373

Skating, 209

Slave-selling described, 241–243

Smallpox, 71, 310

Spain, interests in China, 264

Ssŭ-Chuan, province, 169

Steppes, Mongolia, 274

Street of Lanterns, Peking, 221

Su, Prince of, 171

Sü, Christian convert in seventeenth century, Pref. xx. xxxvi.

Sü Chia Wei, Roman Catholic mission near Shanghai, Pref. xxii.

Suicide, 202, 360

Sun-Ho, near Peking, 129

Superstition a bar to progress, 167

Sweetmeats, Chinese fondness for, 171, 203


Ta-Chio-Ssŭ, summer quarters of British Legation, 330–338

Ta Kao, Mongolia, 324

Ta Liang Ti, Mongolia, 287

Ta Tan, felt factory, Mongolia, 321

Tai Kung, story of, 214

Tai Ping rebellion, 37, 40, 83, 98, 176, 217, Pref. vi.

Taku Forts, 48

Tan Hwa, golden spoon, 373

Tao Kwang, Emperor, 74

Taoism, 374, Pref. xiii.

Tê Shêng Mên, Victory gate, Peking, 246

Tea trade, 4, 97, 272

Telegraph apparatus, attempt to introduce, by Russian Government, 165

Temples—
  “Five Hundred Saints,” Canton, 25
  Hei Lung Tan, 344
  In hills near Peking, 88
  Llama, Peking, 119
  Llama Miao, Mongolia, 290–294
  Lung Wang Miao, 314
  Ma Shên Miao, Mongolia, 286
  Pa Ta Chu, Russian Legation summer quarters, 340
  “Punishments,” Canton, 25
  Ta-chio-Ssŭ, British Legation summer quarters, 330–338
  Wang-ta-jên Miao, Mongolia, 287
  Wo-Fo-Ssŭ, 99

Theatre, Peking, 347–355

Theatricals at British Legation, 216; village, 341

Thieves, cleverness of, 9

Thomas, Mr., expeditions to Corea, 205–208

Thunderstorms, 289, 310

Ti Tsang Wang, a god, 346

Ti-tu, official at Ku Pei Ko̔u, 144–147

Ti̔en, Heaven or God (Christian), Pref. xxvi. xxix. xxxi.–xxxiv.

Ti̔en-Hou, queen of heaven, 154

Tien Wang, chief of Tai Ping rebellion, 217

Tientsing, general description, 50–54

Tournon, Patriarch of Antioch, Pref. xxxiii.

Trade—
  England and America, 263
  Canton, 29
  Opium, Pref. xxxix.–xli.
  Russia, 262, 264
  Shanghai, 37
  Tea, 4, 97, 272
  Tientsing, 53
  Traders, ability of Chinese as, Pref. xxxix.

Travelling—
  Carts, 151, 247, 312
  Hong-kong to Canton, 16
  Hong-kong to Shanghai, 33
  Inns and lodgings, 130, 142, 258, 273, 277–282, 284, 290, 302, 304,
    320, 323, 324, 326, 327
  Mules, 247; mule litters, 316, 325; muleteers, 249, 264, 269–271, 317
  Passport difficulties, 144–147
  Peking to Great Wall, 128–162
  Peking to Mongolia, 246–309, 313–329
  Roads, 57, 253, 300, 331
  Shanghai to Tientsing, 41–50
  Tientsing to Peking, 55
  Yang-tse-Kiang river, 36

Tree cigala, 101

Tsai-shên, god of commerce, 172

Tsao, god of the hearth, 220

Tsêng Kwo Fan, General, 358; Pref. vii.

Tsu Hsi, Empress (reigning), history of, 73 (note); choice of capital,
    Pref. xlvii. xlviii. l. lii.

Tsung-Li-Yamên (Chinese Foreign Office), 181, 190, 240

Tu Mu, town, 255

Tu Shih Kou, Mongolia, 315, 318

Tu-ting, Mongolia, 272

Tuan, Prince, Pref. lii. lvi.

Tung Chi, Emperor, 73 (note)

Tung-Ling, tombs of Ching emperors, 173

Tung-ta-jên, translator of “Psalm of Life,” 69, 70; Preface to
    Wheaton’s _International Law_, 86

Tungchou, 56


Valignani, Father, Pref. xviii.

Verbiest, Father, life and work of, Pref. xxvii.–xxix. xxxvi.

Vlangaly, M., Russian minister, 166


Wade, Mr., _chargé d’affaires_ at Peking, 57, 59, 71

Wampoa, 17

Wan Li, Emperor, Pref. xx.

Wang-ho-lou, Peking racecourse, 237

Wang-ta-jên Miao, Mongol temple, 287

Wei-ta-jên, Chinese for Mr. Wade, 71

Wên Hsiang, Minister of Foreign Affairs, 85, 173

Wên Shên, god of pestilence, 204

Wên Wang, Emperor, 213

Wheaton’s _International Law_, Chinese translation, 86, 175

Williams, Dr. Wells, referred to, 73 (note), 310, Pref. xii. xvii.
    xxiv. xxxi. xxxv.

Wo-Fo-Ssŭ, temple, 99

Wood, scarcity of, 160

Wu Wang, Emperor, 213


Yalu, naval battle of, 358

Yang and Yin, universal principle, 150

Yang Ho, river, 256

Yang Lao Yeh, mandarin in Peking, 229–236

Yang-tse-Kiang, river, 36

Yuen-Ming-Yuen, Imperial summer palace, 111–116, 209

Yun-nan, Pref. li.

Yung Chêng, Emperor, Pref. xxxv.

Yung-Lo, Emperor, 159

Yurt, Mongol hut, 277–282


                                THE END


           _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.




                               FOOTNOTES

[1] There have been five Tartar dynasties—the Liao, A.D. 907–1125;
the Western Liao, A.D. 1125–1168; the Chin, which came to an end in
A.D. 1234; the Yüan, ending A.D. 1341, and the Ching, or present
dynasty, which began in A.D. 1627. (I have not taken into account some
overlappings of reigns which would need long explanation.)

[2] They are supposed by Mr. Finn “to have belonged to the restoration
from Chaldea, as they had portions of Malachi and Zechariah, adopted
the era of Seleucus, and had many rabbinical customs.” They were found,
by two native Christians sent by Bishop Smith to inquire into their
present condition, to be in abject poverty, ignorance, and dejection.
They knew no Hebrew, but had been instructed in copying the letters of
Holy Writ.—Wells Williams, _Middle Kingdom_, ii. 272.

[3] In those days the jinrikisha had not been invented.

[4] This, be it remembered, was written in 1865, and was the most
desponding view taken at that time even by those who were the gloomiest
prophets.

[5] Pa Li Chiao, the Eight Li Bridge (a Li is about a third of a mile),
so called from its distance from Peking.

[6] Great improvements have been effected in late years.

[7] See Note, p. 73.

[8] This is the more curious, as rice is by no means the staple food of
this part of China. It is bad and dear here, the common fare or staple
of the people being millet—a poor food—to which they add much garlic
for nourishment.

[9] Pulled down in 1864.

[10] The crime of parricide includes high treason, murder of parents,
elders in the family, and of the teacher, in such reverence is learning
held. The murder of a master by an apprentice comes under the same
category. A parricide is said to be an “owl-tiger,” both animals being
supposed to devour their parents. The owl especially eats its mother’s
head and eyes. The laugh of an owl portends death in a family.

[11] They were massacred a year later, their murder leading to the
abortive French expedition against Corea.

[12] In the following year this accomplished and adventurous gentleman
made another trip to Corea in an American ship. Not one of the party
was ever seen again, but a report reached Peking that the Coreans had
burnt the ship with all hands in the river not far from Saoul.

[13] Wang, a prince; Chi̔n Wang, a prince of the first rank who is
personally related to the Emperor.

[14] “Fu,” a bat, by a pun, also means happiness. “Wu fu,” the five
bats, or five happinesses, are a common emblem in Chinese ornamentation.

[15] I must remind the reader that this was written in 1866.

[16] In the far East the dragon, associated in our myths with fire, is
a water spirit. At the miraculous birth of Buddha two heavenly dragons
appeared in the air, the one spouting cold, the other warm water, to
wash the holy babe. Hence bronze dragons are commonly seen in temples
and in other places as water-spouts, where in the West the lion’s head
would be used. The lion as a fountain comes from the ancient Egyptians,
whose astronomers held that the rising of the Nile was bound to take
place when the sun was in Leo.

[17] Alas! both he and Farquhar fell victims to the climate and died of
fever.

[18] See preface.

[19] There are nine official buttons, each denoting an official
rank—each divided into a first and second class. The civilian takes
precedence of the military officer—_cedunt arma togæ_.

[20] Compare the account given of Solomon’s wisdom, 1 Kings iv.
29:—“And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and
largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea-shore. And
Solomon’s wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east
country, and all the wisdom of Egypt.... And he spake three thousand
proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five. And he spake of
trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that
springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowls, and
of creeping things, and of fishes. And there came of all people to hear
the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of
his wisdom.”

[21] _The Speculations of the Old Philosopher Lao Tsŭ_, translated by
John Chalmers. London, Trübner and Co.




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                   Transcriber’s Note (continued)

Errors in punctuation and simple typos have been corrected without
note. Variations in spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation and accents,
particularly of Chinese names and places, have been left as they appear
in the original publication unless as stated in the following:

  Page  31 – “reburying” changed to “re-burying” (re-burying the dead)

  Page 123 - “cicalas” changed to “cicadas” (live crickets and cicadas)

  Page 152 - “Chi-hsien” changed to “Chih-hsien” (the Chih-hsien, or
              governor of the town)

  Page 302 - “Kang Hsi” changed to “Káng Hsi” (famous Emperor, Káng Hsi)

  Page 318 - “Chang-Ma-Tzû-Chin” changed to “Chang-Ma-Tzŭ-Chin”
              (Chang-Ma-Tzŭ-Chin on the 3rd July)

  Page 336 - “abbott” changed to “abbot” (The abbot himself)

  INDEX - “Chu Jen” changed to “Chü Jên” (Chü Jên, degree)

  INDEX - “Hung Tung Tien” changed to “Hung Tu̔ng Tien” (Hung Tu̔ng Tien,
           Mongolia)

  INDEX - “Shui-Hsien-Tszê” changed to “Shui-Hsien-Tszŭ”
           (Shui-Hsien-Tszŭ, Mongolia, 295)

  INDEX - “Te Shêng Mên” changed to “Tê Shêng Mên” (Tê Shêng Mên,
           Victory gate, Peking)

  INDEX - “Tien” changed to “Ti̔en” (Ti̔en, Heaven or God (Christian))

  INDEX - “Tien-Hou” changed to “Ti̔en-Hou” (Ti̔en-Hou, queen of
           heaven, 154)

  INDEX - “Yung Cheng” changed to “Yung Chêng” (Yung Chêng, Emperor,)

Footnotes have been re-indexed and moved to a FOOTNOTES section after
the INDEX.





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