the mysteries of China, ancient eggs, sharks' fins, birds' nests, pigeon
eggs, the eight precious treasures, rice pudding, and so on. We continue
to have Chinese meals; yesterday lunch in the home of an adviser to a
military official. He is very outspoken, doesn't trim in politics, and
gives you a more hopeful feeling about China. The most depressing thing
is hearing it said, "When we get a stable government, we can do so and
so, but there is no use at present." But this man's attitude is rather,
"Damn the government and go ahead and do something." He is very proud of
having a "happy, Christian home" and doesn't cover up his Christianity
as most of the official and wealthy class seem to do. He expects to have
his daughters educated in America, one in medicine and one in home
affairs, and to have help in a campaign for changing the character of
the Chinese home--from these big aggregates of fifty people or so living
together, married children, servants, etc., where he says the waste is
enormous, to say nothing of bickerings and jealousies. In the old type
of well-to-do home, breakfast would begin for someone about seven, and
someone would have cooking done for him to eat till noon; then about
two, visitors would come, and the servants would be ordered to cook
something for each caller--absolutely no organization or planning in
anything, according to him.
NANKING, Monday, May 26.
The trouble among the students is daily getting worse, and even the most
sympathetic among the faculties are getting more and more anxious. The
governor of this province, capital here, is thought most liberal, and he
has promised to support these advanced measures in education. Last
Friday the assembly passed a bill cutting down the educational
appropriation and raising their own salaries. Therefore the students
here are now all stirred up and the faculties are afraid they cannot be
kept in control until they are well enough organized to make a strike
effective. At the same time our friends are kept busy running up to the
assembly and the governor. The latter has promised to veto the bill when
it is sent to him from the senate. But the students are getting anxious
to go to the senate themselves. Our friends say it costs so much for
these men to get elected that they have to get it all back after they
get into office. A missionary says: "Let's go out and shoot them all,
they are just as bad as Peking, and if they had the same chance they
would sell out the whole country to Japan or to anyone else." Certainly
China needs education all along the line, but they never will get it as
long as they try in little bits. So maybe they will have to be pushed to
the very bottom before they will be ready to go the whole hog or none.
Yesterday a Chinese lady had a tea for me and asked the Taitai, as the
wives of the officials are called, corresponding to the court ladies of
previous times. As a function this was interesting, for every woman
brought her servant and most of her children. Some appeared to have two
servants, one big-footed maid for herself and one bound-footed as a
nurse for the children. Her own servant hands her the cup of tea. All
the children are fed at the same time as the grown-ups, and after their
superiors the servants get something in the kitchen. I don't know yet
what that something is, but probably an inferior tea. The tea we drank
is that famous jasmine tea from Hangchow. It costs something like
fifteen dollars a pound here. It is very good, with a peculiar spicy
flavor, almost musky and smoky, from the jasmine combined with the tea
flavor, which is strong. It is a delicious brown tea, but I do not like
to drink it so well as I like the best green tea.
Well, I wish you could see the Taitai. The wife of the governor is about
twenty-five, or may be a little more. She is a substantial young person,
with full-grown feet, a pale blue dress of skirt and coat scalloped on
the edges and bound with black satin, her nice hair parted to one side
on the right and pinned above her left ear with a white artificial rose.
Her maid had black coat and trousers. She had some bracelets on, but her
jewels were less beautiful than those of the other women. One very
pretty woman had buttons on her coat of emeralds surrounded with pearls,
and on her arm a lovely bracelet of pearls. After tea, the great ladies
went into an inner room, with the exception of two. One of these two had
a very sad face. I watched her and finally had a chance to ask her how
many children she had. She said she had none, but she would like to have
a daughter. I was told after that her husband was a Christian pastor and
she was trying to be Christian. The other one who stayed was the pretty
one with the emerald buttons. I finally decided the ladies had left us
to play their cards and asked if I might go and see them. They were not
playing cards, but had just gone off to gossip among themselves,
probably about the foreigners. One of the ladies said she would take me
some day to see their card games. It is said they play in the morning
and in the afternoon and all the night till the next morning when they
go to bed. It is commonly said this is all they do, and the losses are
very disastrous sometimes.
But they were not playing then and came back, some of them with their
children, and sat in the rows of chairs, sixteen of them, and some amahs
around the room, while I talked to them. I told stories about what the
American women did in the war and they stared with amazement. I had to
explain what a gas mask is, but they knew what killing is and what high
class is. Their giggles were quite encouraging to intercourse. A nice
young lady from the college interpreted, and when I stopped I asked them
to tell me something about their lives. So the governor's wife was at
last persuaded to give an account of how she brought up her children.
They are all free from self-consciousness, and though they have little
manners in our sense of the word, they have a self-possession and
gentleness combined which gives a very graceful appearance. The
governor's wife says she has two little boys, the eldest six years of
age. In the morning he has a Chinese tutor. After dinner, she teaches
him music, of which she is very fond. After that he plays till
five-thirty, has supper, plays again a little while before going to bed,
and then bed. At thirteen the boy will be sent away to school. I asked
her what about girls, and she said that her little niece was the first
one in her family to be sent to school, but this ten-year-old one is in
Tientsin at a boarding school.
PEKING, Sunday, June 1.
We met a young man here from an interior province who is trying to get
money for teachers who haven't received their pay for a long time.
Meantime over sixty per cent of the entire national expenses is going to
the military, and the army is worse than useless. In many provinces it
is composed of brigands and everywhere is practically under the control
of the tuchuns or military governors, who are corrupt and use the pay
roll to increase their graft and the army to increase their power of
local oppression, while the head military man is openly pro-Japanese.
There is a lull in our affairs just now. We agreed yesterday that never
in our lives had we begun to learn as much as in the last four months.
And the last month particularly, there has been almost too much food to
be digestible. Talk about the secretive and wily East. Compared, say,
with Europe, they hand information out to you here on a platter (though
it must be admitted the labels are sometimes mixed) and sandbag you with
it.
Yesterday we went to the Western Hills where are the things you see in
the pictures, including the stone boat, the base of which is really
marble and as fine as the pictures. But all the rest of it is just
theatrical fake, more or less peeling off at that. However, it is as
wonderful as it is cracked up to be, and in some ways more systematic
than Versailles, which is what you naturally compare it to. The finest
thing architecturally is a Buddhist temple with big tiles, each of which
has a Buddha on--for further details see movie or something. We walked
somewhat higher than Russian Hill, including a journey through the caves
in an artificial mountain such as the Chinese delight in, clear up to
this temple. The Manchu family seems to own the thing yet, and charge a
big sum, or rather several sums, a la Niagara Falls, to get
about--another evidence that China needs another revolution, or rather
_a_ revolution, the first one having got rid of a dynasty and left, as
per my previous letters, a lot of corrupt governors in charge of chaos.
The only thing that I can see that keeps things together at all is that
while a lot of these generals and governors would like to grab more for
their individual selves, they are all afraid the whole thing would come
down round their ears if anyone made a definite move. Status quo is
China's middle name, mostly status and a little quo. I have one more
national motto to add to "You Never Can Tell" and "Let George Do It." It
is, "That is very bad." Instead of concealing things, they expose all
their weak and bad points very freely, and after setting them forth most
calmly and objectively, say "That is very bad." I don't know whether it
is possible for a people to be too reasonable, but it is certainly too
possible to take it out in being reasonable--and that's them. However,
it makes them wonderful companions. You can hardly blame the Japanese
for wanting to run them and supply the necessary pep when they decline
to run themselves. You certainly see the other side of the famous
one-track mind of Japan over here, as well as of other things. If you
keep doing something all the time, I don't know whether you need even a
single track mind. All you have to do is to keep going where you started
for, while others keep wobbling or never get started.
Well, this morning we went to the famous museum, and there is one thing
where China is still ahead. It is housed in some of the old palaces and
audience halls of the inner, or purple, forbidden City. With the yellow
porcelain roofs, and the blue and green and gold, and the red walls, it
is really the barbaric splendor you read about, and about the first
thing that comes up to the conventional idea of what is Oriental. The
Hindoo influence is much stronger here than anywhere else we have been,
or else really Thibetan, I suppose, and many things remind one of the
Moorish. The city of Peking was a thousand years building, and was laid
out on a plan when the capitals of Europe were purely haphazard, so
there is no doubt they have organizing power all right if they care to
use it. The museum is literally one of treasures, porcelains, bronzes,
jade, etc., not an historic or antiquated museum. It costs ten cents to
get into the park here and much more into the museum, a dollar or more,
I guess, and we got the impression that it was fear of the crowd and the
populace rather than the money which controls; the rate is too high for
revenue purposes.
PEKING, June 1.
We have just seen a few hundred girls march away from the American Board
Mission school to go to see the President to ask him to release the boy
students who are in prison for making speeches on the street. To say
that life in China is exciting is to put it fairly. We are witnessing
the birth of a nation, and birth always comes hard. I may as well begin
at the right end and tell you what has happened while things have been
moving so fast I could not get time to write. Yesterday we went to see
the temples of Western Hills, conducted by one of the members of the
Ministry of Education. As we were running along the big street that
passes the city wall we saw students speaking to groups of people. This
was the first time the students had appeared for several days. We asked
the official if they would not be arrested, and he said, "No, not if
they keep within the law and do not make any trouble among the people."
This morning when we got the paper it was full of nothing else. The
worst thing is that the University has been turned into a prison with
military tents all around it and a notice on the outside that this is a
prison for students who disturb the peace by making speeches. As this is
all illegal, it amounts to a military seizure of the University and
therefore all the faculty will have to resign. They are to have a
meeting this afternoon to discuss the matter. After that is over, we
will probably know what has happened again. The other thing we heard was
that in addition to the two hundred students locked up in the Law
Building, two students were taken to the Police rooms and flogged on the
back. Those two students were making a speech and were arrested and
taken before the officers of the gendarmerie. Instead of shutting up as
they were expected to do, the boys asked some questions of these
officers that were embarrassing to answer. The officers then had them
flogged on the back. Thus far no one has been able to see any of the
officers. If the officers denied the accusation then the reporters would
ask to see the two prisoners on the principle that the officers could
have no reason for refusing that request unless the story were true. We
saw students making speeches this morning about eleven, when we started
to look for houses, and heard later that they had been arrested, that
they carried tooth brushes and towels in their pockets. Some stories say
that not two hundred but a thousand have been arrested. There are about
ten thousand striking in Peking alone. The marching out of those girls
was evidently a shock to their teachers and many mothers were there to
see them off. The girls were going to walk to the palace of the
President, which is some long distance from the school. If he does not
see them, they will remain standing outside all night and they will stay
there till he does see them. I fancy people will take them food. We
heard the imprisoned students got bedding at four this morning but no
food till after that time. There is water in the building and there is
room for them to lie on the floor. They are cleaner than they would be
in jail, and of course much happier for being together.
PEKING, June 2.
Maybe you would like to know a little about how we look this morning and
how we are living. In the first place, this is a big hotel with a bath
in each room. On a big street opposite to us is the wall of the legation
quarter, which has trees in it and big roofs which represent all that
China ought to have and has not. The weather is like our hot July,
except that it is drier than the August drought on Long Island. The
streets of Peking are the widest in the world, I guess, and ours leads
by the red walls of the Chinese city with the wonderful gates of which
you see pictures. It is macadamized in the middle, but on each side of
it run wider roads, which are used for the traffic. Thank your stars
there are good horses in Peking; men do not pull all the heavy loads.
The two side roads are worn down in deep ruts and these ruts are filled
with dust like finest ashes, and all thrown up into the air whenever a
man steps on it or a cart moves through. Our room faces the south on
this road. All day long the sun pours through the bamboo shades and the
hot air brings in that gray dust, and everything you touch, including
your own skin, is gritty and has a queer dry feeling that makes you
think you ought to run for water. I am learning to shut the windows and
inner blinds afternoons. Isn't it strange that in the latitude of New
York this drought should be expected every spring? In spite of all this
the fields have crops growing, thinly, to be sure, on the hard gray
fields. There are very few trees, and they are not of the biggest. The
grain is already about fit to cut, and the onions are ripe. After a
while it will rain and rain much and then new crops will be put in. The
flowers are almost gone and I am sorry that we did not see the famous
peonies. You will be interested to know that they keep the peonies
small; even the tree kind are cut down till they are the size of those
little ones of mine. The tuber peonies are transplanted each year or in
some way kept small and the blossoms are lovely and little. I have seen
white rose peonies and at first thought they were roses. The buds look
almost like the buds of our big white roses and they are very fragrant.
The peony beds are laid out in terraces held in place by brick walls,
usually oblong or oval, something like a huge pudding mold on a table.
Other times they are planted on the flat and surrounded by bamboo fences
of fancy design and geometrical pattern, usually with a square form to
include each division. The inner city has many peony beds of that sort,
both the tree and tuber kind, but they have only leaves to show now.
Yesterday we went to the summer palace and to-day we are going to the
museum. That is really inside the Forbidden City, so at last we shall
set foot on the sacred ground. The summer palace is really wonderful,
but sad now, like all things made on too ambitious a scale to fit into
the uses of life. There is a mile of loggia ornamented with the green
and blue and red paintings which you see imitated. Through a window we
had a peek at the famous portrait of old Tsu Hsu and she looks just as
she did when I saw it exhibited in New York. The strange thing about it
is that it is still owned by the Hsu family. Huge rolls of costly rugs
and curtains lie in piles round the room and everything is covered with
this fine dust so thick that it is not possible to tell the color of a
table top. Cloissonne vases, or rather images of the famous blue ware
stand under the old lady's portrait, and everything is going to rack and
ruin. Meantime we wandered around, planning how it could be made over
into use when the revolution comes. Get rid of the idea that China has
had a revolution and is a republic; that point is just where we have
been deceived in the United States. China is at present the rotten
crumbling remnant of the old bureaucracy that surrounded the corruption
of the Manchus and that made them possible. The little Emperor is living
here in his palace surrounded by his eunuchs and his tutors and his two
mothers. He is fourteen and it is really funny to think that they have
just left him Emperor, but as he has not money except what the republic
votes him from year to year, nobody worries about him, unless it is the
Japanese, who want the imperial government restored until they get ready
to take it themselves. It looks as if they might be ready now except for
the nudge which has just been given to the peace conference. You had
better read a book about this situation, for it is the most surprising
affair in a lifetime.
Yesterday we went to see a friend's house. It is interesting and I
should like to live in one like it. There is no water except what the
water man brings every day. This little house has eighteen rooms around
a court. It means four separate roofs and going outdoors to get from one
to another. When the mercury is at twenty below zero it would mean that
just the same. All the ground floors have stone floors. We did not see
all the rooms; there are paper windows in some and glass windows in
some. In summer they put on a temporary roof of mats over the court. It
is higher than the roofs and so allows ventilation and gives good shade.
June 5.
This is Thursday morning, and last night we heard that about one
thousand students were arrested the day before. Yesterday afternoon a
friend got a pass which permitted him to enter the building where the
students were confined. They have filled up the building of Law, and
have begun on the Science building, in consequence of which the faculty
have to go to the Missionary buildings to-day to hold their faculty
meeting. At four yesterday afternoon, the prisoners who had been put in
that day at ten had had no food. One of our friends went out and got the
University to appropriate some money and they ordered a carload of bread
sent in. This bread means some little biscuit sometimes called raised
biscuit at home. I think carload means one of the carts in which they
are delivered. At any rate, the boys had some food, though not at the
expense of the police. On the whole, the checkmate of the police seems
surely impending. They will soon have the buildings full, as the
students are getting more and more in earnest, and the most incredible
part of it is that the police are surprised. They really thought the
arrests would frighten the others from going on. So everybody is getting
an education. This morning one of our friends here is going to take us
up to the University to see the military encampment, and I hope he will
take us inside also, though I hardly think he will do the latter.
As near as I can find out, the Chinese have reached that interesting
stage of development when they must do something for women and do as
little as they can, but in case they must have a girls' school they find
that a convenient place to unload an antiquated official who really
can't be endured any longer by real folks.
No one can tell to-day what the students' strike will bring next; it may
bring a revolution, it may do anything surprising to the police, who
seem to be as lacking in imagination as police are famous for being.
Everyone here is getting ready to flee for the summer, which is very hot
during July. On the whole, the heat is perhaps less hard to endure than
the heat of New York, as it is so dry. But the dryness has its own
effect and when those hard winds blow up the dust storms it gets on the
nerves. Dust heaps up inside the house, and cuts the skin both inside
and outside of the body. This is a lucky day, being cloudy and a little
damp as if it might rain.
The Western Hill was an experience to remember. Stepping from a Ford
limousine to a chair carried by four men and an outwalker alongside, we
were thus taken by fifteen men to the temples, your father, an officer
from the Department of Education, and I. The men walked over the paths
in the dust and on stones which no one thinks of picking up. It was so
astounding to call it a pleasure resort that we could only stare and
remain dumb. We saw three temples and one royal garden. Five hundred
Buddhas in one building, and all the buildings tumble-down and dirty. On
top of one hill is a huge building which cost a million or more to build
about four hundred years ago by someone for his tomb. Then he did
something wrong, probably stole from the wrong person, and was not
allowed to be buried there. Round the temple places the trees remain and
give a refreshing oasis, and there are some beautiful springs. All the
time we kept saying, "Trees ought to be planted." "Yes, but they take so
long to grow," or, "Yes, but they will not grow, it is so dry," etc.
Sometimes they would say, "Yes, we must plant some trees," or more
likely, "Yes, I think we may plant some trees sometime, but we have an
Arbor Day and the people cut down the trees or else they did." We would
show that the trees would grow because they were there round the
temples, and besides grass was growing and trees would grow where grass
would grow in such dry weather, and they would say the same things over.
It made the little forestry station in Nanking seem like a monumental
advance, while that fearful sun was beating up the dust under the stones
as the men gave us the Swedish massage in the motion of the chairs.
Fifty men and more stood around as we got in and out of the car and five
men apiece stood and waited for us as we walked round the temple and ate
our lunch and spent the time sipping tea, and yet they cannot plant
trees, and that is China.
The whole country is covered every inch with stones. Nature has supplied
them, and falling walls are everywhere. We saw one great thing, however.
They are building a new school house and orphanage for the children of
that village. Many of the children are naked everywhere hereabouts and
they stand with sunburned heads, their backs covered only with coats of
dirt, eating their bean food in the street. Everywhere the food is laid
out on tables by the roadside ready to eat. In one temple, a certain
official here has promised to rebuild a small shrine which houses the
laughing Buddha, who is made of bronze and was once covered with
lacquer, which is now mostly split off. At present the only shade the
god has is a roof of mats which they have braced up on the pile of ruins
that once made a roof. The President of the Republic has built a lovely
big gate like the old ones, because it is propitious and would bring him
good fortune. But he has decided it was not propitious, something went
wrong with the gods, I did not learn what it was; anyway, he is now
tearing down one of the big buttresses on one side of it to see if fate
will treat him more kindly then. Just what he wants of fate I did not
learn either, but perhaps it is that fate should make him Emperor, as
that seems to be their idea of curing poverty and political evils. I
forgot to say that they never remove ruins; everything is left to lie as
it falls or is falling, so one gets a good idea of how gods are
constructed. Most of them were of clay, a sort of concrete built up on a
wood frame, and badly as they need wood I have never seen a sign of
piling up the fallen beams of a temple. Instead of that, you risk your
life by walking under these falling roofs unless you have the sense to
look after your own safety. In most of these Peking temples they do
sweep the floors and even some of the statues look as if they had some
time been dusted, though this last I am not certain about.
PEKING, June 5.