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COURT LIFE IN CHINA
THE CAPITAL
ITS OFFICIALS AND PEOPLE
By
ISAAC TAYLOR HEADLAND
Professor in the Peking University
ISAAC TAYLOR HEADLAND'S THREE BOOKS THAT "LINK EAST AND WEST"
Court Life in China: The Capital Its Officials and People.
The Chinese Boy and Girl
Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes
PREFACE
Until within the past ten years a study of Chinese court life would
have been an impossibility. The Emperor, the Empress Dowager, and the
court ladies were shut up within the Forbidden City, away from a world
they were anxious to see, and which was equally anxious to see them.
Then the Emperor instituted reform, the Empress Dowager came out from
behind the screen, and the court entered into social relations with
Europeans.
For twenty years and more Mrs. Headland has been physician to the
family of the Empress Dowager's mother, the Empress' sister, and many
of the princesses and high official ladies in Peking. She has visited
them in a social as well as a professional way, has taken with her her
friends, to whom the princesses have shown many favours, and they have
themselves been constant callers at our home. It is to my wife,
therefore, that I am indebted for much of the information contained in
this book.
There are many who have thought that the Empress Dowager has been
misrepresented. The world has based its judgment of her character upon
her greatest mistake, her participation in the Boxer movement, which
seems unjust, and has closed its eyes to the tremendous reforms which
only her mind could conceive and her hand carry out. The great Chinese
officials to a man recognized in her a mistress of every situation; the
foreigners who have come into most intimate contact with her, voice her
praise; while her hostile critics are confined for the most part to
those who have never known her. It was for this reason that a more
thorough study of her life was undertaken.
It has also been thought that the Emperor has been misunderstood, being
overestimated by some, and underestimated by others, and this because
of his peculiar type of mind and character. That he was unusual, no one
will deny; that he was the originator of many of China's greatest
reform measures, is equally true; but that he lacked the power to
execute what he conceived, and the ability to select great statesmen to
assist him, seems to have been his chief shortcoming.
To my wife for her help in the preparation of this volume, and to my
father-in-law, Mr. William Sinclair, M. A., for his suggestions, I am
under many obligations.
I. T. H.
CONTENTS
I. THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--HER EARLY LIFE
II. THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--HER YEARS OF TRAINING
III. THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--AS A RULER
IV. THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--AS A REACTIONIST
V. THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--AS A REFORMER
VI. THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--AS AN ARTIST
VII. THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--AS A WOMAN
VIII. KUANG HSU--HIS SELF DEVELOPMENT
IX. KUANG HSU--AS EMPEROR AND REFORMER
X. KUANG HSU--AS A PRISONER
XI. PRINCE CHUN--THE REGENT
XII. THE HOME OF THE COURT--THE FORBIDDEN CITY
XIII. THE LADIES OF THE COURT
XIV. THE PRINCESSES--THEIR SCHOOLS
XV. THE CHINESE LADIES OF RANK
XVI. THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE CHINESE WOMAN
XVII. THE CHINESE LADIES--THEIR ILLS
XVIII. THE FUNERAL CEREMONIES OF A DOWAGER PRINCESS
XIX. CHINESE PRINCES AND OFFICIALS
XX. PEKING--THE CITY OF THE COURT
XXI. THE DEATH OF KUANG HSU AND THE EMPRESS DOWAGER
XXII. THE COURT AND THE NEW EDUCATION
I
The Empress Dowager--Her Early Life
All the period since 1861 should be rightly recorded as the reign of
Tze Hsi An, a more eventful period than all the two hundred and
forty-four reigns that had preceded her three usurpations. It began
after a conquering army had made terms of peace in her capital, and
with the Tai-ping rebellion in full swing of success....
Those few who have looked upon the countenance of the Dowager describe
her as a tall, erect, fine-looking woman of distinguished and imperious
bearing, with pronounced Tartar features, the eye of an eagle, and the
voice of determined authority and absolute command.--Eliza Ruhamah
Scidmore in "China, The Long-Lived Empire."
I
THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--HER EARLY LIFE
One day when one of the princesses was calling at our home in Peking, I
inquired of her where the Empress Dowager was born. She gazed at me for
a moment with a queer expression wreathing her features, as she finally
said with just the faintest shadow of a smile: "We never talk about the
early history of Her Majesty." I smiled in return and continued: "I
have been told that she was born in a small house, in a narrow street
inside of the east gate of the Tartar city--the gate blown up by the
Japanese when they entered Peking in 1900." The princess nodded. "I
have also heard that her father's name was Chao, and that he was a
small military official (she nodded again) who was afterwards beheaded
for some neglect of duty." To this the visitor also nodded assent.
A few days later several well-educated young Chinese ladies, daughters
of one of the most distinguished scholars in Peking, were calling on my
wife, and again I pursued my inquiries. "Do you know anything about the
early life of the Empress Dowager?" I asked of the eldest. She
hesitated a moment, with that same blank expression I had seen on the
face of the princess, and then answered very deliberately,--"Yes,
everybody knows, but nobody talks about it." And this is, no doubt, the
reason why the early life of the greatest woman of the Mongol race,
and, as some who knew her best think, the most remarkable woman of the
nineteenth century, has ever been shrouded in mystery. Whether the
Empress desired thus to efface all knowledge of her childhood by
refusing to allow it to be talked about, I do not know, but I said to
myself: "What everybody knows, I can know," and I proceeded to find out.
I discovered that she was one of a family of several brothers and
sisters and born about 1834; that the financial condition of her
parents was such that when a child she had to help in caring for the
younger children, carrying them on her back, as girls do in China, and
amusing them with such simple toys as are hawked about the streets or
sold in the shops for a cash or two apiece; that she and her brothers
and little sisters amused themselves with such games as blind man's
buff, prisoner's base, kicking marbles and flying kites in company with
the other children of their neighbourhood. During these early years she
was as fond of the puppet plays, trained mice shows, bear shows, and
"Punch and Judy" as she was in later years of the theatrical
performances with which she entertained her visitors at the palace. She
was compelled to run errands for her mother, going to the shops, as
occasion required, for the daily supply of oils, onions, garlic, and
other vegetables that constituted the larger portion of their food. I
found out also that there is not the slightest foundation for the story
that in her childhood she was sold as a slave and taken to the south of
China.
The outdoor life she led, the games she played, and the work she was
forced to do in the absence of household servants, gave to the little
girl a well-developed body, a strong constitution and a fund of
experience and information which can be obtained in no other way. She
was one of the great middle class. She knew the troubles and trials of
the poor. She had felt the pangs of hunger. She could sympathize with
the millions of ambitious girls struggling to be freed from the
trammels of ignorance and the age-old customs of the past--a combat
which was the more real because it must be carried on in silence. And
who can say that it was not the struggles and privations of her own
childhood which led to the wish in her last years that "the girls of my
empire may be educated"?
When little Miss Chao had reached the age of fourteen or fifteen she
was taken by her parents to an office in the northern part of the
imperial city of Peking where her name, age, personal appearance, and
estimated degree of intelligence and potential ability were registered,
as is done in the case of all the daughters of the Manchu people. The
reason for this singular proceeding is that when the time comes for the
selection of a wife or a concubine for the Emperor, or the choosing of
serving girls for the palace, those in charge of these matters will
know where they can be obtained.
This custom is not considered an unalloyed blessing by the Manchu
people, and many of them would gladly avoid registering their daughters
if only they dared. But the rule is compulsory, and every one belonging
to the eight Banners or companies into which the Manchus are divided
must have their daughters registered. Their aversion to this custom is
well illustrated in the following incident:
In one of the girls' schools in Peking there was a beautiful child, the
daughter of a Manchu woman whose husband was dead. One day this widow
came to the principal of the school and said: "A summons has come from
the court for the girls of our clan to appear before the officials that
a certain number may be chosen and sent into the palace as serving
girls." "When is she to appear?" inquired the teacher. "On the
sixteenth," answered the mother. "I suppose you are anxious that she
should be one of the fortunate ones," said the teacher, "though I
should be sorry to lose her from the school." "On the contrary," said
the mother, "I should be distressed if she were chosen, and have come
to consult with you as to whether we might not hire a substitute." The
teacher expressed surprise and asked her why. "When our daughters are
taken into the palace," answered the mother, "they are dead to us until
they are twenty-five, when they are allowed to return home. If they are
incompetent or dull they are often severely punished. They may contract
disease and die, and their death is not even announced to us; while if
they prove themselves efficient and win the approval of the authorities
they are retained in the palace and we may never see them or hear from
them again."
At first the teacher was inclined to favour the hiring of a substitute,
but on further consideration concluded that it would be contrary to the
law, and advised that the girl be allowed to go. The mother, however,
was so anxious to prevent her being chosen that she sent her with
uncombed hair, soiled clothes and a dirty face, that she might appear
as unattractive as possible.
The prospects for a concubine are even less promising than for a
serving maid, as when she once enters the palace she has little if any
hope of ever leaving it. She is neither mistress nor servant, wife nor
slave, she is but one of a hundred buds in a garden of roses which have
little if any prospect of ever blooming or being plucked for the court
bouquet. When, therefore, the gates of the Forbidden City close behind
the young girls who are taken in as concubines of an emperor they shut
out an attractive, busy, beautiful world, filled with men and women,
boys and girls, homes and children, green fields and rich harvests, and
confine them within the narrow limits of one square mile of brick-paved
earth, surrounded by a wall twenty-five feet high and thirty feet
thick, in which there is but one solitary man who is neither father,
brother, husband nor friend to them, and whom they may never even see.
When therefore the time came for the selection of concubines for the
Emperor Hsien Feng, and our little Miss Chao was taken into the palace,
her parents, like many others, had every reason to consider it a piece
of ill-fortune which had visited their home. The future was veiled from
them. The Forbidden City, surrounded by its great crenelated wall, may
have seemed more like a prison than like a palace. True, they had other
children, and she was "only a girl, but even girls are a small
blessing," as they tell us in their proverbs. She had grown old enough
to be useful in the home, and they no doubt had cherished plans of
betrothing her to the son of some merchant or official who would add
wealth or honour to their family. Neither father nor mother, brother
nor sister, could have conceived of the potential power, honour and
even glory, that were wrapped up in that girl, and that were finally to
come to them as a family, as well as to many of them as individuals.
Their wildest dreams at that time could not have pictured themselves
dukes and princesses, with their daughters as empresses, duchesses, or
ladies-in-waiting in the palace. But such it proved to be.
II
The Empress Dowager--Her Years of Training
The kindness of the Empress is as boundless as the sea.
Her person too is holy, she is like a deity.
With boldness, from seclusion, she ascends the Dragon Throne,
And saves her suffering country from a fate we dare not own.
--"Yuan Fan," Translated by I. T. C.
II
THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--HER YEARS OF TRAINING
The year our little Miss Chao entered the palace was a memorable one in
the history of China. The Tai-ping rebellion, which had begun in the
south some three years earlier (1850), had established its capital at
Nanking, on the Yangtse River, and had sent its "long-haired" rebels
north on an expedition of conquest, the ultimate aim of which was
Peking. By the end of the year 1853 they had arrived within one hundred
miles of the capital, conquering everything before them, and leaving
devastation and destruction in their wake.
Their success had been extraordinary. Starting in the southwest with an
army of ten thousand men they had eighty thousand when they arrived
before the walls of Nanking. They were an undisciplined horde, without
commissariat, without drilled military leaders, but with such reckless
daring and bravery that the imperial troops were paralyzed with fear
and never dared to meet them in the open field. Thousands of common
thieves and robbers flocked to their standards with every new conquest,
impelled by no higher motive than that of pillage and gain. Rumours
became rife in every village and hamlet, and as they neared the capital
the wildest tales were told in every nook and corner of the city, from
the palace of the young Emperor in the Forbidden City to the mat shed
of the meanest beggar beneath the city wall.
My wife says: "I remember just after going to China, sitting one
evening on a kang, or brick bed, with Yin-ma, an old nurse, our only
light being a wick floating in a dish of oil. Yin-ma was about the age
of the Empress Dowager, but, unlike Her Majesty, her locks were
snow-white. When I entered the dimly lighted room she was sitting in
the midst of a group of women and girls--patients in the hospital--who
listened with bated breath as she told them of the horrors of the
Tai-ping rebellion.
"'Why!' said the old nurse, 'all that the rebels had to do on their way
to Peking, was to cut out as many paper soldiers as they wanted, put
them in boxes, and breathe upon them when they met the imperial troops,
and they were transformed into such fierce warriors that no one was
able to withstand them. Then when the battle was over and they had come
off victors they only needed to breathe upon them again, when they were
changed into paper images and packed in their boxes, requiring neither
food nor clothing. Indeed the spirits of the rebels were everywhere,
and no matter who cut out paper troops they could change them into real
soldiers.'
"'But, Yin-ma, you do not believe those superstitions, do you?'
"'These are not superstitions, doctor, these are facts, which everybody
believed in those days, and it was not safe for a woman to be seen with
scissors and paper, lest her neighbours report that she was cutting out
troops for the rebels. The country was filled with all kinds of
rumours, and every one had to be very careful of all their conduct, and
of everything they said, lest they be arrested for sympathizing with
the enemy.'
"'But, Yin-ma, did you ever see any of these paper images transformed
into soldiers?'
"'No, I never did myself, but there was an old woman lived near our
place, who was said to be in sympathy with the rebels. One night my
father saw soldiers going into her house and when he had followed them
he could find nothing but paper images. You may not have anything of
this kind happen in America, but very many people saw them in those
terrible days of pillage and bloodshed here.'"
Such stories are common in all parts of China during every period of
rebellion, war, riot or disturbance of any kind. The people go about
with fear on their faces, and horror in their voices, telling each
other in undertones of what some one, somewhere, is said to have seen
or heard. Nor are these superstitions confined to the common people.
Many of the better classes believe them and are filled with fear.
As the Tai-ping rebellion broke out when Miss Chao was about fifteen or
sixteen years of age, she would hear these stories for two or three
years before she entered the palace. After she had been taken into the
Forbidden City she would continue to hear them, brought in by the
eunuchs and circulated not only among all the women of the palace, but
among their own associates as well, and here they would take on a more
mysterious and alarming aspect to these people shut away from the
world, as ghost stories become more terrifying when told in the dim
twilight. May this not account in some measure for the attitude assumed
by the Empress Dowager towards the Boxer superstitions of 1900, and
their pretentions to be able at will to call to their aid legions of
spirit-soldiers, while at the same time they were themselves
invulnerable to the bullets of their enemies?
It was when Miss Chao was ten years old that the conflict known as the
Opium War was brought to an end. It has been said that when the Emperor
was asked to sanction the importation of opium, he answered, "I will
never legalize a traffic that will be an injury to my people," but
whether this be true or not, it is admitted by all that the central
government was strongly opposed to the sale and use of the drug within
its domains. It is unfortunate, to say the least, that the first time
the Chinese came into collision with European governments was over a
matter of this kind, and it is to the credit of the Chinese
commissioner when the twenty thousand chests of opium, over which the
dispute arose, were handed over to him, he mixed it with quicklime in
huge vats that it might be utterly destroyed rather than be an injury
to his people. They may have exhibited an ignorance of international
law, they may have manifested an unwise contempt for the foreigner, but
it remains a fact of history that they were ready to suffer great
financial loss rather than get revenue from the ruin of their subjects,
and that England went to war for the purpose of securing indemnity for
the opium destroyed.
The common name for opium among the Chinese is yang yen--foreign
tobacco, and my wife says: "When calling at the Chinese homes, I have
frequently been offered the opium-pipe, and when I refused it the
ladies expressed surprise, saying that they were under the impression
that all foreigners used it."
What now were the results of the Opium War as viewed from the
standpoint of the Chinese people, and what impression would it make
upon them as a whole? Great Britain demanded an indemnity of
$21,000,000, the cession to them of Hongkong, an island on the southern
coast, and the opening of five ports to British trade. China lost her
standing as suzerain among the peoples of the Orient and got her first
glimpse of the White Peril from the West.
Although the Empress Dowager was but a child of ten at this time she
would receive her first impression of the foreigner, which was that he
was a pirate who had come to carry away their wealth, to filch from
them their land, and to overrun their country. He became a veritable
bugaboo to men, women and children alike, and this impression was
crystallized in the expression yang huei, "foreign devil," which is the
only term among a large proportion of the Chinese by which the
foreigner is known. One day when walking on the street in Peking I met
a woman with a child of two years in her arms, and as I passed them,
the child patted its mother on the cheek and said in an
undertone,--"The foreign devil's coming," which led the frightened
mother to cover its eyes with her hand that it might not be injured by
the sight.
On one occasion a friend was travelling through the country when a
Chinese gentleman, dressed in silk and wearing an official hat, called
on him at the inn where he was stopping and with a profound bow
addressed him as "Old Mr. Foreign Devil."
My wife says that: "Not infrequently when I have been called for the
first time to the homes of the better classes I have seen the children
run into the house from the outer court exclaiming,--'The devil
doctor's coming.' Indeed, I have heard the women use this term in
speaking of me to my assistant until I objected, when they asked with
surprise,--'Doesn't she like to be called foreign devil?'" And so the
Empress Dowager's first impression of the foreigner would be that of a
devil.
Colonel Denby tells us that "A Frenchman and his wife were carried off
from Tonquin by bandits who took refuge in China. The Chinese
government was asked to rescue these prisoners and restore them to
liberty. China sent a brigade of troops, who pursued the bandits to
their den and recovered the prisoners. The French government thanked
the Chinese government for its assistance, and bestowed the decoration
of the Legion of Honour on the brigade commander, and then shortly
afterwards demanded the payment of an enormous indemnity for the
outrage on the ground that China had delayed to effect the rescue. The
Chinese were aghast, but they paid the money."
This incident does not stand alone, but is one of a number of similar
experiences which the Chinese government had in her relation with the
powers of Europe, and which have been reported by such writers as
Holcomb, Beresford, Gorst Colquhoun and others in trying to account for
the feelings the Chinese have towards us, all of which was embodied in
the years of training of our little concubine.
It should be remembered that many concubines are selected whom the
Emperor never takes the trouble to see. After being taken in, their
temper and disposition are carefully noted, their faithfulness in the
duties assigned them, their diligence in the performance of their
tasks, their kindness to their inferiors, their treatment of their
equals, and their politeness and obedience to their superiors, and upon
all these things, with many others, as we shall see, their promotion
will finally depend.
When Miss Chao entered the palace, like most girls of her class or
station in life, she was uneducated. She may have studied the small
"Classic for Girls" in which she learned:
"You should rise from bed as early in the morning as the sun, Nor
retire at evening's closing till your work is wholly done."
Or, further, she may have been told,
When the wheel of life's at fifteen,
Or when twenty years have passed,
As a girl with home and kindred these will surely be your last;
While expert in all employments that compose a woman's life,
You should study as a daughter all the duties of a wife."
Or she may have read the "Filial Piety Classic for Girls" in which she
learned the importance of the attitude she assumed towards those who
were in authority over her, but certain it is she was not educated.
She had, however, what was better than education--a disposition to
learn. And so when she had the good fortune,--or shall we say
misfortune,--for as we have seen it is variously regarded by Chinese
parents to be taken into the palace, she found there educated eunuchs
who were set aside as teachers of the imperial harem. She was bright,
attractive, and I think I may add without fear of contradiction, very
ambitious, and this in no bad sense. She devoted herself to her studies
with such energy and diligence as not only to attract the attention of
the teacher, but to make herself a fair scholar, a good penman, and an
exceptional painter, and it was not long until, from among all the
concubines, she had gained the attention and won the admiration--and
shall we say affection--not only of the Empress, but of the Emperor
himself, and she was selected as the first concubine or kuei fei, and
from that time until the death of the Empress the two women were the
staunchest of friends.
The new favourite had been a healthy and vigorous girl, with plenty of
outdoor life in childhood, and it was not long before she became the
happy mother of Hsien Feng's only son. She was thenceforward known as
the Empress-mother. In a short time she was raised to the position of
wife, and given the title of Western Empress, as the other was known as
the Eastern, from which time the two women were equal in rank, and, in
the eyes of the world, equal in power.
The first Empress was a pampered daughter of wealth, neither vigorous
of body nor strong of mind, caring nothing for political power if only
she might have ease and comfort, and there is nothing that exhibits the
Empress Dowager's real greatness more convincingly than the fact that
she was able to live for thirty years the more fortunate mother of her
country's ruler, and, in power, the mistress of her superior, without
arousing the latter's envy, jealousy, anger, or enmity. Let any woman
who reads this imagine, if she can, herself placed in the position of
either of these ladies without being inclined to despise the less
fortunate, ease-loving Empress if she be the dowager, or hating the
more powerful dowager if she be the Empress. Such a state of affairs as
these two women lived in for more than a quarter of a century is almost
if not entirely unique in history.
Perhaps the incident which made most impression upon her was one which
happened in 1860 and is recorded in history as the Arrow War. A few
years before a number of Chinese, who owned a boat called the Arrow,
had it registered in Hongkong and hence were allowed to sail under the
British flag. There is no question I think but that these Chinese were
committing acts of piracy, and as this was one of the causes of
disturbance on that southern coast for centuries past, the viceroy
decided to rid the country of this pest. Nine days after the time for
which the boat had been registered, but while it continued unlawfully
to float the British colours, the viceroy seized the boat, imprisoned
all her crew, and dragged down the British flag. This was an insult
which Great Britain could not or would not brook and so the viceroy was
ordered to release the prisoners, all of whom were Chinese subjects, on
penalty of being blown up in his own yamen if he refused.
Frightened at the threat, and remembering the result of the former war,
the viceroy sent the prisoners to the consulate in chains without
proper apologies for his insult to the flag. This angered the consul
and he returned them to the viceroy, who promptly cut off their heads
without so much as the semblance of a trial, and Britain, anxious, as
she was, to have every door of the Chinese empire opened to foreign
trade, found in this another pretext for war. We do not pretend to
argue that this was not the best thing for China and for the world, but
it can only be considered so from the bitter medicine, and corporal
punishment point of view, neither of which are agreeable to either the
patient or the pupil.
Britain went to war. The viceroy was taken a prisoner to India, whence
he never returned. As though ashamed to enter upon a second unprovoked
and unjust war alone, she invited France, Russia, and America to join
her. France was quite ready to do so in the hope of strengthening her
position in Indo-China, and with nothing more than the murder of a
missionary in Kuangsi as a pretext she put a body of troops in the
field large enough to enable her to checkmate England, or humiliate
China as the exigencies of the occasion, and her own interests, might
demand. America and Russia having no cause for war, no wrongs to
redress, and no desire for territory, refused to join her in sending
troops, but gave her such sympathy and support as would enable her to
bring about a more satisfactory arrangement of China's foreign
relations--that is more satisfactory to themselves regardless of the
wishes, though not perhaps the interests, of China.
We know how the British and French marched upon Peking in 1860; how the
summer palace was left a heap of ruins as a punishment for the murder
of a company of men under a flag of truce; and how the Emperor Hsien
Feng, with his wife, and the mother of his only son, our Empress
Dowager, were compelled to flee for the first time before a foreign
invader. Their refuge was Jehol, a fortified town, in a wild and rugged
mountain pass, on the borders of China and Tartary, a hundred miles
northeast of Peking. At this place the Emperor died, whether of
disease, chagrin, or of a broken heart--or of all combined, it is
impossible to say, and the Empress-mother was left AN EXILE AND A
WIDOW, with the capital and the throne for the first time at the mercy
of the Western barbarian.
This was the beginning of two important phases of the Empress Dowager's
life--her affliction and her power, and her greatness is exhibited as
well by the way in which she bore the one as by the way in which she
wielded the other. In most cases a woman would have been so overcome by
sorrow at the loss of her husband, as to have forgotten the affairs of
state, or to have placed them for the time in the hands of others. Not
so with this great woman. Prince Kung the brother of Hsien Feng, had
been left in Peking to arrange a treaty with the Europeans, which he
succeeded in doing to the satisfaction of both the Chinese and the
foreigners.
On the death of the Emperor, a regency was organized by two of the
princes, which did not include Prince Kung, and disregarded both of the
dowagers, and it seemed as though Prince Kung was doomed. His
father-in-law, however, the old statesman who had signed the treaties,
urged him to be the first to get the ear of the two women on their
return to the capital. This he did, and as it seemed evident that the
regency and the council had been organized for the express purpose of
tyrannizing over the Empresses and the child, they were at once
arrested, the leader beheaded, and the others condemned to exile or to
suicide. The child had been placed upon the throne as "good-luck," but
now a new regency was formed, consisting of the two dowagers, with
Prince Kung as joint regent, and the title of the reign was changed to
Tung Chih or "joint government." Thus ended the Empress Dowager's years
of training.
III
The Empress Dowager--As a Ruler
That a Manchu woman who had had such narrow opportunities of obtaining
a knowledge of things as they really are, in distinction from the
tissue of shams which constitute the warp and the woof of an Oriental
Palace, should have been able to hold her own in every situation, and
never be crushed by the opposing forces about her, is a phenomenon in
itself only to be explained by due recognition of the influence of
individual qualities in a ruler even in the semi-absolutism of
China.--Arthur H. Smith in "China in Convulsion."
III
THE EMPRESS DOWAGER--AS A RULER
In considering the policy pursued by the Empress-mother after her
accession to the regency, one cannot but feel that she was fully aware
of the fact that she had been the wife of an emperor, and was the
mother of the heir, of a decaying house. Of the 218 years that her
dynasty had been in power, 120 had been occupied by the reigns of two
emperors, and only seven monarchs had sat upon the throne, a smaller
number than ever ruled during the same period in all Chinese history.
These two Emperors, Kang Hsi and Chien Lung, the second and fourth, had
each reigned for sixty years, the most brilliant period of the "Great
Pure Dynasty," unless we except the last six years of the Empress
Dowager's regency. The other ninety-eight years saw five rulers rise
and pass away, each one becoming weaker than his predecessor both in
character and in physique, until with the death of her son, Tung Chih,
the dynasty was left without a direct heir.
The decay of the imperial house, the encroachments of the foreigner,
and the opposition of the native Chinese to the rule of the Manchus,
awoke the Empress Dowager to a realization of the fact that a stronger
hand than that of her husband must be at the helm if the dynasty of her
people were to be preserved. "It may be said with emphasis," says
Colonel Denby, who was for thirteen years minister to China, "that the
Empress Dowager has been the first of her race to apprehend the problem
of the relation of China to the outer world, and to make use of this
relation to strengthen her dynasty and to promote material progress."
She was fortunate in having Prince Kung associated with her in the
regency, a man tall, handsome and dignified, and the greatest statesman
that has come from the royal house since the time of Chien Lung.
Here appears one of the chief characteristics of the Empress Dowager as
a ruler--her ability to choose the greatest statesmen, the wisest
advisers, the safest leaders, and the best guides, from the great mass
of Chinese officials, whether progressive or conservative. Prince Kung
was for forty years the leading figure of the Chinese capital outside
of the Forbidden City. He appeared first, at the age of twenty-six, as
a member of the commission that tried the minister who failed to make
good his promise to induce Lord Elgin and his men-of-war to withdraw
from Tientsin in 1858. The following year he was made a member of the
Colonial Board that controlled the affairs of the "outer Barbarians,"
and a year later was left in Peking, when the court fled, to arrange a
treaty of peace with the victorious British and French after they had
taken the capital. "In these trying circumstances," says Professor
Giles, "the tact and resource of Prince Kung won the admiration of his
opponents," and when the Foreign Office was formed in 1861, it began
with the Prince as its first president, a position which he continued
to hold for many years.
It was he, as we have seen, who succeeded in outwitting and
overthrowing the self-constituted regency on the death of his brother
Hsien Feng, and, with the Empress Dowager, seated her infant son upon
the throne, with the two Empresses and himself as joint regents. This
condition continued for some years, with the senior Empress exercising
no authority, and Prince Kung continually growing in power. The
arrangement seemed satisfactory to all but one--the Empress-mother. To
her it appeared as though he were fast becoming the government, and she
and the Empress were as rapidly receding into the background, while in
reality the design had been to make him "joint regent" with them. In
all the receptions of the officials by the court, Prince Kung alone
could see them face to face, while the ladies were compelled to remain
behind a screen, listening to the deliberations but without taking any
part therein, other than by such suggestions as they might make.
Being the visible head of the government, and the only avenue to
positions of preferment, he would naturally be flattered by the Chinese
officials. This led him to assume an air of importance which
consciously or unconsciously he carried into the presence of their
Majesties, and one morning he awoke to find himself stripped of all his
rank and power, and confined and guarded a prisoner in his palace, by a
joint decree from the two Empresses accusing him of "lack of respect
for their Majesties." The deposed Prince at once begged their
forgiveness, whereupon all his honours were restored with their
accompanying dignities, but none of his former power as joint regent,
and thus the first obstacle to her reestablishment of the dynasty was
eliminated by the Empress-mother. To show Prince Kung, however, that
they bore him no ill will, the Empresses adopted his daughter as their
own, raising her to the rank of an imperial princess, and though the
Prince has long since passed away his daughter still lives, and next to
the Empress Dowager has been the leading figure in court circles during
the past ten years' association with the foreigners.
During her son's minority, after the dismissal of Prince Kung as joint
regent, the Empress-mother year by year took a more active part in the
affairs of state, while the Empress as gradually sank into the
background. She was far-sighted. Having but one son, and knowing the
uncertainty of life, she originated a plan to secure the succession to
her family. To this end she arranged for the marriage of her younger
sister to her husband's younger brother commonly known as the Seventh
Prince, in the hope that from this union there might come a son who
would be a worthy occupant of the dragon throne in case her own son
died without issue. She felt that the country needed a great central
figure capable of inspiring confidence and banishing uncertainty, a
strong, well-balanced, broad-minded, self-abnegating chief executive,
and she proposed to furnish one. Whether she would succeed or not must
be left to the future to reveal, but the one great task set by destiny
for her to accomplish was to prepare the mind of a worthy successor to
meet openly and intelligently the problems which had been too vast, too
new and too complicated for her predecessors, if not for herself, to
solve.
When her son was seventeen years old he was married to Alute, a young
Manchu lady of one of the best families in Peking and was nominally
given the reins of power, though as a matter of fact the supreme
control of affairs was still in the hands of his more powerful mother.
The ministers of the European countries, England, France, Germany,
Russia and the United States, now resident at Peking, thought this a
good time for bringing up the matter of an audience with the new ruler,
and after a long discussion with Prince Kung and the Empress-mother,
the matter was arranged without the ceremony of prostration which all
previous rulers had demanded.
The married life of this young couple was a short one. Three years
after their wedding ceremonies the young monarch contracted smallpox
and died without issue, and was followed shortly afterwards by his
young wife who heeded literally the instruction of one of their female
teachers in her duty to her husband to
Share his joy as well as sorrow, riches, poverty or guilt,
And in death be buried with him, as in life you shared his guilt.
That her nearest relatives did not believe, as has often been
suggested, that there was any "foul play" in regard to her death, is
evident from the fact that her father continued to hold office until
the time of the Boxer uprising, at which time he followed the fleeing
court as far as Paotingfu, where having heard that the capital was in
the hands of the hated foreigners, he sent word back to his family that
he would neither eat the foreigners' bread nor drink their water, but
would prefer to die by his own hand. When his family received this
message they commanded their servants to dig a great pit in their own
court in which they all lay and ordered the coolies to bury them. This
they at first refused to do, but they were finally prevailed upon, and
thus perished all the male members of her father's household except one
child that was rescued and carried away by a faithful nurse.
When Tung Chih died there was a formidable party in the palace opposed
to the two dowagers, anxious to oust them and their party and place
upon the throne a dissolute son of Prince Kung. But it would require a
master mind from the outside to learn of the death of her son and
select and proclaim a successor quicker than the Empress Dowager
herself could do so from the inside. She first sent a secret messenger
to Li Hung-chang whom she had appointed viceroy of the metropolitan
province at Tientsin eighty miles away, informing him of the illness of
her son and urging him to come to Peking with his troops post-haste and
be ready to prevent any disturbance in case of his death and the
announcement of a successor.
When Li Hung-chang received her orders, he began at once to put them
into execution. Taking with him four thousand of his most reliable
Anhui men, all well-armed horse, foot and artillery, he made a secret
forced march to Peking. The distance of eighty miles was covered in
thirty-six hours and he planned to arrive at midnight. Exactly on the
hour Li and his picked guard were admitted, and in dead silence they
marched into the Forbidden City. Every man had in his mouth a wooden
bit to prevent talking, while the metal trappings of the horses were
muffled to deaden all sound. When they arrived at the forbidden
precincts, the Manchu Bannermen on guard at the various city gates were
replaced by Li's Anhui braves, and as the Empress Dowager had sent
eunuchs to point out the palace troops which were doubtful or that had
openly declared for the conspirators, these were at once disarmed,
bound and sent to prison. The artillery were ordered to guard the gates
of the Forbidden City, the cavalry to patrol the grounds, and the
foot-soldiers to pick up any stray conspirators that could be found. A
strong detachment was stationed so as to surround the Empress Dowager
and the child whom she had selected as a successor to her son, and when
the morning sun rose bright and clear over the Forbidden City the
surprise of the conspirators who had slept the night away was complete.
Of the disaffected that remained, some were put in prison and others
sent into perpetual exile to the Amoor beyond their native borders, and
when the Empress Dowager announced the death of her son, she proclaimed
the son of her sister, Kuang Hsu, as his successor, with herself and
the Empress as regents during his minority. When everything was
settled, Li folded his tent like the Arab, and stole away as silently
as he had come.
The wisdom and greatness of the Empress Dowager were thus manifested in
binding to the throne the greatest men not only in the capital but in
the provinces. Li Hung-chang had won his title to greatness during the
Tai-ping rebellion, for his part in the final extinction of which he
was ennobled as an Earl. From this time onward she placed him in the
highest positions of honour and power within sufficient proximity to
the capital to have his services within easy reach. For twenty-four
years he was kept as viceroy of the metropolitan province of Chihli,
with the largest and best drilled army at his command that China had
ever had, and yet during all this time he realized that he was watched
with the eyes of an eagle lest he manifest any signs of rebellion,
while his nephew was kept in the capital as a hostage for his good
conduct. Once and again when he had reached the zenith of his power, or
had been feted by foreign potentates enough to turn the head of a
bronze Buddha, his yellow jacket and peacock feather were kindly but
firmly removed to remind him that there was a power in Peking on whom
he was dependent.
Li Hung-chang's greatness made him many enemies. Those whom he
defeated, those whom he would not or could not help, those whom he
punished or put out of office, and those whose enmity was the result of
jealousy. When the war with Japan closed and the Chinese government
sent Chang Yin-huan to negotiate a treaty of peace, the Japanese
refused to accept him, nor were they willing to take up the matter
until "Li Hung-chang was appointed envoy, chiefly because of his great
influence over the government, and the respect in which he was held by
the people." We all know how he went, how he was shot in the face by a
Japanese fanatic, the ball lodging under the left eye, where it
remained a memento which he carried to the grave. We all know how he
recovered from the wound, and how because of his sufferings he was able
to negotiate a better treaty than he could otherwise have done. Then he
returned home, and only "the friendship of the Empress and his own
personal sufferings saved his life," says Colonel Denby, for "the new
treaty was urgently denounced in China" by carping critics who would
not have been recognized as envoys by their Japanese enemies.
In 1896 he was appointed to attend the coronation of the Czar at
Moscow, and thence continued his trip around the world. Never before
nor since has a Chinese statesman or even a prince been feted as he was
in every country through which he passed. When he was about to start,
at his request I had a round fan painted for him, with a map of the
Eastern hemisphere on one side and the Western on the other, on which
all the steamship lines and railroads over which he was to travel were
clearly marked, with all the ports and cities at which he expected to
stop. He was photographed with Gladstone, and hailed as the "Bismarck
of the East," but when he returned to Peking, for no reason but
jealousy, "he was treated as an extinct volcano." The Empress Dowager
invited him to the Summer Palace where he was shown about the place by
the eunuchs, treated to tea and pipes, and led into pavilions where
only Her Majesty was allowed to enter, and then denounced to the Board
of Punishments who were against him to a man. And now this Grand
Secretary whom kings and courts had honoured, whom emperors and
presidents had feted, and our own government had spent thirty thousand
dollars in entertaining, was once more stripped of his yellow jacket
and peacock feather, and fined the half of a year's salary as a member
of the Foreign Office, which was the amusing sum of forty-five taels or
about thirty-five dollars gold, and it was said in Peking at the time
that only the intercession of the Empress Dowager saved him from
imprisonment or further disgrace.
During the whole regency of the Empress Dowager only two men have
occupied the position of President of the Grand Council--Prince Kung
and Prince Ching. While the former was degraded many times and had his
honours all taken from him, the latter "has kept himself on top of a
rolling log for thirty years" without losing any of the honours which
were originally conferred upon him. The same is true of Chang
Chih-tung, Liu Kun-yi and Wang Wen-shao, three great viceroys and Grand
Secretaries whom the Empress Dowager has never allowed to be without an
important office, but whom she has never degraded. Need we ask the
reason why? The answer is not far to seek. They were the most eminent
progressive officials she had in her empire, but none of them were
great enough to be a menace to her dynasty, and hence need not be
reminded that there was a power above them which by a stroke of her pen
could transfer them from stars in the official firmament to dandelions
in the grass. Not so with Yuan Shih-kai--but we will speak of him in
another chapter.
All the great officials thus far mentioned have belonged to the
progressive rather than the conservative party, all of them the
favourites of the Empress Dowager, placed in positions of influence and
kept in office by her, all of them working for progress and reform, and
yet she has been constantly spoken of by European writers as a
reactionary. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as we shall see.
Nevertheless she kept some of the great conservative officials in
office either as viceroys or Grand Secretaries that she might be able
to hear both sides of all important questions.