Empress Dowager would do all in her power to prepare him to occupy the
position with credit to himself, and in the hope that he would continue
the policy which she has followed during the last ten years. Whenever,
therefore, opportunity offered for a prince to represent the government
at any public function with which foreigners were connected, Prince
Chun was asked or appointed to attend. I have said that it was the
murder of the German minister, Baron von Kettler, that gave Prince Chun
his opportunity to see the world. And just here I might add that an
account of the massacre of Von Kettler, sent from Canton, was published
in a New York paper three days before it occurred. This indicates that
his death had been premeditated and ordered by some high
authorities,--perhaps Prince Tuan or Prince Chuang, Boxer
leaders,--because the Germans had taken the port of Kiaochou, and had
compelled the Chinese government to promise to allow them to open all
the mines and build all the railroads in the province of Shantung.
After the Boxer troubles were settled, the Germans, at the expense of
the Chinese government, erected a large stone memorial arch on the spot
where Von Kettler fell. At its dedication, members of the diplomatic
corps of all the legations in Peking were present, including ladies and
children, together with a large number of Chinese officials
representing the city, the government, and the Foreign Office, and
Prince Chun was selected to pour the sacrificial wine. He did it with
all the dignity of a prince, however much he may or may not have
enjoyed it. On this occasion he used one of the ancient, three-legged,
sacrificial wine-cups, which he held in both hands, while Na Tung,
President of the Foreign Office, poured the wine into the cup from a
tankard of a very beautiful and unique design. It is the only occasion
on which I have seen the Prince when he did not seem to enjoy what he
was doing. I ought to add just here that I have heard the Chinese refer
to this arch as the monument erected by the Chinese government in
memory of the man who murdered Baron von Kettler!
It is a well-known fact that the Boxers destroyed all buildings that
had any indication of a foreign style of architecture, whether they
belonged to Chinese or foreigner, Christian or non-Christian, legation,
merchant, or missionary. In the rebuilding of the Peking legations,
missions, and educational institutions, there were naturally a large
number of dedicatory services. Many of the Chinese officials attended
them, but I shall refer to only one or two at which I remember meeting
Prince Chun. I believe it was the design of the Empress Dowager, as
soon as she had decided upon him as the Regent, to give him as liberal
an education in foreign affairs as the facilities in Peking would allow.
For many years the Methodist mission had tried to secure funds from
America to erect a hospital and medical school in connection with the
mission and the Peking University. This they found to be impossible,
and finally Dr. N. S. Hopkins of Massachusetts, who was in charge of
that work, consulted with his brother and brother-in-law, who
subscribed the funds and built the institution. This act of benevolence
on the part of Dr. Hopkins and his friends appealed to the Chinese
sense of generosity, and when the building was completed, a large
number of Chinese officials, together with Prince Chun and Prince Pu
Lun, were present at its dedication. A number of addresses were made by
such men as Major Conger, the American minister, Bishop Moore, Na Tung,
Governor Hu, General Chiang, and others of the older representatives,
in which they expressed their appreciation of the generosity which
prompted a man like Dr. Hopkins to give not only himself, but his
money, for the education of the Chinese youth and the healing of their
poor. And I might add that Dr. Hopkins is physician to many of the
princes and officials in Peking at the present time.
During this reconstruction, a number of the colleges of north China
united to form a union educational institution. One part of this scheme
was a union medical college, situated on the Ha-ta-men great street not
a hundred yards north of the Von Kettler memorial arch. To the erection
of this building the wealthy officials of Peking subscribed liberally,
and the Empress Dowager sent her check for 11,000 taels, equal to
$9,000 in American gold, and appointed Prince Chun to represent the
Chinese government at its dedication. At this meeting Sir Robert Hart
made an address on behalf of the foreigners, and Na Tung on behalf of
the Chinese. Although Prince Chun took no public part in the exercises,
he privately expressed his gratification at seeing the completion of
such an up-to-date hospital and medical school in the Chinese capital.
I have given these incidents in the life of Prince Chun to show that he
has had facilities for knowing the world better than any other Chinese
monarch or regent that has ever sat upon the dragon throne, and that he
has grasped the opportunities as they came to him. He has been
intimately associated with the diplomatic life of the various
legations, which is perhaps the most important knowledge he has
acquired in dealing with foreign affairs, as these ministers are the
channels through which he must come in contact with foreign
governments. He has been present at the dedication of a number of
missionary educational institutions, and hence from personal contact he
will have some comprehension of the animus and work of missions and the
character of the men engaged in that work. He may have as a councillor,
if he so desires, the Prince Pu Lun, who has had a trip around the
world, with the best possible facilities for seeing Japan, America,
Great Britain, Germany, France, and Italy, and who has been in even
more intimate contact with the diplomats and other foreigners than has
Prince Chun himself. My wife and I have dined with him and the Princess
both at the American legation and at his own palace, and when we left
China, they came together in their brougham to bid us good-bye, a thing
which could not have happened a few years ago, and an indication of how
wide open the doors in China are now standing.
On the whole, therefore, Prince Chun begins his regency with a brighter
outlook for his foreign relations than any other ruler China has ever
had. What shall we say of his Chinese relations? Being the brother of
Kuang Hsu, and himself a progressive young man, he ought to have the
support of the Reform party, and being the choice of the Empress
Dowager, he will have the support of the great progressive officials
who have had the conduct of affairs for the last quarter of a century
and more, and especially for the past ten years, since the Emperor
Kuang Hsu was deposed.
XII
The Home of the Court--The Forbidden City
The innermost enclosure is the Forbidden City and contains the palace
and its surrounding buildings. The wall is less solid and high than the
city wall, is covered with bright yellow tiles, and surrounded by a
deep, wide moat. Two gates on the east and west afford access to the
interior of this habitation of the Emperor, as well as the space and
rooms appertaining, which furnish lodgment to the guard defending the
approach to the dragon's throne.--S. Wells Williams in "The Middle
Kingdom."
XII
THE HOME OF THE COURT--THE FORBIDDEN CITY
During the past ten years, since the dethronement of the late Emperor
Kuang Hsu, I have often been asked by Europeans visiting Peking:
"What would happen if the Emperor should die?"
"They would put a new Emperor on the throne," was my invariable answer.
They usually followed this with another question:
"What would happen if the Empress Dowager should die?"
"In that case the Emperor, of course, would again resume the throne," I
always replied without hesitation. But during those ten years, not one
of my friends ever thought to propound the question, nor did I have the
wit to ask myself:
"What would happen if the Emperor and the Empress Dowager should both
suddenly snap the frail cord of life at or about the same time?"
Had such a question come to me, I confess I should not have known how
to answer it. It is a problem that probably never presented itself to
any one outside of that mysterious Forbidden City, or the equally
mysterious spectres that come and go through its half-open gates in the
darkness of the early morning. There are three parties to whom it may
have come again and again, and to whom we may perhaps be indebted both
for the problem and the solution.
When the deaths of both of their Imperial Majesties were announced at
the same time, the news also came that the Japanese suspected that
there had been foul play. With them, however, it was only suspicion;
none of them, so far as I know, ever undertook to analyze the matter or
unravel the mystery. There is no doubt a reasonable explanation, but we
must go for it to the Forbidden City, the most mysterious royal
dwelling in the world, where white men have never gone except by
invitation from the throne, save on one occasion.
In 1901, while the court was in hiding at Hsianfu, the city to which
they fled when the allies entered Peking, the western half of the
Forbidden City was thrown open to the public, the only condition being
that said public have a certificate which would serve as a pass to the
American boys in blue who guarded the Wu men, or front gate. I was
fortunate enough to have that pass.
My first move was to get a Chinese photographer--the best I could find
in the city--to go with me and take pictures of everything I wanted as
well as anything else that suited his fancy.
The city of Peking is regularly laid out. Towards the south is the
Chinese city, fifteen miles in circumference. To the north is a square,
four miles on each side, and containing sixteen square miles. In the
centre of this square, enclosed by a beautifully crenelated wall thirty
feet thick at the bottom, twenty feet thick at the top and twenty-five
feet high, surrounded by a moat one hundred feet wide, is the Forbidden
City, occupying less than one-half a square mile. In this city there
dwells but one male human being, the Emperor, who is called the
"solitary man."
There is a gate in the centre of each of the four sides, that on the
south, the Wu men, being the front gate, through which the Emperor
alone is allowed to pass. The back gate, guarded by the Japanese during
the occupation, is for the Empress Dowager, the Empress and the women
of the court, while the side gates are for the officials, merchants or
others who may have business in the palace.
Through the centre of this city, from south to north, is a passageway
about three hundred feet wide, across which, at intervals of two
hundred yards, they have erected large buildings, such as the imperial
examination hall, the hall in which the Emperor receives his bride, the
imperial library, the imperial kitchen, and others of a like nature,
all covered with yellow titles, and known to tourists, who see them
from the Tartar City wall, as the palace buildings. These, however, are
not the buildings in which the royal family live. They are the places
where for the past five hundred years all those great diplomatic
measures--and dark deeds--of the Chinese emperors and their great
officials have been transacted between midnight and daylight.
If you will go with me at midnight to the great gate which leads from
the Tartar to the Chinese city--the Chien men--you will hear the
wailing creak of its hinges as it swings open, and in a few moments the
air will be filled with the rumbling of carts and the clatter of the
feet of the mules on the stone pavement, as they take the officials
into the audiences with their ruler. If you will remain with me there
till a little before daylight you will see them, like silent spectres,
sitting tailor-fashion on the bottom of their springless carts,
returning to their homes, but you will ask in vain for any information
as to the business they have transacted. "They love darkness rather
than light," not perhaps "because their deeds are evil," but because it
has been the custom of the country from time immemorial.
Immediately to the north of this row of imperial palace buildings, and
just outside the north gate, there is an artificial mound called Coal
Hill, made of the dirt which was removed to make the Lotus Lakes. It is
said that in this hill there is buried coal enough to last the city in
time of siege. This, however, was not the primary design of the hill.
It has a more mysterious meaning. There have always been spirits in the
earth, in the air, in every tree and well and stream. And in China it
has ever been found necessary to locate a house, a city or even a
cemetery in such surroundings as to protect them from the entrance of
evil spirits. "Coal Hill," therefore, was placed to the north of these
imperial palace buildings to protect them from the evil spirits of the
cold, bleak north.
Just inside of that north gate there is a beautiful garden, with
rockeries and arbours, flowering plants and limpid artificial streams
gurgling over equally artificial pebbles, though withal making a
beautiful sight and a cool shade in the hot summer days. In the east
side of this garden there is a small imperial shrine having four doors
at the four points of the compass. In front of each of these doors
there is a large cypress-tree, some of them five hundred years old,
which were split up from the root some seven or eight feet, and planted
with the two halves three feet apart, making a living arch through
which the worshipper must pass as he enters the temple. To the north of
the garden and east of the back gate there is a most beautiful Buddhist
temple, in which only the members of the imperial family are allowed to
worship, in front of which there is also a living arch like those
described above, as may also be found before the imperial temples in
the Summer Palace. This is one of the most unique and mysterious
features of temple worship I have found anywhere in China, and no
amount of questioning ever brought me any explanation of its meaning.
Now if you will go with me to the top of Coal Hill I will point out to
you the buildings in which their Majesties have lived. There are six
parallel rows of buildings, facing the south, each behind the other, in
the northwest quarter of this Forbidden City, protected from the evil
spirits of the north by the dagoba on Prospect Hill.
Perhaps you would like to go with me into these homes of their
Majesties--or, as a woman's home is always more interesting than the
den of a man, let me take you through the private apartments of the
greatest woman of her race--the late Empress Dowager. She occupied
three of these rows of buildings. The first was her drawing-room and
library, the second her dining-room and sleeping apartments, and the
third her kitchen.
One was strangely impressed by what he saw here. There was no gorgeous
display of Oriental colouring, but there was beauty of a peculiarly
penetrating quality--and yet a homelike beauty.
No description that can be written of it will ever do it justice. Not
until one can see and appreciate the paintings of the old Chinese
masters of five hundred years ago hanging upon the walls, the beautiful
pieces of the best porcelain of the time of Kang Hsi and Chien Lung,
made especially for the palace, arranged in their natural surroundings,
on exquisitely carved Chinese tables and brackets, the gorgeously
embroided silk portieres over the doorways, and the matchless
tapestries which only the Chinese could weave for their greatest
rulers, can we appreciate the beauty, the richness, and the refined
elegance of the private apartments of the great Dowager.
I went into her sleeping apartments. Others also entered there, sat
upon her couch, and had their friends photograph them. I could not
allow myself to do so. I stood silent, with head uncovered as I gazed
with wonder and admiration at the bed, with its magnificently
embroidered curtains hanging from the ceiling to the floor, its
yellow-satin mattress ten feet in length and its great round, hard
pillow, with the delicate silk spreads turned back as though it were
prepared for Her Majesty's return. On the opposite side of the room
there was a brick kang bed, such as we find in the homes of all the
Chinese of the north, where her maids slept, or sat like silent ghosts
while the only woman that ever ruled over one-third of the human race
took her rest. The furnishings were rich but simple. No plants, no
intricate carvings to catch the dust, nothing but the two beds and a
small table, with a few simple and soothing wall decorations, and the
monotonous tick-tock of a great clock to lull her to sleep.
If Shakespeare could say with an English monarch in his mind, "Uneasy
lies the head that wears a crown," we might repeat it with added
emphasis of Tze Hsi. For forty years she had to rise at midnight,
winter as well as summer, and go into the dark, dreary, cold halls of
the palace, lighted much of the time with nothing but tallow dips, and
heated only with brass braziers filled with charcoal, and there sit
behind a screen where she could see no one, and no one could see her,
and listen to the reports of those who came to these dark audiences.
Then she must, in conjunction with them, compose edicts which were sent
out to the Peking Gazette, the oldest and poorest newspaper in the
world, to be carved on blocks, and printed, and then sent by courier to
every official in the empire. Ruling over a conquered race, she must
always be watching out for signs of discontent and rebellion; being
herself the daughter of a poor man, and beginning as only the concubine
of an emperor, and he but a weak character, she must be alert for
dissatisfaction on the part of the princes who might have some title to
the throne. She must watch the governors in the distant provinces and
the viceroys who are in charge of great armies, that they do not direct
them against instead of in defense of the throne.
When her husband died while a fugitive two hundred miles from her
palace, she must see to it that her three-year-old child was placed
upon the throne with her own hand at the helm, and when he died she
must also be ready with a successor, who would give her another lease
of office. Even when he became of age and took the throne she must
watch over him like a guardian, to prevent his bringing down upon their
own heads the structure which she had builded. Nay, more, when it
became necessary for her to dethrone him and rule in his name,
banishing his friends and pacifying his enemies, keeping him a prisoner
in his palace, it required a courage that was titanic to do so. But she
never flinched, though we may suppose that many of her poorest
subjects, who could sleep from dark till daylight with nothing but a
brick for a pillow, might have rested more peacefully than she.
She had a myriad of other duties to perform. She was the mother-in-law
of that imperial household, with the Emperor, the Empress, sixty
concubines, two thousand eunuchs, and any number of court ladies and
maid-servants. Their expenses were enormous and she must keep her eye
on every detail. The food they ate was similar to that used by all the
Chinese people. I happen to know this, because one of her eunuchs who
visited me frequently to ask my assistance in a matter which he had
undertaken for the Emperor, often brought me various kinds of meat, or
other delicacies of a like nature, from the imperial kitchens.
I want you to visit three of the imperial temples in these beautiful
palace grounds. The first is a tall, three-story building at the head
of that magnificent Lotus Lake. In it there stands a Buddhist deity
with one thousand heads and one thousand arms and hands. Standing upon
the ground floor its head reaches almost to the roof. Its body, face
and arms are as white as snow. There is nothing else in the
building--nothing but this mild-faced Buddhist divinity for that
brilliant, black-eyed ruler of Chinas millions to worship.
Standing near by is another building of far greater beauty. It is faced
all over with encaustic tiles, each made at the kiln a thousand miles
away, for the particular place it was to occupy. Each one fits without
a flaw, a suggestion to American architects on Chinese architecture.
The second of these temples stands to the west of the Coal Hill,
immediately to the north of the homes of their Majesties. One day while
passing through the forbidden grounds I came upon this temple from the
rear. In the dome of one of the buildings is a circular space some ten
feet in diameter, carved and gilded in the form of two magnificent
dragons after the fabled pearl. It is to this place the Emperor goes in
time of drought to confess his sins, for he confesses to the gods that
the drought is all his doing, and to pray for forgiveness, and for rain
to enrich the thirsty land. The towers on the corners of the wall of
the Forbidden City are the same style of architecture as the small
pavilion in the front court of this temple.
Now as the buds of spring are bursting and the eaves on the
mulberry-trees are beginning to develop, will you go with the Empress
Dowager or the Empress into a temple on Prospect Hill, between the Coal
Hill and the Lotus Lake, where she offers sacrifices to the god of the
silkworm and prays for a prosperous year on the work of that little
insect? Above it stands one of the most hideous bronze deities I have
ever seen--male and naked--in a beautiful little shrine, every tile of
which is made in the form of a Buddha's head. During the occupation
tourists were allowed to visit this place freely, and their desire for
curios overcoming their discretion, they knocked the heads off these
tiles until, when the place was closed, there was not a single tile
which had not been defaced.
One other building in the Forbidden City is worthy of our attention. It
is the art gallery. It is not generally known that China is the parent
of all Oriental art. We know something of the art of Japan but little
about that of China. And yet the best Japanese artists have never hoped
for anything better than to equal their Chinese teacher. In this art
gallery there are stored away the finest specimens of the old masters
for ten centuries or more, together with portraits of all the noted
emperors. Among these portraits we may now find two of the Empress
Dowager, one painted by Miss Carl, and another by Mr. Vos, a well-known
American portrait painter.
XIII
The Ladies of the Court
I love to talk with my people of their Majesties, the princesses, and
the Chinese ladies, as I have seen and known them. Your friendship I
will always remember. Her Majesty, your imperial sister, found a warm
place in my heart and is treasured there. Please extend to the Imperial
Princess my cordial greetings and to the other princesses my best of
good wishes.--Mrs. E. H. Conger, in a letter to the Princess Shun.
XIII
THE LADIES OF THE COURT
The leading figure of the court is Yehonala, wife of the late Emperor
Kuang Hsu. She has always been called the Young Empress, but is now the
Empress Dowager. After the great Dowager was made the concubine of
Hsien Feng, she succeeded in arranging a marriage, as we have seen,
between her younger sister and the younger brother of her husband, the
Seventh Prince, as he was called, father of Kuang Hsu and the present
regent.
The world knows how, in order to keep the succession in her own family,
she took the son of this younger sister, when her own son the Emperor
Tung Chih died, and made him the Emperor Kuang Hsu when he was but
little more than three years of age. When the time came for him to wed,
she arranged that he should marry his cousin, Yehonala, the daughter of
her favourite brother, Duke Kuei. This Kuang Hsu was not inclined to
do, as his affections seem to have been centred on another. The great
Dowager, however, insisted upon it, and he finally made her Empress,
and to satisfy,--or shall we say appease him?--she allowed him to take
as his first concubine the lady he wanted as his wife; and it was
currently reported in court circles that when Yehonala came into his
presence he not infrequently kicked off his shoe at her, a bit of
conduct that is quite in keeping with the temper usually attributed to
Kuang Hsu during those early years. This may perhaps explain why she
stood by the great Dowager through all the troublous times of 1898 and
1900, in spite of the fact that her imperial aunt had taken her
husband's throne.