methods" of Yuan in thus protecting instead of imprisoning her, and
thus placing the reins of government once more in her hands, and she
appointed him Junior Vice-President of the Board of Works, and when she
was compelled to remove the Governor of Shantung who had organized the
Boxer Society, she appointed Yuan Acting Governor in his stead. "Yuan,"
says Arthur H. Smith, was "a man of a wholly different stripe" from the
one removed, and "if left to himself he would speedily have
exterminated the whole Boxer brood, but being hampered by 'confidential
instructions' from the palace, he could do little but issue poetical
proclamations, and revile his subordinates for failure to do their
duty."
When Yuan was made Governor of Shantung a number of the Boxer leaders
called upon him expecting to find in him a sympathizer worthy of his
predecessor. They told him of their great powers and possibilities, and
of how they were proof against the spears, swords and bullets of their
enemies. Yuan listened to them with patience and interest, and invited
them to dine with him and other official friends in the near future.
During the dinner the Governor directed the conversation towards the
Boxer leaders and their prowess, and led them once more to relate to
all his friends their powers of resistance. He fed them well, and after
the dinner was over he suggested that they give an exhibition of their
wonderful powers to the friends whom he had invited. This they could
not well refuse to do after the braggadocio way in which they had
talked, and so the Governor lined them up, called forth a number of his
best marksmen, and proceeded with the exhibition, and it is unnecessary
to add that if the Empress Dowager had invited Yuan to the meeting with
the princes when they discussed the advisability of joining the Boxers
on account of a belief in their supernatural powers, she might have
been spared the humiliation of 1900.
We shall soon see that Yuan cared no more for the "confidential
instructions" of the Empress Dowager, when his statesmanship was
involved, than for the orders of the Emperor. His business was to
govern and protect the people of his province, and thanks to his wise
statesmanship and strong character "there was not only no foreigner
killed during the troubled season of anxiety and flight" of 1900, and
"comparatively little of the suffering elsewhere so common."
And now we come to another plot which indicates the character of Yuan
and two other great viceroys, Chang Chih-tung, now Grand Secretary, and
Liu Kun-yi, Viceroy of the Yangtse-kiang provinces. It is a well-known
fact that during the Boxer rebellion the Empress Dowager was so
influenced by the promises of the Boxers to drive out all the
foreigners that she sent out some very unwise edicts that they should
be massacred in the provinces. Yuan and his two confreres secretly
stipulated that if the foreign men of war would keep away from the
ports of their provinces they would maintain peace and protect the
foreigners no matter what orders came from the throne. So that when
these confidential instructions came from the palace to massacre the
foreigners, in order to gain time they pretended to believe that no
such orders could have come from the throne. They must be forgeries of
the Boxers. They therefore refused to believe them until they had sent
their own special messenger all the way to Peking to get the edict from
the hands of Her Majesty and bring it to them in their provinces. This
messenger was also secretly instructed to find out what the contents of
the edict were, and if it was contrary to the desires of the Governor,
he was to dilly-dally on the way home until the Boxer trouble was ended
or until the foreigners had all been removed from the territory. And it
was such conduct as this on the part of three Chinese and one Manchu
viceroys that saved China from being divided up among the Powers in
1900, a fact which the Empress Dowager was not slow to understand and
reward.
In 1900 Yuan was made Governor of the Shantung province, and the court
was compelled to flee to Hsian. It was while the court was thus in
hiding that an incident occurred which indicates the fertility of the
Empress Dowager and the elasticity of all Chinese social customs.
Governor Yuan's mother died. In a case of this kind customs dictate,
and the rules of filial affection demand, that a man shall resign all
his official positions and go into mourning for a period of three
years. Yuan therefore sent his resignation to the Empress Dowager,
while "weeping tears of blood."
The country was of course in desperate straits and could ill afford to
lose, for three years, for a mere sentiment, the services of one of her
greatest and most powerful statesmen. However much he may have
regretted to give up such a brilliant career which was just well begun,
Yuan no doubt expected to do so. What was his surprise therefore to
receive from Her Majesty a message of condolence in which she praised
his mother in the highest terms for having given the world such a
brilliant and able son. Under the circumstances, however, it would be
impossible to accept his resignation as his services to the country
just at this juncture were indispensable. She would, however, appoint a
substitute to go into mourning for him, and this with the knowledge
that she had borne a son whose services were so necessary to the safety
of the government and the country, would be a sufficient comfort to the
spirit of his departed mother, and Yuan was forced to continue in his
official position as Governor of the province without the intermission
of a single day of mourning. Such is the elasticity and adaptability of
the unchanging laws and customs of the Oriental when in the hands of a
master--or a mistress--like Her Majesty the Empress Dowager.
One can imagine that in proportion as the Empress Dowager was pleased
with the statesmanship manifested by Yuan Shih-kai in unintentionally
reseating her upon the throne, in a like proportion the Emperor would
be dissatisfied with it as being the cause of his dethronement. This
was not, however, against Yuan alone but against the father-in-law of
the present Regent and even Prince Ching as well. During the whole ten
years, from 1898 until his death, while he was a prisoner "his heart
boiled with wrath" against those who had been the cause of his downfall.
It was not until the Boxer troubles of 1900 were over, and Yuan, by the
masterly way in which he had disregarded the imperial edicts, had
protected and preserved the lives of all the foreigners in his
province, keeping peace the while, that honours began to be heaped upon
him. And this not without reason as we shall proceed to show.
In 1901 he was made Governor-General of the metropolitan province, and
Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent. In 1902 he was decorated with the
Yellow Jacket, placed in charge of the affairs of the Northern Railway,
and consulting minister to counsel the government. Wherever he was he
gave as much attention to the city government as to that of the
province or the nation, and in spite of his having no foreign education
himself, he began building up a system of public schools in his
province like which there is nothing else in the whole of China. Let us
remember also that during ail this time there was suspended over his
head, from the palace, a sword of Damocles which was liable to fall at
any time. But we will explain that further on as it is the last act of
the drama.
When Yuan went to Tientsin as Viceroy of the metropolitan province he
found there Dr. C. D. Tenny, the president of the Tientsin University
which had been begun by Li Hung-chang some ten or a dozen years before.
It had a good course of study and was turning out a large number of
young graduates for whom there ought to be a better future than that of
interpreters in the various business houses of that and other cities.
He therefore called Dr. Tenny to him and inquired particularly about
the system of public school education throughout the United States.
"What is to prevent our putting into operation such a system throughout
this province?" asked the Viceroy.
"Nothing," answered Dr. Tenny, "except to be willing to submit to the
conditions."
"And what are those conditions?" asked His Excellency.
"They are that you open schools in every important town, place in them
well-educated, competent teachers, whom you are willing to pay a salary
equal to what they may reasonably expect to get if they enter business."
"May I ask if you would be willing to undertake the development of such
a system?" he asked further.
"On one condition," answered Dr. Tenny.
"And what is that?"
"That you allow me to open a school wherever I think there should be
one, call my teachers from whatsoever source I please to call them, pay
them whatever salary I think they deserve, sending all the bills to
Your Excellency, and you pay them without question."
The Viceroy had known Dr. Tenny for years, had always had the most
implicit confidence both in his ability and his honesty, and so,
lightening up his duties in the Tientsin and Paotingfu Universities, he
commissioned him to establish what may be termed the first public
school system of education on modern lines in the whole empire. This
one act, if he had done no other, was reason enough for a wise regent
to have continued him in office even though he "had rheumatism of the
leg." But it may be that there are extenuating circumstances in this
act of the Regent as we shall point out later.
There is one phase of the Boxer uprising that I have never yet seen
properly represented in any book or magazine. We all know how the
ministers of the various European governments with their wives and
children, the customs officials, missionaries, business men, and
tourists who happened to be in Peking at the time, with all the Chinese
Christians, were confined in the British legation and Prince Su's
palace. We know how they barricaded their defense. We know how they
were fired upon day and night for six weeks by the Boxer leaders and
the army of the conservatives under the leadership of their general,
Tung Fu-hsiang. But the thing which we do not know, or at least which
has not been adequately told, is the most interesting secret plot of
the liberal progressives, under the leadership of "Prince Ching and
others," to thwart the Empress Dowager and the Boxer leaders, the
conservatives and their army, and protect the most noted company of
prisoners that have ever been confined in a legation quarter. The plot
was this:
When Prince Ching and his progressive associates in Peking discovered
that they could not vote down the Boxer princes, they dared not openly
oppose them, but they secretly decided that the representatives of the
Powers must not be massacred else the doom of China was sealed. When
they discovered that Yuan Shih-kai and the other great viceroys had
decided by stratagem to foil the Boxers even though they must set all
the imperial edicts at naught, they decided, for the sake of the
protection of the legations and the preservation of the empire, that
they would do the same. They secretly sent supplies of food to the
besieged, which the latter feared to use lest they be poisoned. But
more than that they kept their own armies in Peking as a guard and as a
final resort in case there was danger of the legation being overcome,
and as a matter of fact there were regular pitched battles between the
troops of Prince Ching and his associates and those of the Boxer
leader, Tung Fu-hsiang. Had the Boxers finally succeeded, Yuan Shih-kai
and Prince Ching and their associates would have lost their heads, but
as the Boxers failed it was they who went to their graves by the short
process of the executioner's knife.
So Yuan was between two fires. He had disobeyed the commands of the
Emperor in not coming to Peking and had therefore incurred his
displeasure and caused his downfall. He had disobeyed the Empress
Dowager in not putting to death the foreigners in his province, and if
the Boxers were successful he would surely lose his head on that
account. The Boxers, however, were not successful and as his
disobedience had helped to save the empire, Yuan, so long as the
Dowager remained in power, was safe.
But a day of reckoning must inevitably come. The Empress Dowager was an
old woman, the Emperor was a young man. In all human probabilities she
would be the first to die, while his only hope was in her outliving the
Emperor, who had sworn vengeance on all those who had been instrumental
in his imprisonment.
I have a friend in Peking who is also a friend of one of the greatest
Chinese officials. This official has gone into the palace daily for a
dozen years past and knows every plot and counterplot that has been
hatched in that nest of seclusion during all that time, though he has
been implicated in none of them. He has held the highest positions in
the gift of the empire without ever once having been degraded. One day
when he was in the palace the Emperor unburdened his heart to him,
thinking that what he said would never reach the ears of his enemies.
"You have no idea," said the Emperor, "what I suffer here."
"Indeed?" was the only reply of the official.
"Yes," continued the Emperor, "I am not allowed to speak to any one
from outside. I am without power, without companions, and even the
eunuchs act as though they are under no obligations to respect me. The
position of the lowest servant in the palace is more desirable than
mine." Then lowering his voice he continued, "But there is a day of
reckoning to come. The Empress Dowager cannot live forever, and if ever
I get my throne again I will see to it that those who put me here will
suffer as I have done."
It is not unlikely that this conversation of the Emperor reached the
ears of Yuan Shih-kai. Walls have ears in China. Everything has ears,
and every part of nature has a tongue. If so, here was the occasion for
the last plot in the drama of the Emperor's life, and next to the last
in the official life of Yuan Shih-kai.
The problem is to so manipulate the laws of nature as to prevent the
Emperor outliving the Empress Dowager, and not allow the world to know
that you have been trifling with occult forces. He must die a natural
death, a death which is above suspicion. He must not die one day after
the Empress Dowager as that would create talk. And he ought to die some
time before her. The death fuse is one which often burns very much
longer than we expect--was it not one of the English kings who said "I
fear I am a very long time a-dying, gentlemen"--and sometimes it burns
out sooner than is intended. There were two imperial death fuses
burning at the same time in that Forbidden City of Peking. The Empress
Dowager had "had a stroke." Hers was undoubtedly nature's own work. But
the enemies of Yuan Shih-kai tell us that the Emperor had "had a
Chinese doctor," to whom the great Viceroy paid $33,000 for his
services. We are told that the Empress Dowager in reality died first
and then the Emperor, though the Emperor's death was first announced,
and the next day that of the Dowager.
What then are we to infer? That the Emperor was poisoned? Let it be so.
That is what the Japanese believed at the time. But who did it? Most
assuredly no one man. One might have employed a Chinese physician for
him, but the last man whose physician the Emperor would have accepted
would have been Yuan Shih-kai's. Had you or I been ill would we have
allowed the man who was the cause of our fall to select our physician?
But granted that Yuan Shih-kai did employ his physician, and that his
death was the result of slow poisoning, could Yuan Shih-kai have so
manipulated Prince Ching, the Regent (who is the late Emperor's
brother), the ladies of the court, and all those thousands of eunuchs,
to remain silent as to the death of the Empress Dowager until he had
completed the slow process on His Majesty? No! If the Emperor was
poisoned--and the world believes he was--there are a number of others
whose skirts are as badly stained as those of the great Viceroy, or
long ere this his body would have been sent home a headless corpse
instead of with "rheumatism of the leg."
What then is the explanation? It may be this, that the court, and the
officials as a whole, felt that the Emperor was an unsafe person to
resume the throne, and that it were better that one man should perish
than that the whole regime should be upset. They even refused to allow
a foreign physician to go in to see him, saying that of his own free
will he had turned again to the Chinese, all of which indicates that it
was not the plot of any one man.
Why then should Yuan Shih-kai have been made the scapegoat of the court
and the officials, and branded as a murderer in the face of the whole
world? That may be another plot. The radical reformers, followers of
Kang Yu-wei, have been making such a hubbub about the matter ever since
the death of the Emperor and the Empress Dowager that somebody had to
be punished. They said that Yuan had been a traitor to the cause of
reform, that he had not only betrayed his sovereign in 1898, but that
now he had encompassed his death.
Now to satisfy these enemies, the Prince Regent may have decided that
the best thing to do was to dismiss Yuan for a time. I think that the
trivial excuse he gives for doing so favours my theory--with
"rheumatism of the leg," to which is added, "Thus our clemency is
manifest"--a sentence which may be severe or may mean nothing, and when
the storm has blown over and the sky is clear again, Yuan may be once
more brought to the front as Li Hung-chang and others have been in the
past. Which is a consummation, I think, devoutly to be wished.
XX
Peking--The City of the Court
The position of Peking at the present time is one of peculiar interest,
for all the different forces that are now at work to make or mar China
issue from, or converge towards, the capital. There, on the dragon
throne, beside, or rather above, the powerless and unhappy Emperor, the
father of his people and their god, sits the astute and ever-watchful
lady whose word is law to Emperor, minister and clown alike. There
dwell the heads of the government boards, the leaders of the Manchu
aristocracy, and the great political parties, the drafters of new
constitutions and imperial decrees, and the keen-witted diplomatists
who know so well how to play against European antagonists the great
game of international chess.--R. F. Johnston in "From Peking to
Mandelay."
XX
PEKING--THE CITY OF THE COURT
In the place where Peking now stands there has been a city for three
thousand years. Five centuries before Christ it was the capital of a
small state, but was destroyed three centuries later by the builder of
the great wall. It was soon rebuilt, however, and has continued from
that time until the present, with varied fortunes, as the capital of a
state, the chief city of a department, or the dwelling-place of the
court.
It is the greatest and best preserved walled city in the empire, if not
in the world. The Tartar City is sixteen miles in circumference,
surrounded by a wall sixty feet thick at the bottom, fifty feet thick
at the top and forty feet high, with six feet of balustrade on the
outside, beautifully crenelated and loopholed, and in a good state of
preservation. The streets are sixty feet wide,--or even more in
places,--well macadamized, and lit with electric light. The chief mode
of conveyance is the 'ricksha, though carriages may be hired by the
week, day or hour at various livery stables in proximity to the hotels,
which, by the way, furnish as good accommodation to their guests as the
hotels of other Oriental cities.
In the centre of the Tartar City is the Imperial City, eight miles in
circumference, encircled by a wall six feet thick and fifteen feet
high, pierced by four gates at the points of the compass; and in the
centre of this again is the Forbidden City, occupying less than half a
square mile, the home of the court.
Fairs are held, at various temples, fourteen days of every month,
distributed in such a way as to bring them almost on alternate days,
while at certain times there are two fairs on the same day. It is a
mistake to suppose that the Chinese women in the capital are very much
secluded. They may be seen on the streets at almost any time, while the
temple courts and adjacent streets, on fair days, are crowded with
women and girls, dressed in the most gorgeous colours, their hair
decorated with all kinds of artificial flowers, followed by little boys
and girls as gaily dressed as themselves. Here they find all kinds of
toys, curios, and articles of general use, from a top to a broom, from
bits of jade or other precious stones, to a snuff bottle hollowed out
of a solid quartz crystal, or a market basket or a dust-pan made of
reeds.
Peking being the city of the court, and the headquarters of many of the
greatest officials, is the receptacle of the finest products of the
oldest and greatest non-Christian people the world has ever known.
China easily leads the world in the making of porcelain, the best of
which has always gone to Peking for use in the palace, and so we can
find here the best products of every reign from the time of Kang Hsi,
as well as those of the former dynasties, to that of Kuang Hsu and the
Empress Dowager. The same is true of her brass and bronze
incense-burners and images, her wood and ivory carvings, her beautiful
embroideries, her magnificent tapestries, and her paintings by old
masters of six or eight hundred years ago. Here we can find the finest
Oriental rugs, in a good state of preservation, with the "tone" that
only age can give, made long before the time of Washington.
There is no better market for fine bits of embroidery, mandarin coats,
and all the better products of needle, silk and floss, of which the
Chinese have been masters for centuries, than the city of the court.
The population consists largely of great officials and their families,
whose cast-off clothing, toned down by the use of years, often without
a blemish or a spot, finds its way into the hands of dealers. The
finest furs,--seal, otter, squirrel, sable and ermine,--are brought
from Siberia, Manchuria and elsewhere, for the officials and the court,
and can be secured for less than half what they would cost in America.
Pearls, of which the Chinese ladies and the court are more fond than of
diamonds, may be found in abundance in all the bazars, which are many,
and judging from the way they are purchased by tourists, are both
cheaper and better than elsewhere.
The Chinese have little appreciation of diamonds as jewelry. On one
occasion there was offered to me a beautiful ring containing a large
sapphire encircled by twenty diamonds. When I offered the dealer less
than he asked for it, he said: "No, rather than sell it for that price,
I will tear it apart, and sell the diamonds separately for drill-points
to the tinkers who mend dishes. I can make more from it in that way,
only I dislike to spoil the ring." The Empress Dowager during her late
years, and many of the ladies and gentlemen of the more progressive
type, affected, whether genuinely or not, an appreciation of the
diamond as a piece of jewelry, especially in the form of rings, though
coloured stones, polished, but not cut, have always been more popular
with the Chinese. The turquoise, the emerald, the sapphire, the ruby
and the other precious stones with colour have, therefore, always
graced the tables of the bazars in the capital, while the diamond until
very recently was relegated to the point of the tinker's drill.