THE COUNTRY IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF PEKING—NUMEROUS SIGNS OF THE DECLINE
OF THE EMPIRE
From Peking to the Ming Tombs and the Great Wall of China—The temples
in the hills—Striking neglect of monuments and public
works—Remains of ancient and well-paved highroads, now replaced by
wretched ones, which are only temporarily repaired when the
Emperor or the Empress Dowager passes—The manner in which useful
works are neglected in China, and her treasure wasted.
A tour in the environs of Peking, to the Great Wall and to some of the
temples built on the hills to the west of the town, confirms the bad
impressions received in the city. This excursion occupies between three
and four days, and can be performed with relative comfort, and in
ordinary times without the least danger. A ‘boy,’ that is to say, a
domestic servant—a combination of guide, interpreter, valet and cook,
and who is often, by the way, a very expert disciple of Vatel—a donkey
and donkey-boy, a waggon, drawn by two mules, and a waggoner, are the
staff necessary for this journey, which is usually performed partly on
foot and partly on donkey-back. This suite may be considered somewhat
numerous, but no other human being but his own master would get a
Chinese donkey to budge a step forward, and the same may be said of the
mules. As to the ‘boy,’ he is the indispensable party into whose hands
you must trust yourself absolutely, even to the extent of handing over
your purse, so that he may settle your accounts at the various inns and
give the expected backsheesh to the servants or to the guides and bonzes
in the temples. Needless to say, he perfectly understands how to take
care of himself in the matter of reserving for his own benefit the
‘squeezee,’ as they say in pigeon-English. All Europeans who travel in
the Far East are obliged to have a retinue, which adds to their
importance, and in which every man has his particular function to
fulfil, and will not undertake the least share of his fellow-servants’
work.
On leaving Peking by the Northern Gate, one crosses a sandy and barren
space, occupied in the thirteenth century by a part of the town, which
has now disappeared. Then come some outlying towns, mainly inhabited by
merchants, succeeded by the admirably cultivated plain which extends
from the north of Peking to the foot of the hills. It is more barren to
the south, and trees only grow close to the villages, which are
invariably surrounded by groups of weeping-willows. In this region the
soil and the climate are too dry to allow of the cultivation of rice,
but a crop of winter wheat is obtained, and I have seen it sown, and
even appearing above the ground, in the month of October. It does not
freeze in the very dry earth, although the thermometer falls twenty
degrees, and the snow is never very deep. This crop of wheat is
harvested during May. Presently you see fields of sorghum, millet, the
staple food of the people in these parts, and also of buckwheat. On all
sides the peasantry are hard at work, usually alongside strong waggons,
better built than those of the Siberian mujiks, and drawn either by two
mules or two horses, or sometimes by three little donkeys. In the
villages you can sometimes see the grain thrashed or the long leaves of
the sorghum being bound in sheaves, which when dried are made into mats
and screens. The women help in the latter work, which invariably takes
place close to their doors, for they are never seen in the fields. The
roads are generally very bad, but have not always been so. Many of the
bridges are still in a superb condition, although the fine flagstones
with which they are paved are in a shocking condition. Others, however,
are in absolute ruin, and the rivers which they once spanned have
consequently to be forded. Everything points to the fact that we are
passing over a once magnificent highroad, and effectively it leads to
the Tombs of the Mings, which explains why it was built in such a
sumptuous manner by that Dynasty, as well as the state of abandonment
into which it has fallen since it has come into the hands of the
Manchus, who dethroned the Mings in 1644.
Very few places that I have ever visited have produced upon me a greater
impression of grandeur than the amphitheatre formed by the lofty hills
on whose last slopes stand the Tombs of the thirteen Emperors of the
Ming Dynasty. Each of these monuments is formed of an aggregation of
buildings shaded by magnificent trees, that present a striking contrast
to the usual gray barrenness of Chinese hills. The broad road which
leads to them, once paved but now in ruins, passes under a superb
triumphal arch into the silent valley, which seems deserted, although in
reality it is highly cultivated; the little villages clustering at the
foot of the heights, too, are, as a rule, difficult to make out. After
passing under numerous elegant gateways, supported by winged columns, we
at length arrive at a gigantic alley of colossal monoliths, representing
figures of animals and monsters alternately sitting and crouching, and
statues of famous legislators and warriors. Roads radiate towards each
of the Tombs, of which I only visited that of the first Ming Emperor who
reigned in Peking.
After having passed through a high wall by a porch with three badly-kept
gates, we crossed a spacious courtyard planted with trees, and presently
entered the great hall. Before the whole length of the façade extends
several flights of marble steps with exquisitely sculptured balustrades.
The hall itself is not less than 200 feet long by about 80 feet wide and
40 feet in height. It is nearly empty, and at first you can only
perceive the forty gigantic wooden columns, each formed of the trunk of
a tree, that support the roof, and which two men cannot embrace. These
columns are said to have come from the confines of Indo-China. In the
midst of them, half hidden away, is a small altar, ornamented with a few
commonplace china vases, which are crumbling to pieces and full of dust.
Beyond the altar, enclosed in a sort of tabernacle, is the tablet
inscribed with the deceased Emperor’s name in three Chinese characters.
His body lies beyond, at the end of a gallery a mile long, which
penetrates straight into the heart of the hill, but is walled up a short
distance from the entrance, which one reaches through two courtyards
separated by a portico. From the lofty tower that rises over this
entrance, the walls of which, by the way, are embellished with names
which numerous Chinese and a few Europeans have been vulgar enough to
scratch on the walls with the points of their knives, the view includes
the whole semicircle of hills, as well as all the Tombs, which, by
reason of the very simplicity of their design, create an impression of
extreme grandeur. Their erection must have cost as great an amount of
labour as that which was bestowed by the Egyptians upon the sepulchres
of their Pharaohs.
The Great Wall of China is another colossal undertaking, in order to
reach which you take the high road to Mongolia that passes through the
Pa-ta-ling Gate at the extremity of the pass of Nan-kow. This highroad,
which for centuries has been daily traversed by long caravans of camels,
engaged in the traffic between Mongolia, Siberia, and China, was
formerly paved with blocks of granite, of which no trace is now to be
seen, either on that part of the road in the little town of Nan-kow, or
in the difficult mountain pass, and the traveller may therefore conclude
that they have either been used in the construction of houses or washed
away by some torrent. Nan-kow is a walled town, like almost all those in
the neighbourhood of Peking, including the curious old suburb of
Chao-yung-kwan, over one of the doors of which there is an inscription
in six languages, one of which has not yet been deciphered. Everywhere
on the mountain sides towers and picturesque ruins of fortifications
manifest how great has ever been the fear of the Chinese of the Tatars
and Mongols, for protection against whom the Great Wall was built. It is
divided into two parts, the inner and the outer wall, the first of which
extends for nearly 1,560 miles, from Shan-hai-kwan on the Gulf of
Pe-chi-li into the Province of Kan-su on the upper Yellow River. Built
two hundred years before our era, needless to say, it has been often
repaired and rebuilt. Near the sea it is constructed of stone, but brick
has been used on the inland portions. In thickness it varies from 16
feet to 20 feet, and is about the same in height, but to the west it is
nothing like so lofty.
The inner wall, which dates from the sixth century, was almost entirely
reconstructed by the Mings in the sixteenth century, and is 500 miles
long. This is the wall to be seen from Pa-ta-ling, passing over the
hill, and then proceeding right and left to climb in zigzag fashion to
the very summit of the mountains. It is constructed after the model of
the walls of Peking, on a substructure of stone, with two rows of brick
battlements. The top is paved, and forms a roadway 11 feet in width. Its
height varies, according to the irregularity of the land, between 12
feet and 20 feet, and at about every 300 feet there are towers twice the
height of the wall, also surrounded by bastions and battlements.
Although less imposing than the Wall of Peking, the Great Wall of China
does not deserve the flippant remarks that have been made about it.
Against an enemy unprovided with artillery, and horsemen like the
Mongols and Tatars, it must have presented a very serious obstruction,
and if occasionally they have been able to scale it, it has generally
resisted every attempt at invasion. Although it has not been used under
the present Dynasty, which is of Tatar origin, it has remained, thanks
to the care bestowed upon it in former times, one of the best preserved
monuments in China.
It is otherwise with the greater number of the temples scattered over
the hills, which stand amidst groups of magnificent trees, whose green
foliage contrasts so pleasantly with the gray, barren hills which the
Chinese, like all other peoples of the Far East, never cultivate.
Visitors are pleasantly received in the temples near Peking, some of
which are used as summer residences by European diplomatists tired of
being shut up in the city, whose pestilential miasmas occasionally reach
even their houses, although they are surrounded by parks. Some of them
are only wooden structures, with dwellings for the bonzes surrounding
courtyards on to which open the various sanctuaries. The use of wood in
the Far East for building purposes does not prevent a certain display of
magnificence and art, and the Japanese temples at Nikko and many other
places are marvels of richness and beauty, although they are entirely
built of wood. Unfortunately, unless they are very carefully looked
after, they are naturally apt to deteriorate much quicker than stone
buildings. Needless to say, the Chinese temples are in a very
dilapidated condition. I cannot say that I was impressed by the amazing
collection of Buddhas, some life-size, others colossal, some gilded and
others painted, no two of which are said to be exactly alike; or by the
crowd of horrible monsters with ferocious faces and abominable gestures
who guard the entrances to these temples. They one and all filled me
rather with disgust than with the slightest impression of awe. This
degenerate Buddhism is very different from that which exists in Ceylon,
and among certain Japanese sects. The only traces of the original
character of the religion, or at any rate of the land from which it
sprang, are to be found in the lovely stone pagoda of the Pi-Yuen-Sse,
whose style is pure Hindu, and contains some exquisite bas-reliefs
representing scenes in the lives of Sakyamuni and his saints, or, again,
in the even more beautiful sculpture to be admired in the Temple of the
Yellow Tower.
The Summer Palace, which, by the way, was not a genuine Chinese
building, but erected under the direction of the Jesuits in the
eighteenth century in the style of Versailles, has not been rebuilt
since its destruction by the Allies in 1860, and all access to its ruins
has been prohibited. Not far distant is the summer residence of the
Empress Dowager, surrounded by magnificent gardens. The road which leads
to it is well kept. For the matter of that, as the Empress was about to
make a pilgrimage to a neighbouring shrine at the time I passed that
way, all the roads were being tinkered up for her advent. Hundreds of
coolies were working under the direction of mandarins of the second or
inferior rank, with the white or gold button, who were dashing on
horseback hither and thither, giving orders and generally superintending
so that all irregularities were rapidly disappearing under cartloads of
sand. These costly repairs were, however, only ephemeral.
The Chinese Government never hesitates about wasting money on
trivialities. On one occasion, a river happening to upset certain
arrangements in one of the Imperial gardens, it was, at enormous cost,
drained from its bed, and allowed to inundate and ruin hundreds of farms
belonging to the unfortunate peasants. On another occasion, with a view
to worthily celebrating the sixtieth birthday of the Dowager Empress,
the money intended for the reorganization of the army in Pe-chi-li was
squandered on processions, illuminations, and fireworks. Whenever money
is needed for anything but the gratification of the greed and vanity of
the Court officials, it is never forthcoming; and every traveller who
has been to China will corroborate what I have said concerning not only
the neighbourhood of Peking, but also of Canton and Shanghai. The
highroads have practically ceased to exist, and the bridges are rapidly
crumbling to ruin. The Imperial canal, one of the most magnificent works
of past generations, which goes from Hang-Chow to Tien-tsin, a distance
of over 940 miles, and unites the Blue, the Yellow, and the Pei-ho
Rivers, and also the capitals of the middle provinces, whence are
obtained the best provisions, is now at many points choked up with sand
and stones, and in others it is only a few inches deep, and can only be
used for local traffic. China of to-day is but a shadow of what she has
been, for her sole object in existence is to deceive, and her
administration is rotten to the core. This decadence dates centuries
back, but it culminated five years ago, when an Empire of 400,000,000
inhabitants was obliged to humble itself to a nation ten times its
inferior in population and resources.