{283}
[Illustration: 0386]
_A return call--Ceremonies--A dog-robbing suit--Difficulties of
conversation--A treat for the amah--The British Ambassador at Jehol in
the eighteenth century--The last stages of decrepitude--Glories of the
park--The bronze temple--A flippant young Chinese gentleman--“Ladies'
Temple”--Desolation and dirt and ruin--“Happiness Hall”--Examining a
barbarian._
|The next day the secretary returned my call, bringing with him the
General's card, and an apology for not coming himself. He was so very
busy. I never expected him to come, and don't suppose he ever really
intended to, but it was true Chinese politeness to put it that way.
Mr Wu had sent to say he was coming to call upon me, and it surprised
me to see the commotion such a little thing occasioned in the mission
house. I felt they were really being awfully good to my guest, but,
without taking away one jot from their kindliness, I think, too, they
were very glad to be brought into friendly relations with the yamen, and
I was very glad indeed to think that I, who was in outer darkness from
their point of view, was able to do this little thing for them. Cakes
were made, the best tea got out, the table set, and the boy, who
generally waited upon us humbler folk in a little short jacket and
trousers caught in at the ankles, was put into the long coat, {284}or
petticoat, whichever you are pleased to call it, that a well-dressed
Chinese servant always wears. It seems it is not the correct thing for
him to wait upon one in a little short jacket. And then when all was
ready, and the small great man was announced, to my surprise the other
two women were hustled out of sight, and I and the missionary received
him alone. Why, I do not know even now. I sat on a high chair, and
so did Mr Wu, and the missionary gave us both tea and cakes, handing
everything with both hands; that I believe is the correct Chinese way
of doing honour to your guest. I received it as a matter of course, said
“Thank you,” or “Please don't bother,” whichever occurred to me, but
Mr Wu was loud in his protestations, in both Chinese and English, and
I fancy the whole interview--unless I spoiled it--was conducted in a
manner which reflected infinite credit upon the missionary's knowledge
of Chinese customs and the secretary's best manners. They certainly were
very elaborate. This day he had on what one of my naval brothers was
wont to designate a dog-robbing suit, though I don't know that he ever
went out dog-robbing, and I am quite sure the young Chinese gentleman
never did, also his hair was neatly parted in the middle and plastered
down on each side, and with a high collar and tie on, he looked really
as uncomfortable and _outré_ as it was possible to look. He had brought
me the tickets, and implored me if I wanted anything else to ask for it.
The interview was a trial to me. It is all very well to be prepared to
smile, but smiles don't really fill up more than a minute or two, and
what on earth to say during the rest of the time, troubled me. In all
the wide world, and I felt it acutely, we had absolutely nothing in
common save those tickets, and my heart sank when he told me he would do
himself the honour of showing me over the palace himself. If I felt
half an hour with him, for all my gratitude for his kindliness, an
intolerable burden, what on earth should I feel the livelong day. One
piece of news he did tell us, there had been fighting in Mongolia,
severe fighting, and many men had been killed, but when we came to
ask which side had won he said he did not know, and then of course we
guessed the Chinese had suffered a reverse, for if the telegraph could
tell any details at all, it was sure to have told the all-important one
which side was the conqueror. At last, when it seemed that hour had been
interminable, the young man rose, and the farewells began.
[Illustration: 0399]
Those Chinese farewells! Chinese etiquette is enough to cure the most
enthusiastic believer in form and ceremony, to reduce him to the belief
that a simple statement of fact, a “Yea, yea,” and “Nay, nay,” are amply
sufficient. I suppose all this form and ceremony, this useless form
and ceremony, comes from the over-civilisation of China. If ever in the
future I am inclined to cavil at abrupt modern manners, I shall think of
that young man protesting that the missionary must not come to the gate
with him, when all the while he knew he would have been deeply offended
if he had not. I fear lest I may now swing over to the other side and
say that a rude abruptness is a sign of life, so much better does it
seem to me than the long elaborate and meaningless politeness that
hampers one so much.
When he had gone we discussed the question of a visit to the Imperial
Park, and then I found that {286}there were many things in the way of my
entertaining my hosts, prayer meetings, dispensary afternoons, visits,
and that in any case, only the women would accompany me, whether that
was really because the men were busy, or because it was not Chinese
etiquette for men and women to amuse themselves together I do not know,
but I strongly suspect the latter had something to do with it. For of
course what the foreigners did, more especially the new foreign woman,
who was not a missionary, was a matter of common talk in all the
district round. Then my hostess put it to me, as I had plenty of tickets
and to spare, would I take their amah. She was most anxious to go. She
had been in service with a Manchu family, and once when they were going
she had been ill, and once it had rained so that she had never gone,
and she was getting an old woman and feared her chances were dwindling
sadly.
It was such a little thing to want, and yet I don't know. When I looked
at the hideous town, for Cheng Teh Fu remains in my mind as the ugliest
Chinese town I have ever seen it had not the charm and fascination that
walls give, when I thought of the delights that lay hidden behind the
fifteen miles of high wall that surround the Park, the delights that
are for so very, very few, I did not wonder that the Manchu woman, who
already counted herself old, she was forty-five, should have been
very anxious to go inside. And when I told her I would take her, she
immediately begged leave to go away and put on her best clothes. I
couldn't see any difference between her best clothes and her everyday
clothes, but I could see she had a small shaven grandchild in
attendance, who was immediately put on to carry my umbrella. I suppose
she hoped to smuggle him in to see the delights, and I said nothing, for
I had plenty of tickets.
Curiously enough, while most of China has been a sealed book, the
Hunting Palace--it is really better described as a Lodge--of the Manchus
has been known to the English for one hundred and twenty years, for
it was here that, on the 9th September, 1793, the Emperor Ch'ien Lung
received Lord Macartney, the first British Ambassador to China. I did
not come straight from Peking, but I know that the road, by valley and
mountain pass, is reckoned very bad indeed, and very few people as
yet take the trouble to go to Jehol. It is four and a half days' hard
travelling now, but Lord Macartney took seven, and it is a curious
commentary upon the state of the roads in the British Isles in those
days that though his chronicler, Sir George Staunton, writing of
the journey, complains a little of the roads, and mentions that Lord
Macartney's carriage, which he had brought out from England with him,
had generally to be dragged along empty, while the “Embassador” himself
rode in a palankeen, he does not make much moan about them; no one
reading his account would think they were so appalling as they must have
been, for I cannot think they have deteriorated much since those days.
When I looked at the streets of Cheng Teh Fu, banks, dust heaps, great
holes, stones, I tried to imagine the British “Embassador's” coach being
dragged across them, twisting round corners, balancing on sidings, up
to the axles in dust, or perhaps mud, for it was September and the crowd
looking on at the lord from the far islands of the sea, who was bringing
tribute to the Emperor of China, {288}for I am afraid it is hardly
likely they believed he was doing anything else.
Another thing Sir George Staunton notes is the scarcity of timber. “The
circumjacent hills,” he writes, “appeared to have been once well planted
with trees; but those few which remained were stunted, and timber has
become very scarce. No young plantations had been made to supply the old
ones cut down.” Now the hills round are absolutely bare, there is not
a sign that ever a tree has grown upon them, and I should not have
believed they had, had it not been for Sir George Staunton's account.
And on the other side of this ugly town, among these desolate hills, is
set a wall, a wall about twenty feet high, with a broad pathway on the
top, along which the guards might walk. And the wall has been built with
discretion. Not only was it to keep out all but the elect, but it was
to block effectually all view of what went on inside. Not even from the
neighbouring hills is it possible to look into that Park. Its delights
were only for the Son of Heaven and those who ministered to his
well-being.
We went along a sordid, dusty street to the principal gate, a shabby
and forlorn-looking gate, and the watch-tower over it was crumbling to
decay, and we entered the courtyard, a forlorn and desolate courtyard,
where the paving-stones were broken, and the grass and weeds were coming
up between the cracks. Then there was a long pathway with a broken
pavement in the middle, a pavement so characteristic of China that
wherever I chance to see such I shall think of her golden sunshine and
bright skies. On either side of that pathway were high walls over which
were peeping the tiled roofs of {289}buildings, until at last after
fully five minutes' walk, after passing through many gates, all in
various stages of decay, we came to a place where the path ended with
two doors to the right and left. This, the palace of an Emperor; it
seemed impossible to believe it. I wondered if the woman who had wanted
for so many years to see it was disappointed. She was supporting my
elbow, true Chinese fashion, and Tuan, having succeeded in passing on my
camera to the usual ragged follower, was on the other side, as if I were
in the last stages of decrepitude. At first this exceeding attention
used to irritate me, but by this time I had resigned myself to my fate.
I was more concerned at the shabbiness and sordidness of everything. Of
course no one save the servants, who keep the place, live in the grounds
now, no one has lived there for over fifty years, not since 1860, when
the reigning Emperor fled there from the Allies who sacked Peking, and
died there. Perhaps it was for that reason that his secondary wife, the
great Dowager-Empress whom all the world knew, disliked the place, and
went there no more. I remembered that, as I stood between those two
doors and wondered which I should go through first. The one to the
left led to some courtyards surrounded by low, one-storied
buildings--Emperor's first bedroom--said Tuan, and possibly he was
right. I turned to the door on the right and as it opened I knew that
these Manchu pleasure-grounds had been planned, as so many things
Chinese are planned, nobly. I stepped out on to a plateau and there,
there in this treeless China, was a grove of firs and pines. The blue
sky peeped through the branches, the sunshine dappled the ground with
shadow and light, and the wind {290}murmured softly among the evergreen
foliage. Here was coolness and delight. Beyond the plateau lay a long
grassy valley surrounded by softly rounded, tree-clad hills, and right
at the bottom of the valley was a lake with winding shores, a lake
covered with lotus lilies, with islands on it, with bridges and
buildings, picturesque as only the ideal Chinese buildings can be
picturesque. It may have been created by art, and at least art must have
entered to some great extent into the making of the beauty, but there
is no trace of it. My followers looked at the scene and looked at me,
as much as to say this was something belonging to them they were showing
me, and they hoped I was appreciating it properly. It might have been
the Manchu woman's very own. In truth I could only look and wonder, lost
in admiration. What could the heart of man want more for the glorious
summertime, the brief, hot summer of Northern China?
[Illustration: 0405]
The first glance was a surprise, and the farther I went in the more my
wonder grew. There were paved pathways, but they were not aggressively
paved, the rough grey stones had just been sunk in the grass. They
were broken a little now, and they toned naturally with the rural
surroundings. There were lovely bridges bridging ravines, and here, too,
was not one stone too many, nothing to suggest the artificial, that
so often spoils the rural scene made to conform to the wants of the
luxurious. Of course, besides the pavement, other things had fallen into
disrepair, there were steps down hill-sides that were well-nigh hopeless
for purposes of ascent and descent, and there were temples where indeed
the gods were forlorn and forgotten. Gigantic gods they were {291}with
fearsome faces and painted in gorgeous colours, but they were all dusty
and dirty. There was one temple all of bronze, but it was rusted
and shabby. There were shrines in it set with agate and jasper,
mother-of-pearl and jade, and what looked like great rubies, but, very
likely, were only garnets. Shabby, forlorn, forgotten was the temple,
the steps that led up to it were broken and almost unusable, the
courtyards were neglected, the tiles of the roof grass-grown, the
woodwork of the doors perished, the walls falling, but the situation on
the hill-side, embosomed in pines, with the beautiful lake at its feet
and the wide vista of hills beyond, was superb, eternal.
On the day the missionaries arranged to come we made a picnic to this
temple, I, and the two missionary women and our attendants, my servant,
and their boy and the Manchu amah and all the heterogeneous! following
my boy always collected, and as we sat there at our open-air tiffin the
gates were pushed open and in came the little Chinese gentleman in his
badly fitting foreign clothes.
“Hallo, Missus,” he said, and I forgot for a moment all the wonders that
his people had done, that were here before my eyes.
He had come to fulfil his promise and show me round.
He was a flippant young gentleman impatient of the past, just as I have
seen young men of his age, in Western lands. He was only a boy, after
all, and he threw stones at the birds just as a younger boy might have
done in England. Only I wished he wouldn't. It was nice to think the
birds had sanctuary here, but I suppose it was a way of letting off
steam, since he could not talk very easily to the {292}foreign woman. A
small red squirrel, sitting up deeply engaged with a nut from one of the
fir-trees, roused him to wild excitement, and he shouted and yelled to a
couple of dignified, petticoated Chinamen on the other side of the lake,
in a way that quite upset my ideas of Chinese propriety; in fact, he was
the General's secretary, showing off just as I have seen boys in other
lands show off.
He took us to the women's temple, since we were interested in temples,
a temple away on the other side of the lake, down in a hollow of the
hills, hidden away as woman has been hidden away in China for immemorial
ages.
“Ladies' temple,” said our cicerone with a wave of his hand.
And it, too, is falling into decay, the dusty gods, ranged round
the sacred place, remind one of the contents of a lumber-room, and
“Forgotten, forgotten,” is written large all over it. The forlorn old
man in shabby blue, with a tiny little queue and a dirty face who
keeps it, looks as if he too had been forgotten, and was grateful for a
twenty-cent _cumshaw_. Only the courtyard with the soft breeze rustling
in the pine-trees and ringing the musical bells that hung from the eaves
was peaceful in the afternoon sunshine, with a charm of its own.
What women have come and prayed here? The proud Manchu Empress whom her
lord had neglected, the Chinese concubine who longed to find favour in
his eyes?
All over this pleasure-ground are buildings, but so deftly placed they
never for one moment interfere with the charm of the countryside. There
is a little temple on the Golden Mountain where the Jehol River takes
its rise in a spring; on another hill is a little look-out place or tea
pagoda with the roof covered with tiles of imperial yellow, and a view
from it that even an Emperor is lucky to command. At the end of a
long grassy glade where the deer were feeding in the shade of oaks and
willows was a tall pagoda, and the Emperor's library was in another
little valley, hidden away behind high walls. We entered through a
guard-house and came upon a small door in the high stone wall, and this
door on the inner side appeared to be blocked not only by the trunk of a
tree but by a huge rock. There was, however, just room for one person to
pass round, and then we entered a shaded rock garden, which is all round
the building that holds the library. The deep veranda was charming, on
the hottest day one might sit, cool and secluded, reading here, and on
each corner are exquisite bronze models of Chinese ponies. The library
itself, like most of these houses, was sealed up, and our young friend
had not the key, but the lattice-work windows, and most of the walls are
of lattice-work, for this is a summer palace, were down to the ground,
and through the torn paper I could get a glimpse of what looked like
another lumber-room, but that once must have been gorgeous with red
lacquer and gold.
[Illustration: 0411]
Always it was the same, desolation and dirt and ruin, and the young man
who was showing us everything made as if he wished to impress upon us
that it did not matter. He belonged to the modern world, and these were
past and gone. But when we admired and were charmed and delighted I saw
that he, too, was pleased.
There were the Emperor's rooms opening into a courtyard close to the
gate, there were his great audience halls down among a grove of firs,
where probably he received Lord Macartney. Highly scented white single
peonies made fragrant the grass-grown courtyards, where great bronze
gongs are the remnants of a past magnificence, and the rooms are many of
them empty, for all they are so carefully sealed. There were more rooms
for the Emperor on an island in the lily-covered lake; and reached by
bridges that are taken up in June and July and boats substituted, and
farthest away of all, at the very end of the lake, were the rooms of the
Empress.
“Happiness Hall” the Emperor Kwang Hsi wrote on it with his own hands,
or so our guide told us, and there to this day the golden characters
remain. Did they speak the truth, I wonder. At that particular period, I
believe, the Empress counted for a great deal more than the Emperor, so
possibly at least the envious Emperor felt he was speaking the truth;
but, as a rule, it is difficult to think that the woman who shared the
Dragon Throne could have been happy. It is difficult to believe that
any woman in China can be happy, she counts for so little even now.
The courtyards were like all the other courtyards, with great gongs of
Ningpo work and bronze vases, and shaded by picturesque pine-trees,
only here was an innovation. In a sheltered corner, hidden away from the
sight of all, by high walls and green shrubs, was the bathing-place of
the Court ladies, and on the other side their theatre.
The Emperor had a theatre not far from the gate of the pleasure-grounds,
a great place all falling into decay, and here they had a play for the
entertainment {295}of their guests, when the first British Ambassador
came here, and it is evident that the women were allowed to be present,
even though they were behind a screen, for Sir George Staunton relates
that the only foreigner, seen by these secluded women, was George
Staunton aged thirteen, the page to the Embassy, who was led on to a
platform by a eunuch, so that the wives and concubines of the Emperor
might see what a barbarian from the islands of the far Western sea
looked like.
But here, close to her rooms, and by her bathing-place, the Empress
had her own private theatre, and I wondered what manner of play could
interest such secluded ladies, such narrow lives.
Wonderful to relate both the theatre and the roof of the rooms showed
signs of having been recently done up. The rumour ran that after the
Revolution in February 1912, the Court thought of retiring here, and
these recent repairs in a place that has been untouched for years give
colour to the rumour. We asked our guide as we sat at afternoon tea on
the veranda looking out at the sunlight coming through the fir-trees
that make the approach to “Happiness Hall,” but he shook his head. He
knew nothing about it. He was a most circumspect young man and never did
know anything, he felt perhaps it was wisest not.
Oh but it was sad the waste here. All these dwelling-places dotted about
in the valley, on hillside, hidden away in groves of trees, are of one
story, they are summer palaces, but the rooms are well-proportioned,
and with their wide verandas and their lattice-work walls down to the
ground, must have been delightful to live in, and they were furnished as
{296}an Emperor's palace should be furnished. There were chairs
unlike the usual Chinese chairs, comfortable chairs of red lacquer and
blackwood, and they were inlaid with cloisonne work, with carved jade,
with delightful patterns in mother-of-pearl, there were stools, there
were tables, there were low k'ang tables of lacquer, and all were
perished with the sun and the wind; of not one piece has any care been
taken. Some of the rooms were empty, some were full of packing-cases
hiding I know not what treasures; judging by those perishing chairs and
tables that were left out, I should imagine something worth possessing.
Can it be only fifty years since an Emperor came here, it might be two
hundred judging by the state of decay everything was in, and yet,
when all was said and done, this place struck me as being the most
magnificent pleasure-ground, the most beautifully situated, the most
beautifully planned, that I have ever seen, worth, and more than worth,
the arduous journey through the mountains that I had taken to see it.
It is supposed to be cut off from the people, and it is I suppose,
judging by the joy the mission servants expressed at getting a chance to
see it.
“All my life,” said the amah, “I have served in Manchu families, and yet
see, it is through a foreigner I come here,” and it was as if the seeing
had crowned her life. But still there is a little dribbling in of
the favoured few of the lower classes. It may be they were the palace
servants who speared great black bass in the lake. It might have been
they who carried out baskets of lily root and sold them with the fish
outside. I bought bass easily enough for my hostess, great things still
alive and bleeding from women's temple.
Sometimes there are rumours of art treasures sold from the palace, and
then again it is contradicted: but I wondered, as I looked at those
great baskets of lily roots that were constantly going outside, if here
were not an excellent way to conceal contraband. It may be though that
the guards at the gate are not to be bought, and possibly I do them an
injustice.
[Illustration: 0417]
I had written this and felt apologetic for my suspicions of the humble
guard, forgetting that this is China, where anything may happen, when
before my book could go to press a greater than the guard, no less
a person than the Premier himself, Hsiung Hsi Ling, the great Tartar
General, was accused of taking away the precious curios from Jehol. He
had brought away curios valued at tens of thousands of pounds but he
succeeded in proving to the satisfaction of the President that he had
brought them away only that they might be stored in one of the great
museums in Peking, where not only could they be cared for, but they
might be seen by far more people. Again I thought of the Babylonish
gentleman. Doubtless he, too, would have moved the nation's treasures
from one place to another without saying by your leave to any man. To
whom was he responsible? Perhaps to the King upon the throne. Hardly to
him, if his army was strong and faithful.
We lingered on the veranda of the Empress's house over our afternoon
tea--wherever we went hot water was procurable--and the sunshine came
through the branches of the pines and firs, the great willows dipped
their weeping branches in the clear waters of the lake, the deep blue of
the sky contrasted {298}with the green of the pine-needles, and a long
snake came slowly, slowly, through the grass to take his daily drink,
unperturbed, though all the servants and the German girl and I ran
to look at him. He knew he was quite safe, no one would harm a sacred
snake. A small eagle screamed from the rocks above, there was the
mourning of a dove, the plaintive cry of a hoopoe, and a chattering
black and white magpie looked on. A tiny blue kingfisher, like a jewel,
fluttered on to a stone, and a bird something like a thrush, sang
sweetly and loudly as the evening shadows lengthened. A great blue
crane, tall almost as a man flew slowly across the water, and the brown
deer clustered in the glades and began to feed. Truly it was an ideal
spot up among the barren hills of Inner Mongolia, this Park enclosed by
miles of high wall and still carefully guarded and jealously secluded
by the Republic as it was by the Manchus. When France became a Republic
they threw open her palaces and desecrated her most holy places. Not so
here in the unchanging East. What was secluded and difficult of entrance
in Manchu times is secluded and entered only by favour still. China
absorbs the present and clings to the past. Are they past for ever those
dead and gone rulers who made these pleasure-grounds?
Their last representative is a little boy hidden away in the heart of
Peking, hardly realising yet what he has lost.
“If he comes again,” said a Chinese gentleman, “he will be Emperor by
force of arms.”
Will the power come back to him? I can no more believe that the Chinese
will become a modern nation, forgetting these glories of their past,
than could the women's bathing place. {299}prophet believe that the Lord
would leave His chosen people in captivity.
[Illustration: 0421]
“I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they
shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant
vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens and
eat the fruit of them.
“And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled
out of their land, which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God.”
And we from the mission wended our way back through the dusty, dirty,
commonplace streets, and the little gentleman who had been our guide,
much to his relief, I am sure, for he spoke little English, and he would
not speak Chinese, turned off at the yamen.