in Europe, a master who is paid so much to come for an hour a day,
but a man who regularly enters my service, and is at my beck and
call whenever I want him. I have taken a header into Chinese, and am
floundering about in a sea of difficulties. One great disadvantage that
one labours under is that the native teachers, and there are no others,
of course don’t speak a word of any language but their own. At first,
therefore, Ku, that’s my man’s name, and I used to sit and look at one
another in a hopeless state of unintelligibility, until either he got
bored, made signs of having a stomach-ache, and took his leave, or I
could stand him no longer and dismissed him. However, it is surprising
how quick a man may pick up, not the language of a strange country, but
a jargon that will pass current, if he is dependent upon it for the
everyday necessaries of life. Teachers, servants, cooks, and grooms,
all must receive their orders in Chinese; shopping and bargain-driving
increase one’s stock of words; so one way or another Ku and I get on
pretty tolerably. He will accompany me to the hills, and as I mean
to get through much work there, I hope that by the time you get this
letter I shall be well started up the stream.
A pleasanter addition to my personnel, and a sweeter, for he does not
eat garlic nor smoke opium, is a small Manilla poodle, Nou-nou by name,
whom I have inherited. He has consoled the exile of a succession of
diplomatists at Peking, and has finally fallen into my hands. He is
the jolliest little dog, and has the most companionable ways. Although
only a shade bigger than your Tiny, he is as plucky as Tom Sayers, and
is the terror of strange dogs and Chinamen; indeed his valour being
much too great for his body often brings him to trouble. For many years
he would fly at any dog that he saw in any part of the Legation, and
bid him get out of his majesty’s way; but now he is no longer in his
_première jeunesse_, having received much hard usage from dogs over
whom as puppies he had been used to exercise a terror, especially from
one big black retriever, who won’t stand any nonsense. Nou-nou has
taken possession of our courtyard, where by tacit consent the other
dogs seem to respect his authority. If one of them so much as shows his
nose there, Nou-nou pricks his ears, his tail curls as crisply as of
old, and he flies at the intruder, who quickly disappears. Here Nou-nou
leads a happy life; every one has a kind word for him, and his only
grievance is, that on Mondays and Thursdays he is carried off by a big
Chinaman, from his holy looks like a pre-Raphaelite picture, known as
“the apostle,” and summarily washed.
We have better news from Shantung. The Imperialist troops have driven
back the rebels. There is now no danger of this province being invaded,
which might have been a serious thing for us, and certainly would have
resulted in the sacking of Tientsing. It is really provoking, after all
the pains that have been taken to induce this wretched Government to
save itself, which it could easily do by the most ordinary exertion,
to see half a dozen archers outside the gates making such practice
at a target twenty yards off as any girl of eighteen, member of a
toxophilite club at home, would be ashamed of. Yet this is the stuff
which the Chinese Government are content to accept as the means of
putting down the insurrection. The troops that they are drilling in
the European fashion are merely a sop to foreign representatives,
and not the evidence of earnest wishes to improve. Self-help and
self-improvement seem repugnant to the nature of this belly-patting
Buddhist nation. They are willing enough to get foreign officers,
especially Englishmen, in whom the example of Colonel Gordon has
given them unbounded confidence, to drill and lead their troops; but
they will do nothing for themselves; and there is a class of superior
officers (such as Li, the governor of the province in which Shanghai
is situated) who, having acquired a certain reputation for valour and
military ability among their own people, consider it beneath their
dignity to serve under foreign officers. The obstacles which such men
throw in the way of the latter, together with the uncertainty of being
able to obtain supplies and pay for the troops under their command,
render their position intolerable, as Colonel Gordon found on more
than one occasion. The English officers who have been lent to instruct
the Imperialists have found their way in many instances anything but
smooth, and have had great difficulty in carrying out the measures
which they deemed necessary. Under these circumstances, it is not to
be wondered at that the rebels, whose ranks are swelled by the local
banditti, secret societies, and Imperialist soldiers mutinous for want
of pay, should still show a head.
With this internal difficulty pressing them sorely, the Chinese
continue persistently to break their treaty engagements with the Great
Powers, any of which, if it were so minded, has a handle for blowing up
the whole concern. Wên-Hsiang, who is the chief of the Board of Foreign
Affairs [which he virtually directs, although the Prince of Kung is
nominally at its head], and who is the most advanced and patriotic man
in the Government, is fully conscious of the danger of the situation;
but unfortunately he is a timid man, and it is one thing to convince
a Chinaman, and another to induce him to act upon his conviction. So
the treaties continue to be broken, and the existence of the present
dynasty in China hangs upon the patience of foreign governments, who
have too great a stake in the country to sink the ship so long as there
is a hope of her floating.
It is only fair to say, on the other hand, that the residence of
foreign representatives at Peking during the last four years has
certainly been productive of some good. As an evidence of this, Dr.
Martin, an American missionary, has produced, at the expense of the
Board of Foreign Affairs and with the co-operation of a commission
specially appointed by the Prince of Kung, a translation into the
Chinese language of Wheaton’s _International Law_. To this Tung-ta-jên,
whom I mentioned in my last letter to you as the translator of
Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life,” has added a preface. This preface, coming
as it does from the vice-president of the College of Historians, one of
the chiefs of the lettered class in China, adds great authority to the
work, the publication of which is certainly an event of importance in
the history of the country.
LETTER VII
PI YÜN SSŬ, _7th July 1865_.
You will see by the date of this that we have beaten a retreat from
the dust, heat, and filth of the city, and that our “villegiatura” has
begun. Indeed, Peking was becoming insupportable. The thermometer when
we left was standing at 108° in the shade, the highest degree which it
has reached for these three years, and I was heartily glad to turn my
back upon the Legation gates.
The plain between these hills and the town is very beautiful. It is
thickly studded with farmsteads, knolls of trees, and tombs, which are
always the prettiest spots in China, for as a balance against the dirt
and squalor in which they pass their lives, the Chinese choose the most
romantic and delightful places for their final habitations. The soil is
wonderfully fertile, and yields two crops in the year, so that usually
the plain bears every appearance of prosperity; but this year, owing
to the excessive heat and drought, the first crop has failed, and the
fields are parched and burnt up. In vain the Emperor prays for rain;
it only comes in rare and scanty showers, and the fierce sun bakes
the ground harder than ever. The country folk are in great distress,
and food is at famine prices. Yet they seem happy and contented, and
when we asked one of the priests here whether there was no danger of a
famine riot, he answered, “Oh, no! the people about here are too great
fools to get up a disturbance.” Those that are hardest up will sell
their daughters into bondage, and there will be an end of the matter.
The hills west of Peking are the Switzerland of Northern China. They
are not very high nor extraordinarily beautiful, but there are some
very pretty gorges and valleys, richly wooded, and at any rate the air
is fresh and pure. Every gorge has a perfect nest of temples, built
by the pious emperors of the Ming dynasty and the earlier Tartars,
for which good deeds the _Corps diplomatique_ at Peking cannot be
too grateful. Properly speaking, according to the rules of their
order, the Buddhist monks are forbidden to receive any money for the
hospitality which they offer to strangers, so when the Chinese go to
stay at a temple they restore or beautify some part of it as a return;
but we prefer paying a few dollars, and in spite of their statutes the
arrangement seems to suit the monks as well as it does us.
Our temple is called “Pi Yün Ssŭ,” “the temple of the azure clouds,”
a romantic name, and certainly the place is worthy of it. It is
built on terraces ascending the hill to a length of about half a
mile, and on every terrace is a shrine, each more beautiful (if
that is the proper word to apply to the grotesque buildings of this
country) than the last; black and white marble statues and vases,
bronze dragons, alto-relievos and basso-relievos representing kings
and warriors, gods and goddesses, and fabulous monsters, all of rare
workmanship,—inscriptions graven on marble and stone, and bronze or
gilt upon wood, meet one at every step; and the whole is set in a nest
of rock-work, fountains, woods, and gardens. At the top is a small
temple more in the Indian than the Chinese style, and here there is
a very curious idol with ten heads, three large ones at the bottom,
from which three smaller ones spring, in their turn carrying three
lesser ones surmounted by a single very small head. The hands are in
proportion. This little place commands a panoramic view over the plain,
with the walls and towers of Peking in the distance.
Our habitation consists of several little houses on one side of
the temple; we dine in an open pavilion, surrounded by a pond and
artificial rockery, with ferns and mosses in profusion; high trees
shade it from the sun, and close by us a cold fountain pours out of the
rock into the pond, in which we can ice our wine to perfection. The
pond was dried up, and the fountain had been turned from its channel,
when we arrived; but we got together a few coolies, and soon set that
right. Fancy our feelings on coming here, when we were told that if
there came no rain we could have no bath! This too in a climate where
the hot nights make a morning wash doubly necessary. The priest had
hardly said the word, when a tremendous thunderstorm broke over the
mountain and set our minds at rest, and next morning we discovered that
we could have the most delicious natural bath. Our life here is very
simple and very, very dull. We are only two—Saurin and myself. We rise
at any hour after daybreak, breakfast at eight, dine at three; after
dinner we go for a ride, or a scramble over the mountain, and come home
to tea at about eight or nine. We sit smoking our cheroots for perhaps
an hour, talking always about home and watching the fire-flies, that,
according to Chinese tradition, served as lamps to Confucius and his
disciples. A visit from or to the Russian Legation, who have got a
temple at about an hour and a half’s ride from here, is the only break
to the monotony of our daily life. I have my teacher with me here, and
work with him at the language from breakfast to dinner; that is my
serious occupation, and about as hard a task as one could wish for. I
carry about my lessons for the rest of the day written on paper fans—a
capital dodge for keeping one’s work before one. We are rather bothered
by mosquitoes, and a most venomous little insect called the sand-fly,
yellow in colour, and smaller than a midge, which is lucky, for if he
were of the size of a blue-bottle I should think his bite would be
fatal. There are quantities of scorpions too; one of our men was stung
the other day. We heard a great wailing and crying one night, for all
the world like an Irish wake; next morning our servants told us that
the cook’s assistant had been stung in the hand, and that he had died
in an hour, but that he had come to rights again, and was getting well.
This sounded something like being “kilt entirely.” The man’s presence
at the temple illustrates a custom of the country; of course, as is the
way of the East, no one can move without a large retinue. There must be
a valet for each man, and a groom for each horse, and a man or two to
do nothing, and two or three more to look on and see them do it. But
besides this, like Thackeray’s description of Irishmen and their poor
relations, no Chinaman is so poor or mean but what he can find a poorer
and a meaner to do part of his work. A coolie earning three dollars a
month will pay another one dollar a month to help him, and he in his
turn will give a boy a few cash, that he may enjoy his ease and his
opium. The man who was stung was the cook’s poor relation. Although his
brother and the other men supposed him to be dying, and finally to
have actually died, they never came and told us, nor did they get any
assistance for him. We heard the noise, but one of our servants has a
very pretty little talent for tickling a lute, and there was so little
difference between the sounds of the wake and those of the concerts he
gets up, that we thought the hullabaloo was only a melancholy variety
of the latter, so we took no notice of it. As far as Chinese remedies
are concerned, better be without them. It is almost impossible to
believe the amount of ignorance which exists in China about medicine
and surgery. Native doctors, who never dissect, are utterly ignorant
for the most part of the position of the heart, the lungs, and the
other principal organs. They are ignorant of the difference between
arteries and veins, nor do they understand the circulation, looking
upon the several pulses of the body as the effects of separate causes.
All diseases are attributed by them to their favourite doctrine, “hot
and cold influences.” They have a certain knowledge of the use of
drugs, and of mercury in particular, but their remedy above all others
is acupuncture. Some days ago my groom had an attack of diarrhœa, and
his medical man pricked him underneath the tongue for it! Sir John
Davis tells a story of a doctor who wanted to prick a man for hernia.
If in these prickings they cut into an artery, and the man dies, why,
so much the worse for him! it is fate. Astrology plays a great part in
their medical art, certain planets being supposed to influence certain
parts of the body. It is one among many instances in which one sees
the analogy between the present condition of China and Europe in the
Middle Ages.
LETTER VIII
PEKING, _8th July 1865_.
We have ridden in to spend three days, copying despatches and sighing
for our “cool grot.” The town seemed too beastly as we came in. Peking,
as Southey said of Exeter, “is ancient and stinks.” The “Beggar’s
Bridge,” which we have to pass every time we go into the Chinese city,
and nearly every time we go out, is the most loathsome and stinking
exhibition that it ever was my fate to come across. Here every day a
hundred or two of the most degraded specimens of humanity congregate
and beg. By far the greater majority of them are clothed only in dirt,
and all sorts of repulsive cutaneous complaints; some have a linen rag,
but it is worn over the shoulders, and in no way serves as a decent
covering. Lice, mange, scrofula, leprosy, and filth are allowed to
remain undisturbed by water or drugs. They are a stock-in-trade, and
as such rather encouraged than not. It is a sickening sight when these
creatures come and perform the ko̔to̔u to us, prostrating themselves in
the dust or mud, which is scarcely as dirty as themselves. I spare you
a description of the food I have seen them eating. If ever I get back
to Europe, I feel that the Beggar’s Bridge will be a nightmare to me
for the rest of my life. All this strikes one with double force after
spending a fortnight in the country among the healthy, sunburnt natives
of the hills. I assure you that they look quite handsome after the
yellow townsfolk. It would amuse our friends at home, if they could see
us the centre of a group of thirty or forty of these brown villagers,
in some out-of-the-way valley where Englishmen are about as often seen
as Chinamen in Yorkshire. They ask us all the most absurd questions
about ourselves, our clothes, and our dogs, who are quite as great
objects of wonder as ourselves. They never will believe that Nou-nou is
not some variety of sheep, and Saurin’s pointer, a very handsome young
dog of French royal breed, comes in for much admiration. The women
are all frightened at us, and keep well out of the way; we see them
timidly peering out of their doors at the foreign barbarians who kill
little children, and use their eyes for photography, but it is seldom
that anything but a stout old matron of great courage will venture to
come near us. The people are beginning to get rid of their prejudices
against us, and to see that we mean them no injury; at any rate they
are quite friendly, and seem to look upon us as harmless eccentric
creatures, but very ugly. As for personal safety, no one ever dreams of
carrying arms, either by day or by night, and nobody is ever insulted
or attacked.
We hear bad news of mercantile prospects in the south. Notwithstanding
their having been hit so hard last season, the merchants have been
speculating again more rashly than ever, and vying with each other
in buying up tea. The Chinese are quite up to this, and have leagued
together to raise prices. The nearer our merchants have got to the
tea-growing districts by means of the opening of new ports, the
dearer tea has become. Tea was never so cheap as when Canton was the
only outlet to the market. This seems a paradox, but it is easily
explained. The merchants competing to buy on the spot have caused
the Chinese growers to send up their prices to any height, and the
foreigner cannot transport the tea south so cheaply as the native,
so that both the original price paid to the farmers, and the cost of
transport, have been raised, and the merchants are paying the penalty
of their own hunger for new markets.
As a set-off against this bad news, we have good tidings with regard
to the rebels, who were in Shantung; they appear to be dispersed, some
south and some west, and the capital is safe. For once the Chinese can
lay the praise to themselves, they having acted without foreign aid.
LETTER IX
PI YÜN SSŬ, _21st July 1865_.
I daresay you will be curious to hear something more of our temple life
than I have been able to tell you hitherto. We have been exploring the
neighbourhood in all directions, and certainly there is plenty to be
seen, although all the points of interest are temples, either Buddhist
or Taoist, and the description of one might hold good for all. The most
curious of these is at a distance from us of about a mile and a half;
it is called Wo-Fo-Ssŭ, “the temple of the Sleeping Buddha,” from a
huge sleeping idol which it contains, about 20 feet in length. At first
I thought the figure was meant for a female, a sort of Sleeping Beauty
in the Wood, but the attendant priest assured me that it was meant for
Buddha himself. The idol lies sleeping in a huge shrine, surrounded
by a number of lesser saints. His slippers, made of softest velvet
and satin, are lying at his feet ready for him to put on whenever it
shall suit his Holiness to get up; each of his attendants is likewise
provided with slippers. He has been sleeping now for more than 700
years, so he brings no great profit to the shoemaking trade. The shrine
is held in great reverence, and is decorated with an inscription
by the Emperor Chien-Lung himself, who seems never to have lost an
opportunity of writing and building; of both these favourite pastimes
of his, Wo-Fo-Ssŭ bears examples, for leading out of one of the courts
of the temple is a most beautiful little Imperial abode, now falling
into decay, like everything else here, but which once must have been
perfectly lovely. Of all the pavilions, courts, rockeries, and shrines,
the Lotus Pond alone remains in all its glory. Equally in ruins is an
Imperial hunting lodge, close by our temple, standing in the middle of
a deer-park which reaches up to the top of the mountain, fenced in by
a high wall. This, too, was a favourite resort of Chien-Lung, and he
must have spent a king’s ransom in decorating it; a gate or two, here
and there a summer-house, and one pagoda of yellow and green tiles,
show what it must once have been. But the whole place has crumbled to
pieces, and the deer and game stray at pleasure through what were once
the gorgeous apartments of the Emperor. The yellow tiles here, worked
in the highest relief with dragons, griffins, lions, and other emblems,
are marvellous specimens of potter’s work. Whole pediments are made in
small pieces and so cunningly joined together that they look like one
block. A very small annual expense would have kept the place in perfect
repair; but to keep in repair is not an Asiatic attribute. Alongside
one of the paths of the park, which is full of the most delightful
resting-places, I noticed the remains of what looked like a number of
stalls at a fancy-fair, and on inquiring I found that they were little
shops at which it was the privilege of the eunuchs of the palace to
sell trinkets and other trifles to the Emperor as he passed with his
wives.
Among other things that Chien-Lung did for these temples, he imported
from the palace of Jo Hol in Manchuria a quantity of a kind of tree
cigala, by Europeans called wee-wees from the noise they make, by the
Chinese called Tatsŭ-chi-liao. They are the most curious insects, and
make a clatter which is as if it were produced by the metal tongues
of an accordion. They go on all day and drive one nearly distracted.
Sometimes one can hardly hear oneself speak, but the Chinese delight in
them, and my teacher told me the story of their introduction as if he
had been speaking of an importation of nightingales. Happily at Peking
they declined to flourish; there we have only a lesser and more piano
sort, which it is an Imperial amusement at certain times of the year to
catch off the trees with long bamboo rods tipped with bird-lime. The
Chinese certainly find pleasure in what are to us very disagreeable
noises. Fancy a flight of pigeons with Eolian harps tied to their
tails! The first time I heard it above my head I thought something
dreadful must be going to happen. However, that fancy has a practical
side to it, for it keeps off the hawks which abound at Peking.