weather. What a pleasure a real rainy day is in this burnt-up climate!
a day when the hills look as if they might be Scotch moors, and the
temples and pavilions as if they ought to melt away and be replaced
by the clubs in Pall Mall. On these wet days we wander about our own
place, of the size of which you may judge from the fact that one
building alone contains Buddha and his five hundred Lo-hans, or saints
of the third class, larger than life, just like the temple of which
I told you at Canton, where, however, they are smaller; then whole
courtyards are surrounded by buildings, in which heaven and hell are
represented by hundreds upon hundreds of wooden dolls. The Buddhist
heaven is a very queer place according to this view of it, where the
height of happiness seems to consist in riding a tiger or griffin, or
some equally uncomfortable mount; but hell is really too grotesque,
especially the ladies’ department, where the unfortunate women who have
sinned in this world are to be seen experiencing what is, to say the
very least of it, very inconsiderate treatment at the hands of a number
of lavender-kid-glove-coloured fiends. In the gentlemen’s department a
favourite punishment is for sinners to have their heads cut off, and
be compelled to walk about with them under their arms like a crush
hat at a ball. No description of mine could give you any idea of the
absurdity and ugliness of the idols and dolls. I can’t say that, so
far as I can judge, any real respect is paid to them. The people seem
to make sort of picnic parties here, quite as a matter of sightseeing,
rather than of religion, just as some tourists visit cathedrals for
their beauty and for the art treasures which they contain, and not as
an act of worship. However, they call visiting a temple “Kwang Miao,”
which means to do an act of respect and worship, so perhaps some may
attach a religious importance to it. The priests at our temple are a
lazy, brutish lot, and rather inclined to be insolent. At Wo-Fo-Ssŭ
they are far more respectable, and a man who was staying there told
me that they had constantly choral service in the temple, especially
at night; here I very rarely hear the bell and drum beat for prayers.
I must do our priests the justice to say that one day I offered one
of them a glass of wine, which their laws forbid, but their stomachs
crave for, and he refused, although there was no one by to have told
the tale, so I suppose they have a conscience somewhere and that they
regard its pricks.
I am sorry to say that by being out here we missed seeing the state
funeral of the famous general San-Ko-Lin-Sin. He was carried all the
way to Peking from Shantung, where he was killed, every mandarin on
the road being bound to furnish men to bear his body. The Emperor
pays the expense of his funeral and of his lying in state at Peking,
and went himself to pour a libation before the coffin. San-Ko-Lin-Sin
was a feudal Mongol prince, and his son has now been created a Wang,
or prince. There are many people who say that the general was not
killed by the rebels, but by his own troops. The account of his death,
however, was given with great details, and he was probably killed
fighting. “A corner of the Great Wall has gone,” say the Chinese, in
their picturesque way, when a great general is killed in battle.
LETTER X
PEKING, _24th July_.
No mail in—we are expecting it any minute, but have begun to fear that
we must send off our bag before its arrival. I never saw anything so
curious as the change which the last few wet days have caused in all
the face of the country—its whole appearance is altered. What were
before arid and desert patches of sand are now turned into green and
luxuriant corn-fields—roads that were like dried water-courses, with
six inches of dust lying on them and banks of sand on each side, are
fresh English-looking lanes. The crops have sprung up to be so tall,
that we could not see our usual landmarks, and lost our way; for the
plain between Peking and the hills is so scarred and intersected by
roads and paths, that one has to make straight for some point in the
distance, or one is thrown out—all the houses and groups of cottages
are exactly like one another and afford no assistance in steering; it
is a regular Chinese puzzle. The thermometer has fallen from 108° in
the shade to 75°. Such a relief!—I hope that we have now got quit of
the very great heat.
By the bye, in my last letter I spoke about Chinese doctors and
prescriptions, and their doctrine of the hot and cold influences. My
teacher has been telling me about their principles of diagnosis. It
appears that they attach great importance to examining the tongue.
Now if the tongue is white the patient is under the cold influence.
If it is yellow, he is under the hot influence. If the centre of the
tongue is white, and the edges yellow, he is under the cold influence
inside, and his skin is under the hot—and so _vice versa_. Palmistry
and the study of the face and features are also brought to bear upon
medicine—certain conditions of feature portend certain events in the
future. My teacher told me that he feared he should not be long-lived,
because the lobe of his ear was small—a large lobe to the ear is much
admired on all accounts, but specially as a sign of wisdom, and Buddha
and the other idols are represented with huge appendages. A soft hand
is the sign of longevity; the eyes, nose and nostrils, and chin, all
have certain prophetic meanings to those who are wise to read them. I
told my teacher about phrenology—he was delighted with the idea, and
stood open-mouthed while his bumps were being felt. His character,
however, did not interest him much, but he was very anxious to know how
long he would live, and whether he would hold an office of any kind.
We have no news.
LETTER XI
PEKING, _7th August 1865_.
The extreme heat has left us at last, and the autumn has set in—a most
charming season in this climate. It is a regular second spring—not
such a spring as we are used to in England, which is a struggle for
mastery between hot sun and chilling east winds, but a season in which
the burnt-up vegetation literally _springs_ into life again under the
influence of quickening rain and warmth—the trees put forth shoots
and tender green leaves, and the plain is one rich field of millet
twelve feet high, through which one rides feeling like Gulliver in
the farms of Brobdingnag. The rains have driven us out of our temple
at the hills, which I much regret, but it had become untenable lately
owing to damp; the scorpions, too, began to come into the house in
too great numbers to be pleasant; five were killed in my room in two
days, besides other creeping things. There were quantities of lizards
also in my house. The Chinese have an idea that lizards, which they
call scorpion-tigers, kill the scorpions by making them commit suicide
in this wise: the lizard touches the scorpion on the back with his
tail, the creature strikes at him, but the enemy is too quick, and he
stings himself instead; this is repeated until the lizard sees that the
scorpion’s poison is exhausted, when he goes at him at once and eats
him. We rather exploded this theory, for we caught two scorpions and
two lizards, and put them in a box with a glass cover, and the only
result was that the large scorpion ate the smaller, continuing his
cannibal feast during ten hours, and leaving nothing of him but the tip
of his tail; so we let the lizards go and killed the scorpion, whom
Shao-To, our head man, considered to have become doubly venomous as he
must have the poison of two in him.
Before leaving the hills we took a great walk over all the summits in
order to get a thorough idea of the country around. It looks as if the
sea, now about 100 miles off, must once have washed the foot of the
mountains, forming bays, promontories, and headlands into the plain,
which has the same appearance of being alluvial as that of Troy. The
numberless watercourses which intersect it show that formerly there
must have been a far greater flow of water towards the sea than is ever
seen now, even in the rainiest season. From the highest peak we had a
magnificent view of Peking, Yuen-Ming-Yuen, and the villages around,
and behind us was another range of mountains, more wild, more rugged
and picturesque than that on which we stood. It was raining slightly,
and as we watched there came on one of the strangest atmospheric
effects I ever saw. Between us and Peking there was a faint mist,
while over the city itself a heavy cloud was hanging, partly black and
partly lurid, with a sort of hellish glare about it that was perfectly
indescribable. All around us there was a deep blue gloom; it was such a
scene as Lot’s wife may have looked upon.
We rode into town the day before yesterday, and made a circuit so
as to take Yuen-Ming-Yuen, the famous summer palace, on our way. It
was a new road to me, and a very pleasant one. We passed several
Chinese villages, principally composed of soldiers’ barracks,
like elongated cow-sheds, and one very pretty prosperous-looking
little city. As we drew near the Imperial grounds the scenery became
prettier and prettier; above all there were shady groves, which were
doubly delightful for the scorching morning sun that was blazing
upon us. Quaint stone and marble bridges were thrown over the dykes
and water-channels, and little gables of pagodas, charged with the
inevitable tile gurgoyles, peeped out of the woods at intervals.
Yuen-Ming-Yuen (“the round bright garden”) is one of three parks
containing Imperial palaces, two of which were destroyed in 1860.
Some of the more out-of-the-way buildings in the third escaped notice
and destruction. The name Yuen-Ming-Yuen has been wrongly given by
Europeans to the whole, and still more wrongly to the only one of the
three parks (the third park is called Yu-Chuan-Shan, or the “Hill of
the Fountain of Jewels”) that can be seen, and which we visited. The
proper name of this is Wan-Shao-Shan, the “Hill of the Ten Thousand
Longevities,” which is a figure of speech for the fête day of the
Emperor or Empress. Of course it is against the orders of the Chinese
authorities that this is shown, but the guardians of the place make a
good profit out of it, and if they were caught they would always be
ready with the excuse that “the barbarians forced their way in and
would not be kept out.”
We were ushered through a number of courtyards, where there was nothing
to be seen but ruined and charred walls, and the ghosts of departed
pine-trees, and along a pretty covered walk to a pavilion by the lake
where we were to breakfast. It was a lovely spot. The lake is a mass
of lotus plants now in full flower; there are quantities of little
islands covered with trees and buildings. A number of boats with naked
fishermen in them gave a touch of wildness and barbarity to the scene,
and further added to our amusement; for one of the men, in the hopes of
finding Heaven knows what small loot among the masses of rubbish where
there is not so much as a tile left whole, had come on shore and was
lying hidden among the ruins; whom when the guardians perceived, they
set up such a game of hare and hounds, and such a throwing of stones
and bad language, as reminded me of Eton days when a boy from another
house was found in my dame’s without being able to give a good account
of himself. When the brave men returned all panting and out of breath,
they were very proud of themselves, and told us the story with much
vigour and dramatic action, for it was a very valiant deed, as they
were only three to one, “with power to add to their number.”
There is nothing like a Chinese servant for a picnic or expedition
of any kind, under whatever difficulties he may be placed. Shao-To
never lets us lack for anything. Even Dan, the pointer puppy, had his
usual mess of rice and broth, as if he had been at home. When we had
breakfasted, with an admiring crowd around us, we went to explore the
ruins. It is difficult to form any idea of what the palace must have
been like, so complete has the work of destruction been. We scrambled
up and down steep steps (that must have been hard work for the poor
little cramped feet that trod them) and along terraces where the wild
vines and creepers, and sweet-scented weeds, now grow in tangled
masses; there is not a stone that has not been split by the action
of the fire. Two colossal marble kylins, of rare workmanship, are
seared with cracks, and have almost fallen away in flakes. Of the great
octagonal three-storied palace, not one stone lies on another, and a
white marble balustrade alone shows where it stood. Higher up there are
still a few remains untouched by fire. There is a little bronze temple,
a perfect gem, which of course escaped, and two little revolving wooden
pagodas full of small gods and images standing in a tower were also
preserved; whilst above all a larger temple, built entirely of the
yellow and green tiles I have so often described to you, shows what a
blaze of glory the place must once have been. But that glory has passed
away now, and so rapidly does ruin work in this climate, that soon even
the little that remains to-day will perish. There is one very curious
device thoroughly Chinese that I must mention. At the end of the
terrace by the lake a sort of jetty stands out, built of huge blocks of
stone, in the shape of a junk being launched into the lake, forty-one
paces long by nine broad. Some of the rockwork is very quaint. When
the Chinese come upon a quaintly-shaped rock or stone they mount it
on a pedestal and make an ornament of it. There are many very curious
specimens at Wan-Shao-Shan.
With regard to the destruction of the summer palace, I believe that,
politically speaking, it was a mistake. It was necessary that some
great reprisal should be made for the outrages committed by the
Chinese; but the destruction should have taken place inside the
city, and not twelve miles off; for so ignorant are the large body
of the Chinese of what passes outside their four walls, that there
are many here in Peking who to this day believe that we had to pay an
indemnity for leave to withdraw our troops, and that we are only here
on sufferance. If this is the case in Peking, in the provinces people
must be still further from the truth, and it is the policy of the
Government to keep up the delusion. Had the Imperial palace in Peking
been destroyed the matter would have been notorious to all, and its
recollection would not have been blown away with the last cloud of
smoke from Yuen-Ming-Yuen.
Here is some more Chinese doctoring which may amuse you. A boy was
brought the other day to the hospital of the London Mission with
slight feverish symptoms. The doctor not being at home, the boy was
taken by his parents to a Chinese practitioner, who prescribed a
decoction of three scorpions, to be taken internally! The boy was well
next day in spite of it.
A recipe for ophthalmia, posted on the walls of Peking, runs as
follows:—Take three bright brass coins of the reign of Tao Kwang, boil
them in water, and use the lotion. Here is our old saw, “A hair of
the dog that bit you,” worked in practice: For a dog bite, catch the
dog, pull out a few of his hairs, and work them into a paste with a
little lime and oil—apply the paste to the wound; of course, the lime
acting as a caustic is the real remedy, but the hair is the one that is
believed in.
The Legation is at present giving hospitality to a certain gentleman
who is accredited by a small state to make a treaty with the Chinese,
as he pompously announces “dans l’intérêt de la Chine même”; if he
does not talk less big at the Tsung-Li Yamên, or Foreign Office, he
will find the Chinese far less tractable than he seems to think it
their duty to be; for they are much too sharp to suppose that anybody
comes out here to negotiate treaties in their interest without having
a still keener eye upon his own; and as for themselves, of course
the mandarins, at any rate, would rather return to the old state of
things, have nothing to do with us and our treaties, and sacrifice
the revenue that accrues to them from their customs. The pressure
put upon them from abroad, and the counsels of Mr. Hart, the Chinese
Inspector-General of Customs, and a very able man, alone keep them
straight, and compel the central Government to assume responsibilities
which they would rather leave to the provincial authorities. Fancy
the difficulty of stirring up into action men whose highest idea of
celestial happiness is an eternity passed in the contemplation of their
own paunches, in the society of Buddha and his Lo-hans.
It is very hard upon our interpreters that they should have to do
the work of other missions besides our own. These ministers of other
states come up here without any staff whatever, and the whole of their
business falls upon the Legation to whose good offices they may be
intrusted.
LETTER XII
PEKING, _22nd August 1865_.
Since I last wrote to you we have been leading the most monotonous of
lives, and no news from home has come to cheer us. We have had staying
with us one of the few stray visitors that chance drives up here—a Mr.
R——, an officer in the commissariat, and a very pleasant companion he
was; he came fresh from Japan, and full of stories about Yokohama and
Yedo, but out here we should prefer to hear about London. There really
is little temptation to travellers to come here now, for, thanks to
the misbehaviour of certain of our countrymen, the Chinese have shut
up the principal lions of the town, and the temples of Heaven, and
of Confucius, are not shown, even to members of the Legations. I for
one have not been able to visit them. The great Lama Temple is still
to be seen, and to any one who has not seen a Chinese temple, is a
great show; but they are all very like one another, the main difference
being merely a question of size. It is very provoking to be kept out of
really interesting sights by the brutality of travelling bullies who
will force their way into places where they have no right to go.
All we can do now for our visitors is to show them the panorama of the
two cities from the walls, the top of which forms a ride or walk right
round Peking, and where the wonderful observatory of the old Jesuit
fathers, with its beautiful bronze instruments, still stands, and to
take them through the streets and over the curio shops—braving offence
given to eyes and nostrils. The curio shops especially make up an
amusing day, and I am always glad of an excuse to go there. There is a
bazaar, too, just inside the Chinese city, a sort of Lowther Arcade on
a small scale, where toys, scents, sham jewellery, cheap embroidery,
and other rubbish are sold, and which is quite worth seeing. This is
greatly patronised by the Mongols, who never weary of admiring the
showy trash exposed for sale. The Mongols are to the Pekingese what
the Auvergnats are to the _gamins de Paris_, or a bumpkin come up to
London for the cattle-show to the cabbies and ’busmen. They are the
perpetual butts of jokes, sells, and cheatery, and are done at every
opportunity. The bazaar leads on to the Beggar’s Bridge, with its mass
of rotting humanity, a place that it makes one shudder to think of, and
once past that we are well in the Chinese city. The amount of traffic
is always very great, and it is no easy matter to thread one’s way
through the crowd of mules, carts, horses, and footpads, and the worst
of it is that one is continually hustled up against some unhappy leper,
whose only clothing is dirt and sores. The neatness and nicety of the
shops are a great contrast to the filth and squalor of the streets
themselves. Inside everything is as clean as water can make it; outside
is a dunghill, where the beggars are disputing with the dogs and pigs
the right to water-melon rinds, rotten vegetables, and dead carrion.
The street hawkers are a great feature; of course they all have their
peculiar cries as in Europe; but in addition to this each trade has its
own announcement in the shape of some instrument—one trade carries a
thing like a huge Jew’s harp, another has a tiny gong, a third a drum,
a fourth beats two pieces of bamboo together, and so forth. All these
make a terrible clatter, and the noise is increased by the beggars, who
take up a position opposite some shop—a cook-house for choice—and there
make themselves odious to eyes, ears, and nostrils until its owner can
stand it no longer and buys them off with a copper cash or piece of
refuse food. Among Chinese street characters the _improvisatore_ is
one of the foremost. He is as loud and fluent as his Italian compeer,
and infinitely more energetic. He generally accompanies himself on the
bones, but often has a little boy to beat a drum for him. He works
himself into a regular frenzy, and jumps about like one possessed of
a devil; he dances and gesticulates and raves until the sweat runs
down his face; but nothing tires him, and he never halts nor pauses in
his chant. These men are too nimble of speech and too slang for most
foreigners to catch a word; but I suppose they are generally witty and
entertaining, for they command immense audiences of gaping Chinamen,
and their sallies are received with great delight. Like the Italians,
when they have worked up their audience to a proper pitch of interest
they stop, and refuse to go on with the story without more coppers. At
the approach of the foreign barbarian some little witticism is launched
_à notre adresse_. You may judge whether it is very complimentary;
however, as “it amuses them and don’t hurt us,” that don’t much
signify. Perhaps the hawkers whose wares are the most curious to
Europeans are the men who carry about live crickets and cicadas for
sale, either in tiny wooden cages or tied to bamboo rods. The Chinese
buy them to any amount as pets, and some make the crickets fight like
quails and game-cocks.
We are very often accosted by the more respectable class. The first
salutation is always, “Have you had your dinner, sir?” which is the
Chinese, “How d’ye do?” and then the conversation runs as follows:—
“Your honourable name?”
“My name is Mi. What is your honourable name?”
“My shabby name is Hwang. What are the years of your age?”
“I am twenty-eight” (great astonishment, for I pass usually for
forty-five).
“How long have you been inside the walls?” (at Peking).
“About four months.”
“Do you belong to the great Ying, or the great Fa?” (English or French).
Then follow a string of the most absurd questions about England. One
man asked one day whether it was true that in Europe there were men
with holes through their chests and backs, whom their servants carried
about by passing a bamboo pole through the hole and so hoisting them on
to their shoulders. Such is the Chinese education, that one of their
scholars, deeply read in ethics and Confucian books, would be capable
of asking questions to the full as ridiculous as the above, which,
indeed, was put by an educated man.
After the din, bustle, and dirt of the streets, it is very refreshing
to go into one of the shops, where there is always the civillest
welcome, even though one may buy nothing. In almost all cases the
master of the house gives us delicious tea, sugarless and milkless of
course, but of the most exquisite flavour. The infusion is made in a
small covered bowl; I have hardly ever seen a teapot. The outer shop
is for the most part only, as it were, an advertisement, and contains
nothing but trash: one of the finest shops here exhibits to the street
a front such as a Cheap Jack at a fair might show; but go inside,
and cross a little courtyard into the inner sanctum, and you will be
dazzled by the beauty of the ornaments and trinkets for sale. There
is a certain black _étagère_ made of ebony, carved to represent very
light bamboo stems supporting irregular niches, filled with carved
lapis-lazuli, jade, cornelians, agates, and other rare stones, that I
should like to carry off bodily. Every piece in the collection is a
_chef-d’œuvre_. The prices are, of course, outrageous, but they come
down; indeed, it is curious that a people so proverbially cunning in
trade should act as they do. Supposing that they ask thirty dollars
for a thing, we offer fifteen, which, at first, will be indignantly
rejected; but after perhaps three months of bargaining the man will
come down to our price, thus keeping himself for three months out of
the interest of his money. There is some beautiful porcelain, but very
dear. I have never seen any of the rose-backed plates or cups that
are so much prized at home; and two or three of the dealers, whom
I have asked about them, had never heard of such things. There is
plenty of bad cloisonné enamel about; but the fine specimens came from
Yuen-Ming-Yuen, and the Chinese were obliged to sell them off as fast
as they could for fear of the law. (I take it the natives had a great
hand in the looting.) I only know of two really magnificent pieces, for
which the owner asks £1000! He would probably take £300, and they would
be a great bargain at the price. They are two colossal covered bowls,
without flaw or fault, and would look splendid at Windsor or some very
great house. I have written to a friend to tell him of them.
The best chance of picking up here and there a pretty thing is in
the minor shops, from which the bigger ones are recruited. There is
a street called the Liu-li-chang, which swarms with old book shops
(a sort of Paternoster Row) and curiosity shops, some of which are
hardly more than stalls, where sometimes one may find a piece of fine
porcelain, or other work of art, for an old song.