Mary Gaunt

“ Tuan, with some difficulty, made me understand it was the Temple of the five hundred and eight Buddhas, and as I went in, attended by a priest in the last stages of dirt and shabbiness, I saw rows upon rows of seated Buddhas greater than life-size, covered with gold leaf that shone out bright in the semi-darkness, with shaven heads and faces, sad and impassive, gay, and laughing, and frowning. Dead gods surely, for the roof is falling in, the hangings are tatters, and the dust of years lies thick on floor, on walls, on the Buddhas themselves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the year 1900, when the Boxers looted the Chinese City, and the Europeans in the Legations north of the Tartar wall trembled for their lives, the looters burned the watch-tower on the Chien Men, all that was burnable of it, and, when peace was restored, the Chinese set to work and built their many-tiered watch-tower, built it in all the glory of red, and green, and blue, and gold, and in the portholes they put the same painted cannon that had been there in past ages, not only to strike terror into the enemy, but also to impress the God of War with an idea of their preparedness. ”

“ Curiously enough it is only from the walls that Peking has this aspect. Once in the network of alley-ways it seems as if a wilderness of houses and shops were crowding one on top of the other, as if humanity were crushing out every sign of green life. This is because there is to all things Chinese two sides. There is the life of the streets, mud-begrimed, dusty, seething with humanity, odoriferous, ragged, dirty, patient, hardworking; and there is a hidden life shut away in those networks of narrow alley-ways. ”

“ A land of exile, and yet from the plains of Eastern Russia in the west to the frozen hills round Kharbin in the east it is a lovely land. It is a plain, of course—a plain thousands of miles in extent, and the vastness and the beauty of the snow-clad solitudes cry aloud in praise to the God Who made them. Overhead, far, far away, is the great arch of the deep blue sky, clear, bright, enticing, delightful, with no threat in its translucent depths such as one knows is latent in tropical lands, and below is the snow-clad plain, stretching far as the eye can see, bathed in the brilliant sunshine. ”

“ When marble is the medium by which so light a thing as a cloud is represented it must be very finely done indeed, when one outside the national thought, such as I, sees in that representation a flame. Two colossal bronze monsters with grinning countenances and curly manes, conventional lions, mounted on dragon-carved pedestals, stand before the entrance to the fourth temple or hall of audience, and here was what the crowd had come to see, the lighthearted, cheerful, merry crowd, that were making high holiday, here was the altar to the dead. ”

“ 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 it is not only well and truly laid, as well as, and better than, many a Western railway, but behold the spirit of China has entered in, the spirit, not of her poor, struggling for a crust of bread, a mess of meal, but the spirit of the men who conceived and planned the Wall, the beautiful Lama Temple, or the spacious courtyards and glorious palaces of the Forbidden City. They have built embankments and curves, tunnels and archways that are things of beauty, and glorious to look upon, as surely never was railway before. ”

“ To be at the heart of things is often to be too close, wiser eyes than mine saw nothing. Once there was a rumour that the Southern army would march on Peking, and that promised excitement, but in the city itself, though there was martial law, there was no excitement, and the only pleasant thing to do was to go on moonlight evenings and sit on the wall. There was a cool breath of air there, if there was anywhere, and at any rate the moonlight lent it a glamour, and the fireflies, that came out after the rain, gave the added touch that made it fairyland. ”

“ Here and there, among the trees, rose up marble pillars tall and stately, carved with dragons and winged at the top, such as one sees in representations of Babylon and Nineveh, there was a marble bridge, magnificent, with the grass growing up between the great paving-stones that here, as everywhere in China, seem to mark the small value that has been put on human flesh and blood, for by human hands have they been placed here, and the uprights are crowned by the symbolic cloud form, caught in the marble. ”

“ Here, where the dust is heaped high under the clear blue sky of Northern China, come slowly, in stately fashion, the camels, as they have come for thousands of years. The man who leads them is ragged in the blue of the peasant, his little eyes are keen, and patient, and cunning, and there is a certain stolidity in his demeanour; life can hold but few pleasures for him, one would think, and yet he is human, he cannot go on superior, regardless of outside things, as does his string of beasts of burden. ”

“ When once one has realised how treeless is the greater part of China, this is rather surprising. For look which way you will from the wall in the summer and autumn, you feel you might be looking down upon a wood instead of a city; the roofs of the single-storied houses are hidden by the greenery, and only here and there peeps out the tiled roof of a temple or hall of audience with the eaves curving upwards, things of beauty against the background of green branches. ”

“ He half-smothers a small donkey with a ring of jingling bells round its neck, a coolie follows him in rags, but that does not matter, spring is in the land, and he is nearly hidden by the lilac bloom he carries, another comes along with a basket strapped on his back and a scoop in his hand, he is collecting the droppings of the animals, either for manure or to make argol for fuel, a stream of rickshaws swerve out of the way of a blind man, ragged, bent, old, who with lute in one hand and staff in the other taps his way along. ”

“ There were the guests, too, petticoated Chinese gentlemen, squires, or merchants, or well-to-do farmers, standing in the doorways looking on, and occasionally ladies, dressed in the gayest colours, with their faces powdered and painted, peeped shyly out, half secretively, as if they were ashamed, but felt they must take one look at the foreign woman who walked about as if she were not ashamed of the open daylight, and was quite capable of managing for herself. ”

“ The sky here is bright and clear, the sunshine hot, and the faces of the moving crowd are yellow and oriental. This crowd is like the men who toiled round the quarries of Babylon or Nineveh, and it is perhaps more satisfied with itself and its position in the universe than any like company of people anywhere in the world. That impression was forced upon me as I stayed in Peking, it grew and grew as I got farther away from the great city, and out into the country. ”

“ Always we came across little stone-built hamlets, there were men and women working in the fields, and rosy-cheeked children stood by the wayside and waved their little hands to the passing stranger. There would be the sound of bells, and a string of mules or donkeys came picking their way as soberly as the coolies themselves, and left much to themselves by their ragged drivers. They looked of the poorest, these people, men and women clad much alike in dirty blue that, torn here and there, let out the cotton-wool which padded it for winter warmth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Imperial City, all round the Forbidden City, consists of a network of narrow streets and alleys lined with low buildings with windows of delicate lattice-work, and curved tiled roofs. Here, hidden away in silent peaceful courtyards shaded by gnarled old trees, are temples guarded by shaven priests in faded red robes. Their hangings are torn and faded, the dust lies on their altars, and the scent of the incense is stale in their courts, for the gods are dead; and yet because the dead are never forgotten in China—China that clings to her past—they linger on. ”

“ When the snow went, the sunshine was bleak and bright, and everywhere, far as the eye could see, stretched tilled fields, bare of every green thing. Flatter and flatter grew the land. It was half ice and half earth, and the little sledges that were hitherto drawn by ponies were now drawn by men. Once we had left behind the Siberian fir, there was not a green thing to be seen all the way to Peking. ”

“ Their own refreshment was provided by hawkers selling cakes and sweetmeats, just outside the forbidden ground, and Peking carts and donkeys waited round to take them back to their homes. There were even beggars there, beggars with long, unkempt hair, wrapped in a single garment of sackcloth, ragged, unwashed, unkempt, the typical beggars of China, for no one knows better than they when money is being lightly handled, and as the bright sunny day, the gorgeous spring day of Northern China drew slowly to a close doubtless even they, whom every man's hand was against, gathered in a few stray cash. ”

“ For the lower-class Chinese understands not the desirability of water, as applied either to himself or his clothes, and, as he certainly never changes those clothes while one shred will hold to another, the moment must arrive, sooner or later, when his discomfort is desperate, and something must be done. He is like the wonks, the great yellow scavenger dogs that haunt the streets of Peking and all Chinese cities, he sits down and scratches himself, and goes through his clothes. ”

“ Tiffin, the luncheon of the East, was set in the rooms behind, decorated with miniature flags of all nations, made in Japan, and wreathed with artificial flowers, though there was a wealth of natural blossom around the stand outside. There is a steward's room and the weighing-room in one tiny building with a curved roof of artistic Chinese design, and all the ponies are walked about and saddled and mounted where every interested spectator can see them. ”

“ The men picked up the little children, for the tiniest tots came to this great festival, and held them on their shoulders, but they coughed, and hawked, and spit, and wiped their noses in the primitive way Adam probably did before he thought of using a fig-leaf as a pocket handkerchief, and at last I felt that the only thing to be done was to edge my way to the fringe of the press, because, even if the doors were opened, it would have seemed like taking my life in my hands to go into one of those tunnels with their uneven pavements in such a crush. ”

“ Once blind there is nothing more to be done. The beautiful blue sky of China, the golden sunshine have gone, and in its place there is the darkness, warm sometimes, bitter cold sometimes, the enveloping darkness that means for so many helplessness and starvation, often at the very best semi-starvation, borne with the uncomplaining stoicism of the Chinese. ”

“ The Chinaman, said a Chinese to me once, is the most materialistic of heathens, believing in little that he cannot see, and handle, and explain; but all of us, Eastern or Western, are human, and have the ordinary man's desire for the pitiful, kindly care of some unseen Power. It is only natural. I, too, Westerner as I am, daughter of the newest of nations, burned incense sticks at the shrine of the Goddess of Mercy, and put up a little prayer that the work upon which I was engaged should be successful. Men have prayed here through the centuries. ”

“ The farther one wanders I find the sooner does novelty wear off. As a little girl, to go fifty miles from my home and to have my meals off a different-patterned china gave me a delightful sense of novelty, and to sleep in a strange bed kept me awake all night. Now in an hour—oh far less—nothing feels new, not even the courtyard of a Chinese mountain inn.
I have never seen so many people with goitres. The missionaries at Jehol told me it was very much dreaded, and that the people brought the affliction upon themselves by flying into violent passions. ”

“ The Boxer tragedy awakened the Western world thoroughly to what it had always felt, that an Empire like Babylon was unsuited to the present day, and they said so with shot and shell, and China is taking the lesson to heart, slowly, slowly, but she is taking it. She will have learned it thoroughly when the need for change, the desire for better things, the power to insist on a higher standard of living shall have come to her lower classes, and then she will not change exactly as the Western world would wish, but as she herself thinks best. ”

“ What the white races fear—and rightly fear—is that the Chinaman will come in such hordes, he will lower the standard of living, he will bring such great pressure to bear, he will reduce the people of the land in which he elects to live, the people of the working classes, to his own condition—the hopeless condition of the toiling slaves of Babylon. It has been well said that the East, China, is the exact opposite of the West in every thought and feeling. In the West we honour individualism. This is true of almost every nation. ”

“ We went from the outer to the inner courtyard, a rock garden where, in true Chinese fashion, are set out plants and rockeries, a little winding river with a stone bridge across it, a miniature lake—there is no water in it now—and many creeping plants hiding the stones. It is a charming spot, but naturally the blind are not allowed to go there by themselves. It is too dangerous. ”

“ In it is a man in a modern tall hat, a little out-of-date; on the box, are two men in grey silk, orthodox Chinese costume, queue and all, but alas for picturesqueness they have crowned their heads with hideous tourist caps, the mafoo behind on the step, hanging on to the roof by a strap, has on a very ordinary wideawake, his business it is to jump down and lead the horses round a corner—no self-respecting Chinese horse can negotiate a corner without assistance—and the finishing touch is put by the coachman, also in a tourist cap, who clangs a bell with as much fervour as a rickshaw coolie. ”

“ For it must be remembered, whether we look at this valley of dead gods or this little temple outside Peking, that when a memorial is put up it is not expected to last for ever, and no provision is made or expected for its upkeep. If it last a year, well and good, so was the man to whom it was put up, valued, and if it last a hundred years—if five hundred years after it was dedicated there still remains one stone standing upon the other, how fragrant the memory of that man must have been. ”

“ And when that spirit animates not the few taskmasters, but the mass of the people, when it reaches the toiling slaves and makes of them men, the nation will be like the palaces and altars they built hundreds of years ago, and the rest of the world may stand aside, and wonder, and, perhaps, fear. ”

“ Some day when the Chinese are a united nation, powerful as they ought to be, they will awake to that insult, and the first thing they will do will be to clear their wall from foreign interference. Meanwhile, as I sit in a courtyard of a temple of the Western Hills, drinking in the sparkling air of September, looking at the lovely blue sky peeping through the dark green branches of the temple pines, as I sit and write this book, I think gratefully of that loose-limbed, lissom, athletic, young American soldier who, with rifle across his shoulder, is doing sentry-go upon the wall. ”

“ If it be the heart of a nation then do I understand. The people who streamed along the causeway, who roamed over the worn brick pavement, had, as a rule, delicate, finely formed hands though they were but humble craftsmen. If the hands of the poorest be so fine, is it any wonder that the picked men of such a people, their very heart, conceived such a mighty pile? ”

“ We may not give sight to the blind nowadays, but if we walk in the streets of Peking, and then turn in to the Mission to the Blind with its kindly care for the helpless, and its brightening of darkened lives, we know that that man who stood on the Beggars' Bridge pitied, as his Master had pitied before him. All that he could do he has done, and those who have come after him have followed faithfully in his footsteps, can any man do more? ”