Beijing

“ Peking stands at the end of the great seacoast plain as you go up from Tientsin by railway or by boat. Beyond rise the Hsi Shan (Western Mountains) and the Mongolian plateau and mountains. It is the most expansive city in the republic, because it is more built up than spacious Nanking; a court, a legation, a trading, an art, an educational, a health center in autumn, a military, but not a manufacturing center as yet, though it will be. It is more Mongolian and Manchu, perhaps, than pure Han Chinese. ”

“ Having seen the Chinese at several points before reaching Hong-Kong, that city with its English environment did not impress me greatly. Canton seemed an unrelated place, a kind of a by-play. The Shanghai I knew was modern.
As we approached Peking, we caught a glimpse of the Great Wall, a massive gray bulk, with the immense corner tower, which produced a feeling of awe, standing as though it were an entrance into a city of mystery—a walled town of over twenty miles in circumference which was virtually the product of four walled cities in one. ”

“ Peking being the city of the court, and the headquarters of many of the greatest officials, is the receptacle of the finest products of the oldest and greatest non-Christian people the world has ever known. China easily leads the world in the making of porcelain, the best of which has always gone to Peking for use in the palace, and so we can find here the best products of every reign from the time of Kang Hsi, as well as those of the former dynasties, to that of Kuang Hsu and the Empress Dowager. ”

“ Life is in a whirl at Shanghai. The river bund is crowded, and so is the long, winding Bubbling Well Road. The concessions are splendidly managed from a foreign point of view, and vie with each other in public spirit. The Chinese, however, feel greater warmth for Hongkong, which gives them representation on the council. In Shanghai there are mixed courts, consular courts, an American Superior Court, and Chinese courts. The Chinese are planning for the day when they will try all Chinese offenders. There is an imposing cathedral, and a modern Venetian style railway station. ”

“ In descending, we return to the main thoroughfare of Queen's Road, and after some shopping, go to the City Hall, and the marble palace of the Shanghai and Hong Kong bank, where I wait outside to watch the ever-varying stream of passers-by. Chinamen in their cool cotton jackets and glazed pantaloons, coolies with their bamboo-slung burdens, sedan-chairs, jinrickshas, wheelbarrows, chairs, Sikh policemen with their scarlet turbans, Cinghalese, Parsees, mingling with our own officers and soldiers, under the shadow of the trees. ”

“ Shanghai is, in fact, an independent republic with a government of its own, which treats all other authorities with whom it is brought into contact—Chinese provincial officials, foreign consuls, the legations at Peking—as so many external bodies to be met and dealt with upon terms of equality.
That it flourishes amazingly is a fact beyond dispute. Prosperity—arrogance the Chinese of to-day, flushed with his new-born spirit of nationality, would probably say—stares you in the face as you steam up the Whang-poo river lined with vast piles of modern architecture. ”

“ Over the tops of the walls nothing is to be seen. There are no [Pg 16] skyscrapers within; no house is higher than the surrounding, defending ramparts. Peking is divided into several areas, each called a city, each city surrounded by its own walls. There is the great, populous Chinese City, where only the Chinese dwell. The Tartar, or Manchu, City has several subdivisions. It contains the legation quarter, and all the foreign legations are clustered together in a small, compact area, surrounded by a small wall for defensive purposes. ”

“ The first impression of a Chinese city is of its myriad, multitudinous life. There are populous cities in Europe, and crowded streets; but here human beings swarm, like birds in the air or fishes in the sea. The wonder is how they all live; but that is a mystery which I could not solve in London any more than here. There is one street a mile long, which has in it nothing but shoemakers. The people amused us very much by their strange appearance and dress, in both which China differs wholly from the Orient. A Chinaman is not at all like a Turk. ”

“ The great Yangtze River sweeps beneath the walls, and the city has canal and railway connection of the finest. The city, as was discovered when General Chang defended it, is commanded by the peaks of Purple Mountain on the north. There are fortified hills within the city, and great avenues down which run modern electric cars. Ruins of the last pure Chinese dynasty remain: the Ming palace, the picturesque tombs, and an avenue lined with wonderful gigantic camels, lions, elephants, etc., similar to the Ming Avenue at Nankow on the Great Wall above Peking. ”

“ No Imperial Commissioner ever conducts business at Shanghai. There being a particular sphere of duty allotted to every official on the establishment of the Celestial Empire, and the principle that between them and the foreigner there is no intercourse being one ever religiously adhered to by the servants of our Government of China, it would not be proper for me to reply in person to the letter of the English Minister. ”

“ Outside this are the government offices, foreign legations, the temple of Confucius, a great Buddhist monastery, a Roman Catholic cathedral, and Christian mission stations. The Chinese city has many temples, mission stations, schools, and hospitals; but it is sparsely populated, houses are poor, and streets unpaved. Pekin has railway communication with Hankow, and is connected with other cities and with Russia by telegraph. Its trade and industry are inconsiderable. It is one of the oldest cities in the world. It was Kubla Khan's capital, and has been the metropolis of the empire since 1421. ”

“ I trust that the moral influence of this great city will always be exerted in that direction. In addressing the merchants of Shanghai some three years ago, at the time when I announced to them that it was my intention to seek a treaty in Pekin itself if I could not get it before I arrived there, I made this observation—that when force and diplomacy should have effected in China all that they could legitimately accomplish, the work which we had to do in that empire would still be only in its commencement. ”

“ No European resident in China will ever allow that Chinese buildings are either beautiful or useful, and if any one suggests that a Western house shall {141} be built in the Chinese style the suggestion is scouted as absurd; yet the British Legation at Peking is an old Chinese palace, and no one who has seen it ever doubts that it is one of the most beautiful buildings in the whole of China, and if this building has been found fitting for His Majesty's Representative, surely some such building might serve for others of less high station. ”

“ Standing on the walls of Peking, a city of the plain, you look down upon twelve square miles of grey-tiled roofs, the roofs of one-storied houses hidden in the summertime by a forest of trees, but in the heart of the city are high buildings that stand out not only by reason of their height but because the roofs of golden-brown tiles, imperial yellow, gleam and glow in the sunlight. This is the Forbidden City where has dwelt for hundreds of years the Emperor of China, often he must have been the only man in it, and always it was closed to all save the immediate following of the Son of Heaven. ”

“ The Southern or Chinese City known as Wai-cheng, which signifies "without the wall," is the business quarter of Peking, and contains the foreign Legations, the Llama, Confucian, and other temples, and numerous shops. It is oblong in shape, and is surrounded by walls about 30 ft. in height and from 25 ft. in thickness at the base to 15 ft. at the summit. The streets are narrow, congested, and, for the most part, in spite of much that has been done to improve them, indescribably dirty. ”

“ Yet they are coming; cement poles are already creeping into the Tartar City from the northwest, and rails are being piled up before the Forbidden City; unless Mukden outstrips her, Peking will be the first to follow foreign-influenced Tientsin and Shanghai by desecrating her streets with the ugliness and clamor of electric tramways. We are glad to have known the inimitable Chinese capital before they came.
The slowness of her man-drawn carriages and the dead flatness of Peking give an exaggerated impression of its size; everything seems farther away than it really is. ”

“ The eye wanders pleasantly over a forest of fine trees, for every house has one or two in its courtyard, and barely a glimpse of the offensive streets is to be had: only the gray roofs of the little houses; and thus Peking looks for all the world like an immense park, from whose midst rise the yellow roofs of the Imperial Palace, and to the northern extremity of the city, a wooded height called the Coal Mountain, surmounted by a pagoda.
As to monuments, there are very few in Peking worth the seeing, and into these foreigners are never allowed to enter. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And then your gaze travels along the wall, to where, dimly outlined against the horizon, you discern the empty frames of the wonderful astronomical instruments that were once the glory of Peking, now adorning a Berlin museum, set up for the German holiday-makers to gape at. After all, there are discordant notes in Peking.
Down in the streets there is plenty of life and variety. Mongol and Manchu and Chinese jostle each other in the dust or mud of the broad highways. The swift rickshaws thread their way through the throng with amazing dexterity. ”

“ Richardson circled this oriental capital on foot. He walked along the top of the twelve miles of huge walls which surround it. Peking has a population of over a million people and is divided into four cities, viz.: The Tartar City, inhabited by the middle classes; the Imperial City, within the Tartar City, where reside most of the government officials; the Forbidden City, in the centre of the Imperial City, in which the Emperors lived and where the President of the Republic of China now has his residence; and the Chinese City where the lower classes live. ”

“ The Peking College has its native supporters in high places, but they have to fight against great odds for its maintenance. Adam Schaal and Ricci had greater and warmer supporters two centuries ago, and what came of it all ? I found a coolie drying his jacket on one of their finest astronomical instruments, on the wall of Peking. China will sooner or later be forced to press forward in the march of civilization, as her Japanese neighbours are fast discovering the secrets of Western power. ”

“ When that time arrives, the Chinese will find the elements of all they are in search of at the foreign settlements in Shanghai, where the schools, the splendid commerce, the merchant palaces, the fleets of steamers, the local foreign government, the opulence of the inhabitants, and the condition of the streets and dwellings, offer an instructive contrast to the condition of the Chinese walled city which lies to the south of the foreign settlements. The labour of centuries has brought this city to its present state, and the result is little to the credit of the authorities who rule there. ”

“ City gates like mammoth office buildings tower above long vistas of lowly human dwellings; lotuses bloom on the lake of the Winter Palace, and the visitor thither is pursued by all but naked mendicants—yao-fan-ti (want-rice-ers) the Chinese call them in their kinder language. Sumptuous private cars stand before most modern buildings, and Peking street-sprinklers, consisting of two men and a bucket, with a long-handled wooden dipper, attempt to lay the dust about them. ”

“ None of them have wide streets, except in the foreign quarters, and none of them are clean; in their abundance of dirt they can even excel New York, and it would be worth the while for the rulers of the American metropolis to visit China and see how filthy a city can be made without half trying. The most interesting city in China is Pekin, for the reason that it has long been the capital, and contains many monuments of the past greatness and the glorious history of the Celestial empire. Its temples are massive, and show that the Chinese, hundreds of years ago, were no mean architects ”

“ We have here a very curious system: a foreign municipality established on Chinese soil and governing itself, subject only to the control of the foreign Consuls and the Ministers at Peking. It is responsible for a few thousand Europeans and over half a million Chinese. At Hongkong we are supreme in everything; but at Shanghai, though the citizens of foreign nations are subject to their own laws, the city is still legally part of China, so that the natives are under the jurisdiction of Chinese officials. ”

“ Unlike the thoroughfares in the cities of central and southern China, the streets of Peking are wide and open, but, being unpaved and the soil being light and alluvial, they easily become almost impassable from mud in wet weather and ankle-deep in dust in dry weather. The inhabitants of Peking being consumers only, and in no way producers, the trade of the city is very small, and the article of the European treaties which prohibits foreign merchants from trading within the walls is, therefore, to be regretted only as an instance of the narrow-mindedness of the Chinese Government. ”