Wuchang

“ Just beyond the Han was Han Yang, once a fine city, but now in ruins, one of the results of the Tae-ping rebellion. Across the Yang Tsze, here a mile wide, was Wuchang, the residence of the viceroy of the Hupeh province. This place was supposed to be closed to foreigners, but Charley and I had made many a secret visit, and had some rare sport among the curiosity shops, with occasionally an adventure of a less pleasing description, about which I should like to tell you if I had time. ”

“ Had the Revolutionary men been kept under better control while off duty this never would have happened. The Imperialists stood a far greater risk of having dissension creeping in among their men, but they took great care that no such loophole should be offered to them. In Wuchang the people, essentially Chinese, talked so wildly about this Revolutionary reverse that it was found necessary to remove the heads of several, and war talk became absolutely taboo on the streets.
The Imperialists then directed their attention to Wuchang. Every hour the Revolutionists expected a bombardment. ”

“ And of the three cities that meet together and almost join—Hankow and Wuchang being separated by the there three-quarter-mile wide Yangtse, and Hankow and Hanyang separated by the boat-covered Han—Wuchang has the reputation of being the most rowdy. It is there, of course, the Provincial Examinations are held; and when men assemble in their thousands away from their families and friends, they are in all countries apt to be unruly. ”

“ The reader should understand that probably of all strategic points in the Chinese Empire there is none more naturally formidable than Hanyang. It was the pivot of the whole situation. With Hanyang gone, Wuchang was practically gone also—if the enemy had any guns at all. At dawn on November 27th the war correspondents brought the news that the Hunan men had refused to fight at Hanyang, and that the city was about to be taken. ”

“ In the heart of Wuchang there is a steep hill which cuts the business part of the city into two sections. This hill is so steep that it is practically impossible to carry the traffic over it. Some Chinese claim the hill to be the dwelling place of a tortoise, others of a serpent, and still others of a dragon. Some years ago, when Chang Chih Tung was living in that city as viceroy of Hunan and Hupeh, he caused a tunnel to be cut through the hill so that communication from one business center to the other would be facilitated. ”

“ When Chang Chih-tung was transferred to the Wuchang viceroyalty, General Li Yuan-hung had accompanied him, actively participating in the training of the new Hupeh army, and being assisted in that work by German instructors. In 1897 he had gone to Japan to study educational, military and administrative methods, returning to China after a short stay, but again proceeding to Tokyo in 1897 as an officer attached to the Imperial Guards. In the autumn of the following year he had returned to Wuchang and been appointed Commander of the Cavalry. ”

“ It also shows how utterly unprepared China herself seemed in the eyes of the world to be for the change that so suddenly shook the fundamentals of her Government:—'
"A rising, which is manifestly very serious," said the Times editorial, "has taken place at Wuchang, the great city in the province of Hupeh which seemed destined to become the centre of the Chinese railway system and of the internal trade of the Empire. How serious it may prove to be and how serious the movement from which it springs are matters on which Europeans have but few materials for judgment. ”

“ The streets, he says, are thronged with long-robed, large-spectacled gentlemen, who inform the world at large by every fold of drapery, every swagger of gait, every curve of nail, that they are the aristocracy of the most ancient empire of the world. Wuchang had from 12,000 to 15,000 bachelors of arts within its walls, who came from the far borders of the province for the examination for the provincial degree. About one-half per cent. will be successful; thousands of them know they have not the shadow of a chance, but literary etiquette binds them to appear. ”

“ If the wind is against you it may take an hour or more to get across, and you could easily imagine yourself on the sea. Indeed, it is nothing uncommon to go across in calm weather to pay a call, and for the wind to rise suddenly and prevent your coming back for a couple of days. At Wuchang there are various missions with hospitals and schools. At one of these we saw a slave girl who had been almost burnt to death with incense sticks by an enraged mistress, and then bricked up in a wall to die of starvation. ”

“ Arnold Foster told us that when she first came to Wuchang she used to see the soldiers dressed mediævally, learning to make faces to inspire terror in the hearts of the adversary. Monseigneur Jarlin, the head of the French mission in Peking, described the China of olden times by saying that in his young days all Chinamen had a rooted contempt for everything Western. Theirs was the {4} only civilised land. The West was the land of barbarism. Now, he added, the positions are reversed; every Chinaman despises China, and is convinced that from the West comes the light of civilisation. ”

“ Wuchang is the capital city of the two provinces of Hunan and Hupeh; it is here that the Viceroy, Chang Chi Tung, resides in his official yamen and dispenses injustice from a building almost as handsome as the American mission-houses [Pg 4] which overlook it. Chang Chi Tung is the most anti-foreign of all the Viceroys of China; yet no Viceroy in the Empire has ever had so many foreigners in his employ as he. "Within the four seas," he says, "all men are brothers" ”

“ Farther down is the province of Anhwei which takes its name from its chief two cities, Anking and Weichou. In general resembling Kiangsi, it has two flourishing ports on the river, Anking, the capital, and Wuhu. Of the people nothing noteworthy is to be observed, save that they are unusually turbulent, and their lawless spirit has not been curbed by any strong hand like that of the viceroy at Wuchang. [*] The province is distinguished for its production of great men, of whom Li Hung Chang was one. ”

“ This language was approved by Confucius, who himself always declined to dogmatize on death and spirits, maintaining that men knew too little of themselves, when living, to be justified in groping for facts about the dead. At first sight it would appear strange that a barbarous country like Wu should suddenly produce a learned prince who at once captivated by his culture Yen-tsz of Ts'i, Confucius of Lu, Tsz-ch'an of Cheng, K'u-peh-yu of Wei, Shuh Hiang of Tsin, and, in short, all the distinguished statesmen of China ”

“ Faintly the passenger can make out to the north, through occasional openings in the ranges close at hand, one of the five sacred mountains of China, the Wu-t’ai-shan. The whole cluster is shaped like a maple-leaf and resembles the Diamond Mountains of Korea, if not in scenic splendors at least in the temples and monasteries scattered among them. For many centuries that region has been a Buddhist sanctuary, both of the black-robed Chinese monks and the yellow-robed lamas, even the latter more often natives of Chihli or Shansi than Mongols or Tibetans. ”

“ Like most Chinese of their class, they mingled a loyal observance of the rites of all three of the great Chinese sects and an anxious acceptance of their tripled superstitions, with an easy and respectful contempt for them all—certainly for all except the Confucianism that has made and welded China for twenty-five centuries, but that every Chinese of half Wu’s intelligence knows is, in fact, a magnificent irreligion, a philosophy, a patriotism, but no God-cult. ”

“ Every tong in China would have torn at the vitals of any one rash enough to exercise against Sing Kung Yah a social ostracism contrary to his wish. And so the unprecedented festivity of the kinswoman’s widowhood was tolerated even by the Chinese whom it both shocked and affronted.
But anything more, or kindlier, than tolerance, even the great Wu was powerless to win for her—at least from the Chinese. And both he and she knew this, and it was the one fly in her very nice amber. She would have been ostracized fiercely if those of their own caste had dared ”

“ Without carrying the exhaustive process further, it is safe to say that whatever concrete statesmanship there has been in China during the past generation has been embodied in the person of Li Hung-chang. He alone has a continuous record, has followed a definite line, and kept his ideals, like a captive balloon, strictly attached to the earth on which he had to work. ”

“ And Wu rarely gave that permission, even to Nang Ping. That bit of garden was his outer solitude, and this room was his indoor privacy. It was here and there he kept alone.
No race prizes privacy more, more realizes its value, conserves and guards it with more dignity and skill, or with so much. A people of interminable clans, knit together and interdependent as is no other people, yet it is with the Chinese people, both Mongol and Tartar, that individuality has its fullest rights, its surest safety. ”

“ Until the door opened and Wu came in, she sat cowering, her eyes riveted on her cup, her fingers knotting and unknotting in her lap, and under the lace of her sleeve the costly jewel she had worn to pay honor to Sing Kung Yah winked and danced.
She did not look up at the mandarin’s step, and for a space he stood and studied her, hatred and contempt for Basil Gregory’s mother ugly on his face, pity for his vicarious victim—and she a woman—in his Chinese eyes. And in his heart there was self-pity too: his sacrificial office was in no way to the liking of Wu Li Chang. ”

“ The older mandarin had graciously appointed them attendants upon his granddaughter and to stay with her in Pekin. But the bear and the juggler were traveling with the home-returning Wus; and when the inevitable chess-board and its jeweled chessmen and the flagons of hot spiced wine were laid between Muir and the mandarin, Bruin—Kung Fo Lo was his name—danced and pranced in the firelight for the boy, who clapped his hands and shook with laughter; the heart of a man-child cannot be for ever sad for a baby-girl, known but two months and not able to crawl yet. But Wu Li Chang did not forget Wu Lu. ”

“ Nothing is hurried in China except the waterfalls. But Lord Wu’s Pekin business was done at last, and he took his elaborate farewells of the Lis, and turned towards home, taking Wu Li Chang reluctant with him.
The boy had asked to take the baby too, even venturing to urge that she belonged to them now. (And to Muir he confided in an unreticent moment that he’d dearly like to include her in the ill-anticipated trip to England.)
The grandfather agreed that she was indeed theirs now. Of course she was. A Chinese wife is the property of her husband’s patriarch. That is alphabetic Chinese fact. ”

“ Then Tsʻao Ts‘ao began to discuss the overthrow of Wuhuan on the west. Tsʻao Hung, speaking in the name of his brother officials, said, “The two brothers Yüan are nearly done for and too weak to be feared. They have fled far into the Sea of Sand and if we pursue them thither it may bring down Liu Piao and Liu Pei upon the capital. Should we be unable to rescue it the misfortune would be immense. ”

“ Muir was right. But chiefly, Wu chose to say good-by in their home—the home that had been theirs for generations and for centuries.
Except a few pagodas there is not an old building in China. The picturesque houses, with their pavilions and their triple roofs, flower-pot hung, curling and multicolored, spring up like mushrooms, and decay as soon. Houses last a few generations—perhaps. Great cities32 crumble, disappear, and every trace of them is obliterated in a brief century or two. The Chinese rebuild, or move on and build elsewhere, but they do not repair. ”

“ He is also known by the name of Sha Wu-ching, and was originally Grand Superintendent of the Manufactory of Stores for Yü Huang’s palace. During a great banquet given on the Peach Festival to all the gods and Immortals of the Chinese Olympus he let fall a crystal bowl, which was smashed to atoms. Yü Huang caused him to be beaten with eight hundred blows, drove him out of Heaven, and exiled him to earth. He lived on the banks of the Liu-sha Ho, where every seventh day a mysterious sword appeared and wounded him in the neck. Having no other means of subsistence, he used to devour the passers-by. ”

“ Wu flicked that aside with a courteous gesture. “And now,” her voice was little more than a whispered gasp, “Mr. Wu, please tell me——”
“I am about to do so. Patience!” Wu said silkenly. “In China things move slowly. China is the tortoise of the world, not the hare. I was going to tell you”—he spoke with a deliberation that was a torture in itself. ”

“ A remarkable contribution to our knowledge of China, is M. Biot's recent translation of the book called Tscheu-li. It seems that in the twelfth century before Christ, the second dynasty that had ruled the country, that of Thang, fell by its own vices, and the empire passed into the hands of Wu-wang, the head of the princely family of Tscheu-li. Wu-wang was a great soldier and statesman; he confided to his brother Tscheu-Kong, a man evidently of extraordinary political genius, the moral and administrative reformation of the empire. ”

“ Wu said. “She is ostracized by the ladies of our race. I am a powerful man among my own people, madame, but I cannot influence or soften the prejudices of Chinese femininity in the slightest. Because she is a widow, she should, according to one of the absurdest of the many absurd canons of our race, live in seclusion, sackcloth and discomfort. She is a nice creature, Mrs. Gregory, and she longs for friends. Will you visit Sing Kung Yah?” ”