Court Life in China Part 20

It was not until the Boxer troubles of 1900 were over, and Yuan, by the masterly way in which he had disregarded the imperial edicts, had protected and preserved the lives of all the foreigners in his province, keeping peace the while, that honours began to be heaped upon him. And this not without reason as we shall proceed to show.

In 1901 he was made Governor-General of the metropolitan province, and Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent. In 1902 he was decorated with the Yellow Jacket, placed in charge of the affairs of the Northern Railway, and consulting minister to counsel the government. Wherever he was he gave as much attention to the city government as to that of the province or the nation, and in spite of his having no foreign education himself, he began building up a system of public schools in his province like which there is nothing else in the whole of China. Let us remember also that during ail this time there was suspended over his head, from the palace, a sword of Damocles which was liable to fall at any time. But we will explain that further on as it is the last act of the drama.

When Yuan went to Tientsin as Viceroy of the metropolitan province he found there Dr. C. D. Tenny, the president of the Tientsin University which had been begun by Li Hung-chang some ten or a dozen years before.

It had a good course of study and was turning out a large number of young graduates for whom there ought to be a better future than that of interpreters in the various business houses of that and other cities.

He therefore called Dr. Tenny to him and inquired particularly about the system of public school education throughout the United States.

"What is to prevent our putting into operation such a system throughout this province?" asked the Viceroy.

"Nothing," answered Dr. Tenny, "except to be willing to submit to the conditions."

"And what are those conditions?" asked His Excellency.

"They are that you open schools in every important town, place in them well-educated, competent teachers, whom you are willing to pay a salary equal to what they may reasonably expect to get if they enter business."

"May I ask if you would be willing to undertake the development of such a system?" he asked further.

"On one condition," answered Dr. Tenny.

"And what is that?"

"That you allow me to open a school wherever I think there should be one, call my teachers from whatsoever source I please to call them, pay them whatever salary I think they deserve, sending all the bills to Your Excellency, and you pay them without question."

The Viceroy had known Dr. Tenny for years, had always had the most implicit confidence both in his ability and his honesty, and so, lightening up his duties in the Tientsin and Paotingfu Universities, he commissioned him to establish what may be termed the first public school system of education on modern lines in the whole empire. This one act, if he had done no other, was reason enough for a wise regent to have continued him in office even though he "had rheumatism of the leg." But it may be that there are extenuating circ.u.mstances in this act of the Regent as we shall point out later.

There is one phase of the Boxer uprising that I have never yet seen properly represented in any book or magazine. We all know how the ministers of the various European governments with their wives and children, the customs officials, missionaries, business men, and tourists who happened to be in Peking at the time, with all the Chinese Christians, were confined in the British legation and Prince Su's palace. We know how they barricaded their defense. We know how they were fired upon day and night for six weeks by the Boxer leaders and the army of the conservatives under the leadership of their general, Tung Fu-hsiang. But the thing which we do not know, or at least which has not been adequately told, is the most interesting secret plot of the liberal progressives, under the leadership of "Prince Ching and others," to thwart the Empress Dowager and the Boxer leaders, the conservatives and their army, and protect the most noted company of prisoners that have ever been confined in a legation quarter. The plot was this:

When Prince Ching and his progressive a.s.sociates in Peking discovered that they could not vote down the Boxer princes, they dared not openly oppose them, but they secretly decided that the representatives of the Powers must not be ma.s.sacred else the doom of China was sealed. When they discovered that Yuan Shih-kai and the other great viceroys had decided by stratagem to foil the Boxers even though they must set all the imperial edicts at naught, they decided, for the sake of the protection of the legations and the preservation of the empire, that they would do the same. They secretly sent supplies of food to the besieged, which the latter feared to use lest they be poisoned. But more than that they kept their own armies in Peking as a guard and as a final resort in case there was danger of the legation being overcome, and as a matter of fact there were regular pitched battles between the troops of Prince Ching and his a.s.sociates and those of the Boxer leader, Tung Fu-hsiang. Had the Boxers finally succeeded, Yuan Shih-kai and Prince Ching and their a.s.sociates would have lost their heads, but as the Boxers failed it was they who went to their graves by the short process of the executioner's knife.

So Yuan was between two fires. He had disobeyed the commands of the Emperor in not coming to Peking and had therefore incurred his displeasure and caused his downfall. He had disobeyed the Empress Dowager in not putting to death the foreigners in his province, and if the Boxers were successful he would surely lose his head on that account. The Boxers, however, were not successful and as his disobedience had helped to save the empire, Yuan, so long as the Dowager remained in power, was safe.

But a day of reckoning must inevitably come. The Empress Dowager was an old woman, the Emperor was a young man. In all human probabilities she would be the first to die, while his only hope was in her outliving the Emperor, who had sworn vengeance on all those who had been instrumental in his imprisonment.

I have a friend in Peking who is also a friend of one of the greatest Chinese officials. This official has gone into the palace daily for a dozen years past and knows every plot and counterplot that has been hatched in that nest of seclusion during all that time, though he has been implicated in none of them. He has held the highest positions in the gift of the empire without ever once having been degraded. One day when he was in the palace the Emperor unburdened his heart to him, thinking that what he said would never reach the ears of his enemies.

"You have no idea," said the Emperor, "what I suffer here."

"Indeed?" was the only reply of the official.

"Yes," continued the Emperor, "I am not allowed to speak to any one from outside. I am without power, without companions, and even the eunuchs act as though they are under no obligations to respect me. The position of the lowest servant in the palace is more desirable than mine." Then lowering his voice he continued, "But there is a day of reckoning to come. The Empress Dowager cannot live forever, and if ever I get my throne again I will see to it that those who put me here will suffer as I have done."

It is not unlikely that this conversation of the Emperor reached the ears of Yuan Shih-kai. Walls have ears in China. Everything has ears, and every part of nature has a tongue. If so, here was the occasion for the last plot in the drama of the Emperor's life, and next to the last in the official life of Yuan Shih-kai.

The problem is to so manipulate the laws of nature as to prevent the Emperor outliving the Empress Dowager, and not allow the world to know that you have been trifling with occult forces. He must die a natural death, a death which is above suspicion. He must not die one day after the Empress Dowager as that would create talk. And he ought to die some time before her. The death fuse is one which often burns very much longer than we expect--was it not one of the English kings who said "I fear I am a very long time a-dying, gentlemen"--and sometimes it burns out sooner than is intended. There were two imperial death fuses burning at the same time in that Forbidden City of Peking. The Empress Dowager had "had a stroke." Hers was undoubtedly nature's own work. But the enemies of Yuan Shih-kai tell us that the Emperor had "had a Chinese doctor," to whom the great Viceroy paid $33,000 for his services. We are told that the Empress Dowager in reality died first and then the Emperor, though the Emperor's death was first announced, and the next day that of the Dowager.

What then are we to infer? That the Emperor was poisoned? Let it be so.

That is what the j.a.panese believed at the time. But who did it? Most a.s.suredly no one man. One might have employed a Chinese physician for him, but the last man whose physician the Emperor would have accepted would have been Yuan Shih-kai's. Had you or I been ill would we have allowed the man who was the cause of our fall to select our physician?

But granted that Yuan Shih-kai did employ his physician, and that his death was the result of slow poisoning, could Yuan Shih-kai have so manipulated Prince Ching, the Regent (who is the late Emperor's brother), the ladies of the court, and all those thousands of eunuchs, to remain silent as to the death of the Empress Dowager until he had completed the slow process on His Majesty? No! If the Emperor was poisoned--and the world believes he was--there are a number of others whose skirts are as badly stained as those of the great Viceroy, or long ere this his body would have been sent home a headless corpse instead of with "rheumatism of the leg."

What then is the explanation? It may be this, that the court, and the officials as a whole, felt that the Emperor was an unsafe person to resume the throne, and that it were better that one man should perish than that the whole regime should be upset. They even refused to allow a foreign physician to go in to see him, saying that of his own free will he had turned again to the Chinese, all of which indicates that it was not the plot of any one man.

Why then should Yuan Shih-kai have been made the scapegoat of the court and the officials, and branded as a murderer in the face of the whole world? That may be another plot. The radical reformers, followers of Kang Yu-wei, have been making such a hubbub about the matter ever since the death of the Emperor and the Empress Dowager that somebody had to be punished. They said that Yuan had been a traitor to the cause of reform, that he had not only betrayed his sovereign in 1898, but that now he had encompa.s.sed his death.

Now to satisfy these enemies, the Prince Regent may have decided that the best thing to do was to dismiss Yuan for a time. I think that the trivial excuse he gives for doing so favours my theory--with "rheumatism of the leg," to which is added, "Thus our clemency is manifest"--a sentence which may be severe or may mean nothing, and when the storm has blown over and the sky is clear again, Yuan may be once more brought to the front as Li Hung-chang and others have been in the past. Which is a consummation, I think, devoutly to be wished.

XX

Peking--The City of the Court

The position of Peking at the present time is one of peculiar interest, for all the different forces that are now at work to make or mar China issue from, or converge towards, the capital. There, on the dragon throne, beside, or rather above, the powerless and unhappy Emperor, the father of his people and their G.o.d, sits the astute and ever-watchful lady whose word is law to Emperor, minister and clown alike. There dwell the heads of the government boards, the leaders of the Manchu aristocracy, and the great political parties, the drafters of new const.i.tutions and imperial decrees, and the keen-witted diplomatists who know so well how to play against European antagonists the great game of international chess.--R. F. Johnston in "From Peking to Mandelay."

XX

PEKING--THE CITY OF THE COURT

In the place where Peking now stands there has been a city for three thousand years. Five centuries before Christ it was the capital of a small state, but was destroyed three centuries later by the builder of the great wall. It was soon rebuilt, however, and has continued from that time until the present, with varied fortunes, as the capital of a state, the chief city of a department, or the dwelling-place of the court.

It is the greatest and best preserved walled city in the empire, if not in the world. The Tartar City is sixteen miles in circ.u.mference, surrounded by a wall sixty feet thick at the bottom, fifty feet thick at the top and forty feet high, with six feet of bal.u.s.trade on the outside, beautifully crenelated and loopholed, and in a good state of preservation. The streets are sixty feet wide,--or even more in places,--well macadamized, and lit with electric light. The chief mode of conveyance is the 'ricksha, though carriages may be hired by the week, day or hour at various livery stables in proximity to the hotels, which, by the way, furnish as good accommodation to their guests as the hotels of other Oriental cities.

In the centre of the Tartar City is the Imperial City, eight miles in circ.u.mference, encircled by a wall six feet thick and fifteen feet high, pierced by four gates at the points of the compa.s.s; and in the centre of this again is the Forbidden City, occupying less than half a square mile, the home of the court.

Fairs are held, at various temples, fourteen days of every month, distributed in such a way as to bring them almost on alternate days, while at certain times there are two fairs on the same day. It is a mistake to suppose that the Chinese women in the capital are very much secluded. They may be seen on the streets at almost any time, while the temple courts and adjacent streets, on fair days, are crowded with women and girls, dressed in the most gorgeous colours, their hair decorated with all kinds of artificial flowers, followed by little boys and girls as gaily dressed as themselves. Here they find all kinds of toys, curios, and articles of general use, from a top to a broom, from bits of jade or other precious stones, to a snuff bottle hollowed out of a solid quartz crystal, or a market basket or a dust-pan made of reeds.

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. The same is true of her bra.s.s and bronze incense-burners and images, her wood and ivory carvings, her beautiful embroideries, her magnificent tapestries, and her paintings by old masters of six or eight hundred years ago. Here we can find the finest Oriental rugs, in a good state of preservation, with the "tone" that only age can give, made long before the time of Washington.

There is no better market for fine bits of embroidery, mandarin coats, and all the better products of needle, silk and floss, of which the Chinese have been masters for centuries, than the city of the court.

The population consists largely of great officials and their families, whose cast-off clothing, toned down by the use of years, often without a blemish or a spot, finds its way into the hands of dealers. The finest furs,--seal, otter, squirrel, sable and ermine,--are brought from Siberia, Manchuria and elsewhere, for the officials and the court, and can be secured for less than half what they would cost in America.

Pearls, of which the Chinese ladies and the court are more fond than of diamonds, may be found in abundance in all the bazars, which are many, and judging from the way they are purchased by tourists, are both cheaper and better than elsewhere.

The Chinese have little appreciation of diamonds as jewelry. On one occasion there was offered to me a beautiful ring containing a large sapphire encircled by twenty diamonds. When I offered the dealer less than he asked for it, he said: "No, rather than sell it for that price, I will tear it apart, and sell the diamonds separately for drill-points to the tinkers who mend dishes. I can make more from it in that way, only I dislike to spoil the ring." The Empress Dowager during her late years, and many of the ladies and gentlemen of the more progressive type, affected, whether genuinely or not, an appreciation of the diamond as a piece of jewelry, especially in the form of rings, though coloured stones, polished, but not cut, have always been more popular with the Chinese. The turquoise, the emerald, the sapphire, the ruby and the other precious stones with colour have, therefore, always graced the tables of the bazars in the capital, while the diamond until very recently was relegated to the point of the tinker's drill.

There is another method of bringing bits of their ancient handiwork to the capital which most of those living in Peking, even, know nothing about. A company, whose headquarters is at an inn, called the Hsing Lung Tien, sends agents all over the empire, to purchase and bring to them everything in the nature of a curio, whether porcelain, painting, embroidery, pottery or even an ancient tile or inkstone, which they then, at public auction, sell to the dealers. The sale is at noon each day. The first time I visited it was with a friend from Iowa who was anxious to get some unique bits of porcelain. The auctioneer does not "cry" the wares. Neither buyer nor seller says a word. n.o.body knows what anybody else has offered. The goods are pa.s.sed out of a closed room from a high window where the crowd can see them, and then each one wanting them tries to be first in securing the hand of the auctioneer, which is ensconced in his long sleeve, where, by squeezing his fingers, they tell him how much they will give for the particular piece. It is the only real case of "talking in the sleeve" I have ever seen, and each piece is sold to the first person offering a fair profit on the money invested, though he might get much more by allowing them to bid against each other.

Among the attractive sights in Peking, none are quite so interesting as the places where His Majesty worships, and of these the most beautiful in architecture, the grandest in conception, and the one laid out on the most magnificent scale, is the Temple of Heaven.

Think of six hundred and forty acres of valuable city property being set aside for the grounds of a single temple, as compared with the way our own great churches are crowded into small city lots of scarcely as many square feet, and over-shadowed by great business blocks costing a hundred times as much, and we can get some conception of the magnificence of the scale on which this temple is laid out. A large part of the grounds is covered with cedars, many of which are not less than five hundred years old, while other parts are used to pasture a flock of black cattle from which they select the sacrifice for a burnt offering. The grounds are not well kept like those of our own parks and churches, but the original conception of a temple on such a large scale is worthy of a great people.

The worship at this temple is the most important of all the religious observances of the empire, and const.i.tutes a most interesting remnant of the ancient monotheistic cultus which prevailed in China before the rationalism of Confucius and the polytheistic superst.i.tion of Buddhism predominated among the people. While the ceremonies of the sacrifices are very complicated, they are kept with the strictest severity. The chief of these is at the winter solstice. On December 21st the Emperor goes in a sedan chair, covered with yellow silk, and carried by thirty-two men, preceded by a band of musicians, and followed by an immense retinue of princes and officials on horseback. He first goes to the tablet-chapel, where he offers incense to Shang Ti, the G.o.d above, and to his ancestors, with three kneelings and nine prostrations. Then going to the great altar he inspects the offerings, after which he repairs to the Palace of Abstinence, where he spends the night in fasting and prayer. The next morning at 5:45 A. M. he dons his sacrificial robes, proceeds to the open altar, where he kneels and burns incense, offers a prayer to Shang Ti, and incense to his ancestors whose shrines and tablets are arranged on the northeast and northwest portions of the altar.

There are two altars in the temple, a quarter of a mile apart, the covered and the open altar, and this latter is one of the grandest religious conceptions of the human mind. It is a triple circular marble terrace, 210 feet wide at the base, 150 feet in the middle, and ninety feet at the top, ascended at the points of the compa.s.s by three flights of nine steps each. A circular stone is in the centre of the top, around which are nine stones in the first circle, eighteen in the second, twenty-seven in the third, etc., and eighty-one in the ninth, or last circle. The Emperor kneels on the circular stone, surrounded by the circles of stones, then by the circles of the terraces, and finally by the horizon, and thus seems to himself and his retinue to be in the centre of the universe, his only walls being the skies, and his only covering, the shining dome.

There are no images of any kind connected with the temple or the worship, the only offerings being a bullock, the various productions of the soil, and a cylindrical piece of jade about a foot long, formerly used as a symbol of sovereignty. Twelve bundles of cloth are offered to Heaven, and only one to each of the emperors, and to the sun and moon.

The bullocks must be two years old, the best of their kind, without blemish, and while they were formerly killed by the Emperor they are now slaughtered by an official appointed for that purpose.