Peking Dust Part 7

Again I marveled at the lofty tone of this note, and wondered how this moral strength had been so suddenly acquired. Thought I to myself, can this be poor old browbeaten China,--humbled and prostrate before the powers of Europe, unable to protest when her territory is s.n.a.t.c.hed away from her,--now suddenly giving voice to these exalted ideas?

Does it not seem rather ludicrous that she should suddenly proclaim herself the upholder of international law? Like Moses of old, she is now stretching forth her arms; but who are they who uphold those arms?

These solemn notes are given forth to the world, and the world is asked to believe sincerely, as China herself states, that they were "dictated purely by the desire to further the cause of the world's peace and by the maintenance of the sanct.i.ty of international law."

Let us believe it, if we can.

An editorial in the "Shanghai Times," a British paper, under the date of February 12 throws some light upon the matter. The article is ent.i.tled "China's Course Clear"; the italics are mine.

To those of us who live in this corner of the Far East, a question of paramount importance is the att.i.tude which the Republic of China is likely to take up in regard to the war. The pendulum of Fate may swing in our favor, and the Peking Government--acting on the counsels of its statesmen _and its friends_--may decide to unite its forces with the Allies. This is a question which interests us individually, it touches our daily lives, and becomes a theme of much discussion at a moment when neutrals are emphasizing to the Hun their rights and their insistence of Germany's recognition of these privileges.... Germans in Shanghai and possibly other ports are to-day existing on the instalments which are being paid as Boxer Indemnity. _The Germans have big interests up north in railway and other enterprises; they penetrated the Customs and captured positions in other Government circles. There is a great deal at stake in China._

This frank and lucid statement contains food for thought. It may possibly lie at the root of China's sudden acquisition of moral strength. It is true that the j.a.panese have acquired Shan-tung since the war, but there are "big interests up north in railway and other enterprises" which have not yet been captured. Fat plums which may yet be shaken into some expectant lap. But will the Chinese, in spite of their ample skirts, have laps wide enough to catch them? Would it not be well to see that these ripe plums do not fall into the lap of Chinese incompetence?

The Lord knows.

V

FEAR OF THE PLUNGE

China is now wavering on the brink. Having despatched her two notes, and thereby proclaimed herself worthy to rank as a first-cla.s.s power, with a seat at the Peace Table promised her, and all the benefits which accrue therefrom, she still hesitates to make the break.

Unquestionably several of her officials and other prominent men have already succ.u.mbed to what the papers call "foreign influence," lured by the words of spellbinders, but there are others who are stoutly resisting all appeals, and who see in such a step dire calamity for the country. The fact that China has no real reason to break with Germany makes the decision more difficult. A plausible excuse of some kind must be offered the country, and such flimsy pretexts as the necessity of upholding the sanct.i.ty of international law are difficult to get away with. The Chinese press is full of the incongruity of the situation, and outspoken of its amus.e.m.e.nt.

Besides keeping the Lao Hsi Kai affair constantly before the people, it is relentless in its denunciation of Vice-President Feng's opium deal, and the methods of the British opium-dealers. Columns in regard to this transaction are published every day in the papers, throwing light on some new phase of it, keeping the public constantly informed regarding it, and asking the people at large to consider well the advisability of allying themselves with such friends as the French and English have proved within the last few months. Thus, in regard to the opium deal we read:

High Official Offered Bribe of $5,000,000. A report is current in the Capital that some time ago, a man representing himself as the Manager of the Shanghai Opium Combine, approached a certain high official and solicited his good offices in consummating the opium transaction, which is now being carried out by the Vice President.

According to the paper, the man promised the high official five million dollars as a "birthday present," a euphemistic term for bribery in this country, if the Combine, through his influence, succeeded in concluding a deal with the Government. The attempt fell through because the high official is too honest to be thus corrupted.

Finding the authorities in Peking incorruptible, the Combine turned its attention to Nanking.

Nanking being the residence of Baron Feng.

It is very interesting to watch this struggle, to see the various forces at work. The pa.s.sions of the Chinese are being played upon: the public is constantly reminded of the insults and indignities that China has suffered at the hands of those nations who are now urging her to join with them. The people are not allowed to forget it is through force and bribery that China has been reduced to her present plight; they are asked to be skeptical of promises made by those nations who employ such methods. It is having its effect, too, this press campaign. While the foreign diplomats are working upon a handful of officials, the people are being reminded of the wrongs they have suffered through the machinations of these diplomats, representing predatory powers.

But, after all, the Chinese people, four hundred millions of them, are a negligible quant.i.ty. The ultimate decision rests with a dozen high officials. It simply remains to influence these officials, and the thing is done. They are of three types: those, like the Vice-president, open to direct bribery; those, like the premier, Tuan Chi jui, who have political ambitions and whose ambitions can be played upon (they say Tuan wishes to become president); and certain others, of the younger school, who are dazzled by the promises made to China and are unable to offset these promises with the experience of years. These last rejoice to think that China has been promised a seat at the Peace Table, which means that China is recognized as a first-cla.s.s power. All sorts of inducements are offered, including cancelation of the Boxer indemnity now being paid to Germany. (The Allies have very obligingly decided that payment of their own Boxer indemnities shall be postponed, not canceled.) Also, there are vague, indefinite hints afloat to the effect that if China is very, very good, the Allies will consider, kindly consider, the right of China to raise her customs-duties. She may, perhaps, be allowed some sort of protective tariff. This latter hint is very vague indeed, too nebulous, in fact, to have much weight. But, after all, the cancelation of the German indemnity is something.

The disadvantages, on the other hand, are these: If China enters the war, she must equip her armies. Being virtually bankrupt, she must first borrow. From whom? She must mortgage herself again, to somebody, before she can borrow money to equip her armies. And will the country from whom she borrows money, who agrees to train and equip her armies, also have full military control over the affairs of China? Will that nation be given liberty to suppress her press, to stifle all opposition to whatever moves military necessity may dictate? It looks like complete surrender.

But the Chinese are not blind, not all of them. Nor are they all corruptible. And very few of them have utter, childlike faith in the motives of the Allies.

VI

A DUST-STORM

S---- invited us to go with him to the Gymkana at the race-course.

"It's a rather amusing sight," he explained. "You'll see all foreign Peking scrambled together out there." Then he went on: "Take the special train from the 'other station,' and, when you arrive, follow the crowd to the club-house. I'm riding out from town, so may possibly be a minute or two late, though I expect to be on hand to welcome you when you arrive. But if I'm a little late, please don't mind."

We a.s.sured him that we shouldn't mind at all; and then he went on to say that he hoped we'd have a pleasant day and no dust.

These dust-storms are the curse of Peking and of North China. To-day, however (March 5), dawned bright and clear and sunny, as usual; but clear, bright weather is not necessarily the sign of a fine day in this part of the world. Not in spring. Every day is one of brilliant sunshine, the winter sunshine of China just south of the Great Wall, and just south of the Mongolian desert. That's where the dust comes from. It blows in straight from the Gobi Desert, and makes the late winter and the spring, particularly the spring, almost intolerable.

Since our return we have been having dust-storms on an average of twice a week, big ones and little ones, lasting from a few hours to several days. There are two kinds: surface storms, when a tremendous wind blows dense clouds of fine, sharp dust along the streets and makes all outdoors intolerable; and overhead storms, which are another thing.

These latter really are a curious phenomenon: fine, red, powdery dust is whirled upward into the higher levels of the atmosphere blown overhead by the upper air currents, from which it drifts down, covering everything in sight. On such occasions there is frequently no wind at all on the streets, but the air is so filled with dust that the sun appears as in a fog, a red disk showing dimly through the thick, dense atmosphere. The dust floats downward and sifts indoors through every crack and crevice, until everything lies under a soft red blanket. You simply breathe dust for days; there is no possibility of escape until the wind changes and it is over.

To-day, however, apparently was going to be a good day. I ran down the hotel corridor to look at the flags flying over the legation quarter, the flags of most of the nations of the world. The sight was rea.s.suring. No wind at all, apparently; they were all idly flapping from their poles, whereas yesterday they had been frantically tearing at them, whipped out stiff by a piercing, cold north wind. So we took rickshaws and were soon running along toward the Hankow station, where we found a large crowd of foreigners a.s.sembling for the special train that was to take us to Pao Ma Tchang, literally "Run Horse Place," the race-course six miles from Peking.

When we dismounted, we had the usual arguments with the coolies as to fares. There are three cla.s.ses of fares here,--one for the Chinese, one for the sophisticated resident, and one for the tourist; each one double that for the preceding cla.s.s. By this time we consider ourselves sufficiently at home to pay the tariff which the foreign residents pay, sufficiently sophisticated to avoid being overcharged. No use. We never seem able to manage it. Inside of a minute we had half the coolies of Peking yelling round us, just as if we were the greenest tourists that ever set foot on Chinese soil. I'm sorry for the rickshaw boys, they have a hard life of it; yet I must confess that our sympathies are somewhat alienated by the way they "do" us on every possible occasion.

The special was waiting in the station, and we installed ourselves in a compartment and looked eagerly out upon the platform for the signs of the "scrambling" we had come to see. There it was, too, all the Who's Who of Peking,--all the ministers and secretaries of the legations, with their families and guests, and all the foreign residents of the legation quarter and the East City and the West City and every city contained within the walls of the capital. Americans, English, French, Danes, Russians, Swedes; only the Germans were absent. The railway pierces the wall of the West City, and for a time we ran along under the walls outside, with the great crenelated battlements rising above us, and their magnificent gates or towers glittering in the sunshine. How incongruous and insignificant seemed that train-load of chattering foreigners beneath the majestic, towering ramparts of this old royal city! The arid plains presented rather a Biblical appearance, with camel-trains moving slowly across the desolate landscape, while here and there flocks of broad-tailed sheep were browsing, tended by their shepherds. We pa.s.sed the usual graves,--little mounds of earth ploughed round very closely, as closely as the people felt they might without disturbing the spirits within.

Twenty minutes later we came to a stop on the plains, and every one began getting off. In a moment we were surrounded by crowds of yelling donkey-boys leading donkeys, and a few rickshaw-pullers as well. No one seemed to care for either form of conveyance, and we soon left behind the blue-coated coolies still shouting the merits of their tiny gray donkeys with their tinkling bells, and began a journey on foot across the dusty plain. Road there was none: merely an ill-defined track presented itself, along which all the ministers and secretaries of the great nations of the world walked, ankle-deep in dust.

But something had gone wrong with the weather. Our pleasant day, on which we had staked our hopes, had somehow disappeared. We had noticed, as the train moved along, that clouds of dust seemed to be rising; but we laid this to the speed of the train, fully twelve miles an hour. But once outside the shelter of our carriage, it was impossible to deceive ourselves any longer. The wind was rising, and the dry dust of many rainless months was rising with it, flying in dense, enveloping clouds.

It was a curious sight that presented itself: a long, straggling procession of two or three hundred men and women, beating their way, heads downward, across the plains of Chili in what turned out to be a dust-storm of colossal proportions. Presently the Chinese band pa.s.sed us, its members mounted on donkeys, galloping by with their drums and horns b.u.mping up and down behind them. We were glad when they disappeared over a knoll on the horizon.

We finally reached the club-house, a simple, unpretentious little building, with wide, open verandas in front, which afforded no shelter from the biting wind. The whole procession staggered in, a choking, coughing, sputtering crowd, and from one end of the line to the other rose imprecations on the weather, in every language known to Europe. As E---- and I stood there, beating the dust off our clothes and looking for some sign of S----, one of the foreign ministers came up to us, raising an immaculate gray hat, in sharp contrast to a very dusty overcoat. "Have you an invitation to tiffin?" he asked, as he shook hands. We hastily said we had, were expecting our host any minute. We don't know what his intentions were. These are war times, and Peking is surging with furious suspicions. He may have meant to ask us to lunch with him, or he may have meant to put us out as intruders. Fortunately, at that minute S---- appeared round the corner, wiping his face and eyes; he claimed us and all was well.

Two or three races were to be run before tiffin, and we went out to have a look at the ponies, little Mongolian ponies with short, clipped hair.

They were the same breed as the s.h.a.ggy little animals one sees everywhere in Peking. E---- and I know nothing of horses; there's no use pretending. But in spite of that blinding dust, every one else was attempting to distinguish the various points, good and bad, of the snorting, struggling little beasts, who were as unhappy about the weather as we were. And between you and me, I think it was a fine affectation to pretend to distinguish qualities in that storm. In the paddock racing-camels and donkeys also were tied up, and let me say I think it was all an honest person could do in the circ.u.mstances to tell the difference between a camel and a horse. Our interest centered in the camels, the great, disdainful camels, who looked down upon ministers plenipotentiary and potentates and powers with such superb hauteur.

Really, these Peking camels are the aristocrats of the world; you feel it every time they condescend to glance at you.

The wind, which was getting higher and colder every moment, soon drove all but the most ardent enthusiasts indoors. We mounted to the upper story of the club-house, and looked out over the course from the windows of the big dining-room, which occupies the entire upper floor. Before us stretched the same bleak, arid plains that we had crossed on our way from the station: only the railing marking the outer boundaries of the track divided it from the barren stretches of earth which extended northward to the uttermost confines of China. Not a blade of gra.s.s was anywhere in sight. And over all, the dust--not the ordinary dust of a windy March day at home, but great, thick, solid clouds of dust, reaching upward, and covering the entire sky. The noon sun gleamed down in a circle of hazy red.

There were two races before lunch. One couldn't see the ponies till they were within a hundred yards of the winning-post. S----, who has great courage, and moreover felt his responsibility as host, would remain outside on the upper veranda, straining his eyes in the biting gale, and then signal to us when they came in sight. Whereupon we would rush outdoors for a brief moment, clinging to our hats and groping for the veranda rail, and stand there for an agonizing minute till he told us it was over.

Now and then, in brief pauses in the wind, the horizon would clear for a moment and we could see beyond the outer boundaries of the course. We caught occasional glimpses of long caravans of camels, two or three hundred of them, bound for the coal-mines up north. Once, in a short interval, we saw a funeral procession stretching away over the plains--a straggling procession on foot, in dingy white dresses, carrying banners and flags and parasols. The coffin was slung on a pole between bearers, and the wailing drone of a horn, and the thud of a big drum came down the wind. Then the dust rose again, and the melancholy sight was shut out. How curious was this little pleasure spot of the Europeans, in the midst of this barbaric setting, in the heart of old, old Asia!

Tiffin time. Every one who had not already taken refuge in the dining-room now trooped up-stairs, hungry and laughing. I must tell you of the dining-room. It was just a huge, square, bare room, with whitewashed walls, with not a picture, with not an attempt at decoration. A dozen trestle tables ran across it, with narrow, backless benches on each side,--benches which had to be stepped over before one could sit down. Every one stepped over them, however--ministers and first-secretaries and Russian princesses and smart American women; and you had to step over them again when the meal was finished, too, unless by some preconcerted agreement every one rose at the same time. There was not a chair in the place. Every one was dust-grimed, wind-blown and bedraggled, and it was a gay, noisy meal, with laughter and cigarette smoke and dust all through it.

In spite of the noise, however, there seemed little real merriment. One became conscious of the atmosphere,--of the forced, rather strained, I was going to say hostile, atmosphere. Every nation, as if by prearrangement, withdrew to itself. The English sat together, the French sat together; the Russians were apart; and the Americans in still another section. There was no real intermingling, no real camaraderie, except among the individual groups. There was much hand-shaking of course, and greetings and perfunctory politeness, but no genuine friendliness. The various ministers, for instance, did not sit together as ministers, off on a holiday. On the contrary, each one sat at the table with his countrymen. Over all there was a feeling of constraint, distrust, national antipathies but thinly veiled, with but the merest superficial pretense of disguising intense dislikes and jealousies.

In Peking there is great freedom of speech, and much outspoken criticism of one nation by another; for there hatred and suspicions run high.

Therefore, of course, such feelings could not be submerged on an occasion of this kind. Perhaps the war has intensified them; perhaps they are always there; perhaps this is the chronic atmosphere of Peking, where each power is trying to outdo the other, to overreach the other, in their dealings with China. Anyway, E---- and I were intensely aware of it in this "scrambling together" of all diplomatic Peking.

No j.a.panese was present, although a few j.a.panese are members of the club. And it is significant that no Chinese, no matter how high in rank, is admitted to membership. The impression we derived of this European playground is that the attempt to play is a farce. You look over your shoulder to behold a knife at your back.

After tiffin two more invisible races took place, but no one made an attempt to see them. The dust sifted in through the windows and lay thick on the tables, and one made footprints in it on the floor. Then we were all cheered by the announcement that the special train was returning an hour earlier than the time scheduled, and there was a general move to go. The walk back across the plains was even worse, if possible, than that from the station to the club-house, for the wind was stronger, the dust more blinding. Yet the whole procession was light-hearted, somehow: there were prospects of a bath at the journey's end. As we reached the station the train was pulling in. E---- was walking just ahead of me, talking to the Russian minister, Prince K----.

A gust more violent than usual struck us, and I saw her suddenly leap aboard while the train was moving. When I joined her a moment later she seemed rather dubious.

"I don't know that that's exactly the way to take leave of a prince,"

she said doubtfully, "to jump on a moving train in the middle of a sentence."

VII