Missionary compound—Prayer—Reputed dangers of the way—The German girl—Midwife—The Bible as a guide—“My yoke is easy, My burden is light”—A harem—Helping the sick and afflicted—A case of hysteria—Drastic remedies—Ensuring a livelihood—“Strike, strike”—Barbaric war-song—The Chinese soldier—The martyrdom of the Roman Catholic priest.
And with my entrance into that missionary compound I entered a world as strange to me as the Eastern world I had come across two continents to see.
The compound is right in the heart of the town, and was originally a Chinese inn, built, in spite of the rigour of the climate, Chinese fashion, so that to go from one room to the other it was necessary to go out of doors. The walls looking on to the street were blank, except in the room I occupied, where was a small window, so high up I could not see out of it. How it must be to pass from one room to the other when the bitter winter of Northern China holds the mountains in its grip, I do not know.
I walked in out of the unknown and there came forward to meet me that sad-looking woman with the soft brown eyes and bright red lips. Take me in, yes, indeed she would take me in. I was dusty, I was torn, and I think I was more weary than Ihave ever been in my life, and she made me welcome, made me lie down in a long chair, and had tea brought in. A tall buxom German girl entered, and then to my surprise, and not a little to my discomfort, my hostess bowed her head, and thanked God openly that I had come through the dangers of the way, and been brought safely to their compound! For a moment it took my breath away, and so self-conscious was I, that I did not know which way to look. My father was a pillar of the Church of England, Chancellor of the Diocese in which we lived, and I had been brought up straitly in the fold, among a people who, possibly, felt deeply on occasion, but who never, never would have dreamt of applying religion personally and openly to each other. Frankly I felt very uncomfortable after I had been prayed over, and it seemed a sort of bathos to go on calmly drinking tea and eating bread and jam. The German girl had just arrived, and they heard that the day after she had left Peking, the German Consul had sent round to the mission station, where she had been staying, to cancel her passport, and to say that on no account must she go to Jehol as the country was too disturbed. However she and her escort, one of the missionaries, had come through quite safely, and the Tartar General in charge here had said she might stay so long as she did not go outside the boundaries of the town. But naturally, they were much surprised to see me, a woman and alone.
I looked round the room, the general sitting-room, a bare stone-floored room, with a mat or two upon it, a little cane furniture, a photograph or two, and some texts upon the walls, a harmonium, acouple of tables, and a book-case containing some very old-fashioned books, mostly of a religious tendency, and some stories by A.L.O.E. There was a time when I thought A.L.O.E's stories wonderful, and so I read one or two of them while I was here, and wondered what it was that had charmed me when I was eleven.
The only other woman in that compound, beside my hostess, was the German girl who had come out to help.
“I gave myself to the Lord for China,” she said, and she spoke simply and quietly, as if she were saying the most natural thing in the world, as if there could be no doubt of the value of the gift—truly it was her all, she could not give more. And the Chinese did need her, I think—that is only my opinion—but not exactly in the way she counted most important. She had taken the precaution to become a midwife, and indeed she must be a godsend, for Chinese practices are crude and cruel in the extreme. It is the child that counts, the mother, even in her hour of travail, must literally make no moan. A woman once told me how she went to see her amah, who was expecting a baby, and she was asked to wait. She waited about an hour, for she was anxious about the woman, and the room was very still, there was no sound till the silence was broken by the first cry of the new-born infant. The child had been born behind the screen while she waited, and an hour later, to her horror, the white-faced young mother was up and preparing to cook the family evening meal. The woman would not have cried out for the world. No Chinese woman would. If poor human flesh is weak, and asigh of pain escape her, her mother-in-law will cover her mouth with her hand, but mostly the woman will gag herself with her long black hair, she will not disgrace herself by a cry as long as her senses are with her. It is all very well to say the Chinese do not suffer as white women suffer. They are not like the sturdy negro women who have lived a primitive, open-air life, walk like queens, and have exercised every muscle. They are the crippled products of an effete civilisation, who spend long hours on the k'ang, and go as little as possible from their own compound. To those women that German girl will be a blessing untold. I think of their bodies while she labours for their souls. Anyway she is surely sent by God.
There were two men here to make up the complement, one was my missionary's husband, a man who takes the Bible for his guide in everything, the Bible as it is translated into the English tongue. He does not read primarily for the beauty of the language, for the rhythm, for the poetry, for the Eastern glamour that is over all. He reads it, he would tell you himself, for the truth. It is to him the most important thing in the world; he quotes it, he lives by it, it is never out of his thoughts, he might be a Covenanter of old Puritan days. And the fourth missionary is a man of the world. I don't think he realises it himself, but he is. He had lived there many years, had married a wife and brought up children there, and now had sent them home to be educated, and he himself talked, not of the Bible, though I doubt not he is just as keen as the other, but of the people, and their manner of life, and their customs, of the country, and of the strangers he hadmet, the changes he had seen, and, when I questioned him, of the escape of himself and his family from the Boxers.
For the souls and bodies of these wretched, miserable, uncomprehending Chinese, who very likely, at the bottom of their hearts, pity the strangers because they were not born in the Flowery Land, these devoted people work—work and pray—day and night. The result is not great.
“They will not hear the truth. Their eyes are blind. They worship idols,” they told me of the majority. But they give kindliness, and in all probability, for it is seldom that faithful, honest kindliness fails in its purpose, they make a greater impression than they or I realise.
True they believe firmly in the old Hebrew idea of a “jealous God,” but they themselves are more tender than the God they preach. For all of them, it seemed to me, life is hard, unless they have greater joy in the service than I, “a Greek” could understand, but for the older woman it must be hardest of all.
“My yoke is easy, My burden is light,” said the Master she followed, but the burden of this woman, away up in the mountains of Northern China, is by no means light. The community is so small, they do not belong to the China Inland Mission but call themselves “The Brethren,” the nearest white man is two days away hard travelling across the mountains, so that perforce the life is lonely. Day in and day out they must live here for seven years among an alien people; a people who come to them for aid and yet despise them. And because they would put no more stumbling-blocks in the way ofbringing the Chinese to listen to the message they bring, these missionaries conform, as much as they can, to Chinese custom. Very seldom does this woman walk abroad with her husband—it would not be the thing—women and men do not walk together in China. If she goes outside the missionary compound she must be accompanied by another woman, and she puts on some loose coat, because the Chinese would be shocked at any suggestion of the outline of a figure. Also she looks neither to the right nor the left, and does not appear to notice anything, because a well-behaved woman in China never looks about her. She considers, too, very carefully her goings, she would not walk through the town at the hour when the men are going about their business, the hour that I found the most interesting, and invariably chose, no boy may bring her tea to her bedroom—it would not be right—and she has none of the arrogance of the higher race who think what they do must be right and expect the natives of the land to fall into line. No, she conforms, always conforms to the uncomfortable customs of the Chinese, and when any man above the rank of the poorest comes to call upon her husband, she and the girl are hustled out of the way and are as invisible as if he kept a harem. It often occurred to me that the Chinese thought he did. Even in the church the women are screened off from the men, and if a man adheres to the customs of the country so closely in everything they can see, it is natural to suppose they will give him credit for adhering to them in all things. But they must think, at least, he has selected his womenkind with a view to their welfare, for the older woman has hada little medical training, and simple cases of sickness she can deal with, while the German girl, as I have said, is a certified midwife. The other man too, though not a doctor, has some little knowledge of the more simple eye diseases.
And they are grateful, the poor Chinese, for the sympathy they get from these kindly missionaries, who openly say they tend their poor bodies because they feel that so only can they get at their souls. They come to the little dispensary in crowds, come twenty miles over the mountains, and they bring there the diseases of a slum people, coughs and colds, pleurisy and pneumonia, internal complaints and the diseases of filth—here in the clean mountains—itch and the like. Many have bad eyes, many granulated lids, and there is many a case of hideous goitre. While I was there a man, old and poor, tramped one hundred miles across the mountains; he was blind, with frightfully granulated lids, and he had heard of the skill of the missionaries. There are also well-to-do people here, who sometimes seek aid from them, though as a rule, it is the lower class they come in contact with.
But the ailments of the rich are different, I remember my missionary woman was called in to see a girl about twenty, the daughter of a high-class Manchu. The girl had hiccough. It came on regularly about four o'clock every afternoon, and continued, if I remember rightly, three or four hours. She was well and strong, she had everything the heart of a Chinese woman could desire, she was never required to do one stroke of work, but she was not married. The Manchus have fallen on evil times and find some difficulty in marrying theirdaughters. So this girl, the daughter of well-to-do people, was necessary to no one, not even to herself, and the missionary, finding she spent the greater part of her time lying idly upon the k'ang, diagnosed hysteria, and prescribed a good brisk walk every day. The proud Manchu, who was her mother, looked at the woman she had called in to help her, scornfully.
“My daughter,” she said drawing herself up to her full height, and the Manchus are tall women, “cannot walk in the street. It would not be seemly.”
The missionary looked at her a little troubled.
“At least,” she said, “she can walk in the courtyard and play with her brother's children.”
But the girl looked at her with weary eyes. There was no excitement in playing with her brother's, children, and she could not see the good to be got out of walking aimlessly round the courtyard. Poor Manchu maid! What had she expected?
“If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it?”
“I could do no good,” said the missionary sorrowfully, “and they would not listen to my message.”
The Chinese have their own remedies for many diseases, and some of them the missionaries told me were good, but many were too drastic, and many were wickedly dangerous. When an eye is red and bloodshot for instance, they will break a piece of crockery and pierce the eye with it, and in all probability the unfortunate loses his sight. No wonder they come miles and miles, however rough the way, to submit themselves to gentler treatment. I have known even women with bound feet toil twenty milesto see them about some ailment. Of course their feet are not as badly bound as some, for there are many women in China who cannot walk at all. I talked with a man once who told me he had just been called upon to congratulate a man because he had married a wife who could not get across the room by herself. She, naturally, was a lady with slaves to wait upon her. These Chinese women of the mountains of the poorer classes—the Manchus do not bind their feet—must be able to move about a little, for there is a certain amount of work they must do.
“A hundred thousand medical missionaries,” said this man, “are wanted in China, for the teeming population suffers from its ignorance, it suffers because it is packed so tightly together; the women suffer from the custom that presses so heavily, and it suffers from its own dirt.”
Up here at Jehol the suffering is apparently as bad as anywhere, and the dispensary is full with all the minor ailments that come within the range of the missionaries' simple skill, and all the cruel diseases that are quite beyond them, that they cannot touch, and they do their best in all pity and love, and yet think that they are doing a greater thing than binding up a man's wounds when they can induce him to come to their prayer-meetings, which go along, side by side, with the dispensary.
I, a heathen and a “Greek,” question whether the Chinese ever receives Christianity. A Chinese gentleman, a graduate of Cambridge, once told me he did not think he ever did.
“But the Chinaman,” said he, he actually used the contemned word, “is a practical man, he receives all faiths. Some may be right, and when he thinkshe is dying, he will send for a priest of every faith he knows of to help him across the dark river. Who knows, some of them may chance to be right,” and he laughed. He himself was of the faith so many of us of this modern world have attained to, seeing the good in so many faiths, seeing the beauty and the pity of them and standing aside and crying: “Why all this? Whither are we bound? What can it matter whether this poor coolie believes in Christ, or Buddha, or the cold ethics of Confucius?” I said this to my missionary woman one day and she looked at me with horror in her eyes.
“There will be a reaping some day,” she said. “Where will you be then?”
“Surely I cannot be blamed for using the reasoning powers God has given.” But I am sure she thought my reasoning powers came from the devil, and if I hadn't been getting used to it I should have been made uncomfortable by being prayed for as one in outer darkness.
It is the worship of the ancestors that holds the Chinese, the man who gives up that, gives up all family ties and becomes practically an outcast. There may be a few genuine Christians, but in proportion to the money spent upon their conversion, their number must be very small. I saw the colporteur come into the compound one day, and they told me he was an earnest Christian. He might be, but again that doubt arose in my mind. If the receiving of Christianity ensures a livelihood, could you expect one of a nation, who will be made a eunuch for the same reason, to reject it.
The missionaries had a hard time when first they came here. The place is inhabited by Manchus,full of the pride of race, and they do not want the outsider. They use them, as they have effected a settlement, but they do not approve of their being there.
As I and my saintly missionary walked down the street, she carefully avoiding a glance either to the right or the left, a little half-naked child at his mother's side looked at her and cried aloud:
“Ta, ta,” and he said it vehemently again and again.
She stopped, spoke to the mother, and evidently remonstrated, and the woman laughed and passed along on her high Manchu shoes without correcting the child.
She looked troubled. “What did he say?” I asked.
“Strike, strike! or some people might say 'kill, kill!' I said to the woman: 'What bad manners is this?'”
And the woman had only laughed! After all her kindness and tenderness, all her consideration and care; I should have thought the very children would have worshipped the ground she walked upon.
They are holding their own, they say. In the compound are a couple of Chinese women, the wives of their teachers or servants, and they have had to unbind their feet, a process almost as painful as the binding. One old woman could not unbind hers, they told me, because so long had they been bound the feet split when she attempted to walk upon them unbound, but so true a Christian is she, she puts her tiny feet inside big shoes. But to balance her, their amah, a Manchu, is still a heathen. After the years, the years they had been striving there, they could not find one who has embraced their faith to wait upon them.
0370
In truth it was a hard faith, morning, noon, and night, they prayed, morning, noon, and night, it seemed to me from the little meeting-house went up the sound of hymns and prayers, not even in Christian England, England that has held the faith for over a thousand years would so many services have been attended, could they expect it of the Chinese?
In the evening, when the night fell, we sat in the compound and talked, I, who was cold and reasonable, and they who were enthusiasts, for to them had come the call, that mysterious crying for the unknown that comes to all peoples and all classes, and is called by such different names.
“I have given myself to the Lord for China.” And outside the house the watchman beat his gong, not to frighten off thieves, as I at first thought, but to keep away the devils who help the “stealer man,” for he cannot alone carry out his nefarious designs, thewonks, the scavenger dogs made the night hideous by their howling, and the soldiers, of whom the town was full, sang their new war-song—wild and barbaric.
“I do not like it,” said she of the sad eyes and red lips, “I do not like it. It does not sound true.”
And I, who had not got to live there, did not like it either, but it was because it did sound to me true—it sounded fierce and merciless. What might not men, who sang like that, do?
“The Chinese soldier is a baby,” said a Chineseto me, but that is when he is among his own particular people at home.
“Chinese soldiers,” said another man, a foreigner, “are always robbers and banditti.”
And there is truth in that last statement, possibly there is truth in both, for children, unguided and unbridled, with the strength and passions of men, are dangerous to let loose upon a community.
We are beginning to look upon China as a land at peace. We talk about her “bloodless revolution,” yet even as I write these words I see, sitting opposite to me, my friend who was one of the rescue-party, the gallant nine, who rode post-haste to Hsi An Fu to rescue the missionaries cut off by the tide of the revolution, and I know the peace of China is not as the peace of a Western land.
Hsi An Fu is situated in Shensi, roughly, about a fortnight's journey from the nearest railway, with walls that rival those of Peking, and like Peking, with a Manchu City walled off inside those walls. There on the 22nd October, 1911, the Revolutionaries, the apostles of progress, shut fast the gates of the inner city and butchered the Manchus within the walls. From house to house they went, and slew them all, old women on the brink of the grave and the tiny infant smiling in its mother's arms. Not one was spared. No cries for mercy were listened to. “Kill, kill!” was the cry that bright autumn Sunday; men, women, and children were slain, the streets ran with their blood, the reek of slaughter went up to heaven, and the Manchus were exterminated.
The movement was not anti-foreign, but the plight of the missionaries well illustrates the danger everyforeigner faces in China. The bulk of the people are peaceful. Nowhere in the world, I suppose, is a more peaceful person to be found than the average Chinese peasant. He asks only to be let alone, but, unfortunately, he is not let alone. His rulers “squeeze” and oppress him, bands of robbers take toll of his pittance, and when an unpaid soldiery is let loose upon him, his plight is pitiable. It is certainly understandable, if not pardonable, that he in his turn, takes to pillage, and pillage leads to murder. He is only a puppet in the hands of others. One man alone may be kindly enough but the man who is one of a mob, is swayed by the passions of that mob, or the passions of its leader. So it was at Hsi An Fu. Party feeling ran high. There were really three parties, the Manchus, the Revolutionaries, and the Secret Society, the Elder Brother Society, who are always anti-foreign and who, here in Hsi An Fu, for whatever purpose they might originally have banded themselves together, were virtually a band of robbers, mainly intent on filling their own pockets. The Revolutionaries declared that the foreigners should be protected, but—and again the menace of China to the white man is felt—in the rush and tumult of the battle, many of their followers did not realise this. This was the time to wreak private vengeance, and it was fiercely taken advantage of. When thousands of helpless people, closer akin to the slayers than the foreigners, were being given pitilessly to the sword, who was likely to take much account of a handful of missionaries.
There was outside the city in the south suburb a small school for the teaching of the Swedish missionaries' children, and the head of that school had,some little time before, had a camera stolen. He reported it to the police, and being dissatisfied with the lax way the man at the head of the district took the matter up, went to his superior officer. Now in these disturbed times, the man who had “lost face” saw his way to vengeance, and, being in sympathy with the Revolutionaries, and knowing the exact hour of the outbreak, he ordered the villagers round the south suburb, every family, to send at least one man to help exterminate the foreigners. “It was an order,” and the villagers responded. The school was the first place attacked, for not only did this man seek vengeance, but the humble possessions of the missionaries seemed to the poorer Chinese to be wealth well worth looting. Therefore that Sunday at midnight a mob attacked the school premises. The missionaries, Mr and Mrs Beckman and Mr Watne, the tutor, were helpless before the crowd, and hid in a tool-house, but they were discovered and ran out, making for a high wall that surrounded the compound. Mr Watne got astride of this and handed over Mr Beckman's eldest daughter, a tall girl of twelve, but, before he could get the other children, the crowd rushed them, and he was tumbled over the wall, making his escape with the girl to another village some way off while the mob swept over the rest, scattering them far and wide. Mr Beckman, a particularly tall, stalwart man, considerably over six feet high, had his youngest child, a baby, in his arms, and the people gave way before him, closing in on the unfortunates who were following. It is impossible for an outsider to tell the tale of that massacre, for massacre it was, the people falling upon and doing to death the unfortunate woman and the children who were clustering round her. The darkness was filled with the fierce shouts of the murderers, and every now and again they were broken in upon by the terrified wail of a child butchered with none to help.
“Ta, ta,” cried the people, and they struck mercilessly, with spades and reaping hooks and knives, the weak and helpless, and dodged out of the way of the great, strong man who could fight a little for his life and the lives of those dear to him.
The woman and the children were slain and at last he was hunted, with the little girl still in his arms, into a deep pond of water outside the suburb. The mite was only three years old, and the distracted father, wild with anxiety for his wife and other children, had to soothe the little one and exhort her to be quiet and not to cry, for the pursuers were lighting fires round the pond to find them. They lighted three, and the fires probably defeated their own end, for the fugitive managed to keep out of the glare, and the leaping flames deepened the darkness around. The baby sheltered in her father's arms, and in spite of the cold, never even whimpered, and the water was so deep the mob dared not venture in. Only a man of extraordinary height could have so saved himself. Hour after hour of the bitter cold autumn night passed and the mob dispersed a little. The lust for killing was not so great in the keen Hours of the early morning. Then the first silver streaks, heralding the rising of the moon, appeared in the eastern sky and the distracted man made his way softly to a bank at one side, and reaching up, again only a tall man could have done it, laid his little girl there. But the child who had been so good in the icy water while she was against his breast began to fret when the keen morning air blew through her sodden clothes and she could not feel her father's arms round her, and he had to take her back and soothe her. But at last he persuaded her to lie still till he got softly out of the water, and crept round to her. He was not followed, the pursuit was slackening more and more, and, keeping in the shadows, he made his way to the missionaries in the western suburb. He thought that all but he and his little girl had perished, and sad to say they did not know of the two who were sheltering in a village some miles away in the country. Here, nearly twelve hours later, the pursuers sought them out and stoned them to death.
Meanwhile rumours of what was happening in the southern suburb reached the missionaries in the eastern suburb, and they, taking counsel with their native helpers, divided themselves into three parties, and set out to take refuge in some more distant villages where the people were reputed Christians. They had gone but a little way, when the carts of two of the parties were overtaken by a mob, who handled them somewhat roughly, took all their humble possessions, and drove them back.
“Kill, kill!” cried the pointing people, as the little helpless company, escorted by the shouting, threatening mob passed, and even those who did not directly threaten, seemed to have no hope.
“They go to their deaths,” they said, looking at them curiously as men look upon other men about to die.
The missionaries themselves had small hope of their lives. When they reached the first mission-house they were roughly thrust into a room and there guarded, and they only wondered why death did not come swiftly and cut short the agony of waiting.
The third party that set out from that suburb consisted of the Rev. Donald Smith, his wife, and some schoolgirls they were escorting back to their homes, as he considered, in these troublous times, they would be safer with their own people than in the mission school. They went due east, and had not gone three miles when they were set upon. The girls fled in all directions, but the attackers only molested the foreigner and his wife. He endeavoured to defend her, but they beat him so severely that both his arms were broken, and they were both left for dead by the wayside. Here they were found by some friendly, kindly villagers—the average Chinaman is kindly—who, when the roughs were gone, came to their rescue, and took them back to the eastern suburb, where the other missionaries had spent a terrible two hours, momentarily expecting the mob to rush in and kill them.
But the Chinese are a cautious people, curious in their respect for precedent. What was to be done with these foreigners. Sometimes the foreigners had been slain, but then again, quite as often, they had been guarded and kept safely. There was no getting into the city. The gates were fast locked and were kept shut for days, but someone—very probably a well-wisher to the missionaries—went to the wall and shouted up to know what was the order about foreigners? Were they to kill them or were they to protect them? Back came the response, the order was, the foreigners were to be protected, and when word of this was brought back to the mission station, they were not only released, but the property of which they had been robbed was returned to them. For those who had looted kept it intact till they saw which way the wind blew.
And by the time the city gates were opened and order was restored, it was understood, by the proclamation of the New Republic, that all foreigners were to be protected.
But the case of the missionaries in Hsi An Fu graphically illustrates the dangers every foreigner, missionary, or the missionary'sbête noire, the ubiquitous cigarette-selling British American Tobacco man, runs in China, where the civilisation, the long-established civilisation is that of Nineveh or Babylon, or ancient Egypt. Not that the foreigner runs any greater risk than the native of the country, sometimes he runs less, because, even into the far interior, a glimmering of the vengeance the Christian nations take for their martyred brothers has penetrated; but life in China is, as it was in Nineveh or Babylon, not nearly as sacred as it is in the West. The life of a poor man, one of the luckless proletariat, is of small account to anyone. A disbanded and unpaid soldiery are for ever a menace, and the difference between the disciplined soldier and the unlicensed bandit is very, very small. One week a regiment of soldiers clamouring for their pay, the next a band of robbers hiding in the hills, their methods ruthless, for their hand is against every man's and every man's hand is against them. They live by the sword, as they perish by the sword, and when the tide of lawlessness reaches a certain height, white man and yellow alike suffer, but we take count only of the sufferings of our own people.Sitting in the missionary compound up at Jehol in the evening, I thought of these things and looked into the eyes that looked into mine, the kind, brown eyes, and I wondered did she remember, did she think of them, too. I looked again, and I knew she remembered, that ever with her was the thought how cut off they were from the rest of the world, and I read there, though she never murmured, fear. For Jehol has its traditions of sacrifice and martyrdom too. Only six miles away at a village on the Lanho, in the year of the Boxer trouble, they had slowly buried the Catholic priest alive. All the long hot summer's day they had kept him tied to a post, slowly, to prolong his agony, heaping up the earth around him. The day was hot, and he begged for water as the long, weary, hopeless hours dragged themselves away. And some of them had loved him.
“You might,” said a man looking on, “give him a drink, even if you do kill him.”
And they turned on him even as men might have done in the days of the Inquisition:
“If you say any more, we will bury you beside him.”
And so he died a cruel death, a martyr, for there was none to help, and when the Western nations exacted retribution, they made the people put up a cross, the symbol of his faith, over the grave. And then, because they had been forced to do it, every villager who passed that monument to show his contempt for the foreigner and all his works cast a stone, till now shape and inscription have both gone, and the passer-by cannot tell what is that rough rock, jagged and unshapely.
Yet here among these selfsame people, four and a half days' hard journey from Peking, far beyond all hope of help from the foreign soldiery, dwell these Christian missionaries. “To the Greeks, foolishness.” But could they better demonstrate the strength of their faith?
Hsiung Hsi Ling, Premier of China—Preparations for a call—A cart of State—An elderly mule—Waiting in the gate—The yam en—Mr Wu, the secretary—“Hallo, Missus!”—The power of a Chinese General—“Plenty robber, too much war”—Ceremonial farewell—A cultivated gentleman—Back to past ages for the night.
Up in Jehol they called the General commanding the three thousand odd troops the Tartar General, why I do not know, but it seems it is the title by which he is commonly known among the country people. He was Hsiung Hsi Ling, the man who is now Premier of China, and to him I brought letters of introduction so that I might be admitted to the Imperial Palace and Park and be treated as a person of consequence, otherwise I imagine a foreigner and a woman at that would have but small chance of respect in China. The Chinese letters lifted me to the rank of the literati, which must have been rather surprising to the Chinese, and these in English were such that I felt I must bear myself so as to live up to them.
The yamen was about five minutes' walk from the mission station, and in my ignorance I had thought I would stroll up some morning when I had recovered from the fatigues of the journey, but the missionaries,steeped in the lore of Chinese etiquette, declared such a proceeding was not suitable. A person of consequence, such as my letters proclaimed me, must bear herself more becomingly.
“Write and ask if ten o'clock on Tuesday morning will be a suitable time for you to call on the General, and send your letters by your servant. I dare say there will be somebody who can read them, though I am sure there will be nobody who can write an answer,” said the missionary. “The General's English-speaking secretary is away.”
Accordingly I sent off Tuan, who was more than sure that he was equal to the task, and he returned without a letter, as the missionary had prophesied, but saying: “She say all right.”
“And now you must have a cart,” said that missionary who was more worldly wise than I expected an enthusiast to be, “and don't get down till the yamen gates are opened. It would never do to wait with the servants in the gate.”
How Eastern it sounded! And then his wife came and superintended my toilet. The weather was warm, not to say hot, and I had thought a black and white muslin a most fitting and suitable array. But she was horrified at the effect. It was made in the mode of 1913, and did not suggest, as the long Manchu robes do, that I was built like a pyramid, broadest at the base.
“Haven't you got a coat to put over you,” said she looking round, and she seized my burberry which was the only thing in the shape of a wrap I had with me. Chinese ideas of propriety evidently influenced her very strongly.
I declined to wear a burberry on a hot day late inMay, though all the Chinese Empire were shocked and horrified at my impropriety, but I sought round and found a lace veil which, draped over me, was a little suggestive of a bridal festivity, but apparently satisfied all conditions, and then I went out to mount into that abomination—a Peking cart. The Peking cart that is used for visiting has a little trestle carried over the back end of the shafts, which is taken down when the occupant wishes to mount and dismount, so I got into the seat of honour, the most uncomfortable seat well under the tilt, and Tuan, glorious in a long black silk brocade robe, his queue newly oiled and plaited, and a big straw hat upon his head, climbed on to the tail of the shaft, and the carter, dressed in the ordinary blue of his class, with the ordinary rag over his head to keep off the dust, walked beside the most venerable white mule I have ever come across. I don't know whether aged animals are held in respect in China, I'm afraid not. The poor old thing had great deep hollows over his eyes. I suspect Tuan had got him cheap, because the cart was respectable, and he had been good once—of course he would never have let me lose face—and then he made me pay full price, a whole fivepence I think it came to.
“That's a very old mule, Tuan,” I said.
“Yes,” he assented, “very old, she forty,” which was certainly more than I had reckoned him. I afterwards came to the conclusion he meant fourteen.
What Tuan was there for, I certainly don't know, except to carry my card-case, which I was perfectly capable of carrying myself.
We went out into the dusty, mud-coloured street, and along between mud-coloured walls of the dullest, most uninteresting description, and presently we arrived at the yamen gates, and here it was evident that Tuan, who had been so important all across the mountains, was now quite out of his depth.
“Cart no can go,” said he. “Missie get out.”
I was prepared for that. “No,” I said very important for once in my life, “I wait till someone comes.”
The yamen entrance was divided into three, as all Chinese entrances seem to be, and over it were curved tiled roofs with a little colouring, faded and shabby, about them; all of it was badly in need of repair, and on the fast-closed gates in the middle were representations of some demon apparently in a fit, but his aspect was a little spoiled by the want of a fresh coat of paint. The two little gates at either side were open, and here clustered Chinese soldiers in khaki, and men in civilian dress of blue cotton, and all stared at the foreign woman who was not a missionary, in the cart; that is the rude ones stared, and the polite ones looked uncomfortably out of the corners of their eyes. A Chinaman's politeness in this respect always ends by making me uncomfortable. A good, downright stare that says openly: “I am taking you in with all my eyes,” I can stand, but the man who looks away and down and out of the corners of his eyes gets on my nerves in no time.
However, this time I had not long to wait. After a minute or two out came a messenger, a Chinese of the better class, for he was dressed in a bright blue silk coat and petticoats, with a black sleeveless jacket over it, and the gates at his command, to my boy's immense astonishment, opened, and my cart rumbled into the first courtyard. We went on into a second—bare, ugly courtyards they were, without a flower or a tree or any green thing to rest the eye upon—and then I got down as there came to meet me a small bare-headed man without a queue, and his thick black hair apparently cut with a saw and done with a fork. He wore an ill-fitting suit of foreign clothes, and about his neck, instead of a collar, one of those knitted wraps an Englishwoman puts inside her coat when the weather is cold. On his feet were the white socks and heelless slippers of the Chinese. Instead of the dignified greeting the first man had given me he remarked genially, and offhandedly: “Hallo, Missus!” and he did it with a certain confidence, as if he really would show the numerous bystanders that he knew how to receive a lady.
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Through one shabby courtyard after another, all guarded by soldiers in khaki, he led me to the presence of the Tartar General, Hsiung Hsi Ling, the great man who had been Minister of Finance and who now held military command over the whole of that part of China, independent even of the Viceroy of the Province of Chihli. Those who told me made a great point of that independence; but in China it seems that a General with troops at his command always is independent, not only of the Viceroy of the Province in which he is stationed, but of anyone else in authority. The President himself would treat him with great respect so long as he had troops at his back. He is, in fact, entirely independent. If the central authorities give him money to pay his troops, well and good, he holds himself at their command, if they do not, then he is quite likely to sympathise with his men, and become not only adanger to the community among whom he is stationed, but to the Government as well. It is hardly likely yet in China, that a General popular with his troops can be degraded or dismissed. He can only be got rid of by offering him something better.
Here I found none of the pomp and magnificence I had expected to find about an all-powerful Oriental. We went into a room floored with stone, after the Chinese fashion, and furnished with a couple of chairs, and through that into a plain, smallish room, with the usual window of dainty lattice-work covered with white paper. All down the centre of it ran a table like a great dining-table, covered, as if to emphasise the likeness, with a white cloth. I felt as if I had come in at an inopportune moment, before the table had been cleared away. Seated at this table, with his back to the window, was the General. He rose as I entered and came forward, kindly and considerately, to meet me—a man of middle height, younger than I expected, for he hardly looked forty. There was not a thread of white in his coal-black hair, but he had some hair on his face—a moustache and the scanty beard that is all the Chinese can produce—so he was evidently of ripe years, well past middle age. He wore a uniform of khaki, as simple and devoid of ornament as that of one of his own soldiers; his thick black hair was cut short and he had a clever, kindly face. Though he could understand no English, he looked at the foreign woman pleasantly, and as if he were glad to see her. He went back to his chair, and I was seated at his right hand, while his secretary, and very inadequate interpreter, sat on his left. An attendant, looking like an ordinary coolie, brought in tea in three cups with handles and saucers, foreign fashion, and the interview began.
I have been told that a grave and unsmiling demeanour is the proper thing to bring to a Chinese interview; and if so I failed lamentably to come up to the correct standard. But since the interpreter knew even less English than Tuan, whom I had left outside, there was really little else to do but smile and look pleasant. My host certainly smiled many times. I complimented him on the beauty of his country and then I asked permission, that is to say his protection, to go on to Lamamiao, or as it is called on the maps, Dolnor. Goodness knows why I asked. It would have meant two or three weeks at least in that awful Peking cart, but I appear to be so constituted that, when I am within range of a place, it would seem like missing my opportunities not to try and get there. I don't know what there is to see at Dolnor, but it is up on the Mongolian plateau, and there is a big lamaserie there and a living Buddha, that is an incarnation of the Buddha. The one who is there at present may be very holy as to one part of him, but the earthly part requires plenty of drink, I am told, and the caresses of many women to make this world tolerable. However, I was not to see him. The General and his secretary might not have understood much, but they did understand what I wanted then, and they were emphatic that I could not go. The General looked at his secretary and then at me, and explained at length, and he must have thought that the English language was remarkable for its brevity, for I was curtly informed:
“No can go. Plenty robber. Too much war.”
I had been threatened with robbers before, but not by an important General, and this time I felt I had better take heed, besides there was always the consolatory thought that, if I did not go, I need not ride any more in a Peking cart. Then I asked permission to visit the Palace and Park.
“No can do one time,” said the interpreter. “How many day you want go?”
Somehow, though I had come all this way to see it, I have a rooted objection to sightseeing. To get a ticket to go into a place takes away the charm; still as I was about it, I thought I would go as often as I could, so I said I would like to go on five days. The missionaries, though they had been here for six years, had never yet set foot inside that Park; to go required a permit from the authorities, and it was their idea to ask nothing from those authorities that they could possibly avoid. They would certainly have thought it wicked to ask for anything for their own pleasure. I did not suffer from any such ideas. As the General was bent on being civil to me I thought I might as well say I would like to take my friends in, and as we could not go without proper attendants—I who come from a country where I have blacked my own boots, cooked the family dinner, and ironed my husband's shirts many a time—I asked for and got about thirty tickets. I've got some of them still. Then I drank a cup of very excellent tea, and before five minutes were up rose and made my adieux. Brevity, I had been instructed, was the soul of courtesy in a Chinese interview.
The Tartar General saw me through two doors, which I believe was a high honour, and due to my having been introduced as a learned doctor. The correct thing is to protest all the while and beg your host not to come any farther, but I am really too Western in my ideas and it seems silly. Either he wants to come, or he doesn't, in any case what does it matter, and so I fear me, I was not vehement enough in my protestations of unworthiness. The secretary conducted me to my cart, where a subdued and awed servant awaited my arrival with a new and exalted idea of his Missie's importance. Tuan had magnified my importance, I fancy, for his own sake. He was serving a woman—yes, but she was a rich, generous, and important woman, but he had never, at the bottom of his heart, really dreamt that she could go through the yamen gate in a cart, that she could sit down beside the Tartar General, that she could get many tickets to go inside grounds forbidden to all the Chinese round about. I have not the slightest doubt all the details of the interview reached him before I came out, brief as my visit had been, and he helped me into my cart with, I felt, more deference and less make-believe than was usual. It made me smile a little to myself, but I think it was Tuan who really got most satisfaction out of that visit, though he had not seen the great man.