0257
Nobody could speak a word of English. In the course of five minutes I should say, the entire station staff of Pao Ting Fu stood around me, and vociferously gave me their views—on the weather and the latest political developments for all I know. If it was about the luggage I was no wiser. Some were dressed in khaki, some in dark cloth with uniform caps, and most had the wild hair that comes to the lower classes with the cutting off of the queue. There were about a dozen of them with a few idlers in blue cotton, patched, dirty, faded, and darned, and some of these wore queues, queues that had been slept in for about a week without attention, and they were all quite anxious to be nice to the foreign woman, and took turns in trying to make her understand. In vain. What they wanted I could not imagine. At last a lane opened, and I guessed the vociferating crowd were saying: “Here is the very man to tackle the situation.” There came along a little man in dark cloth who stood before me and in the politest manner laid a dirty, admonitory finger upon my breast He had a rudimentary knowledge of English but it was very rudimentary, and I remembered promptly that this was a French railway.
“Parlez-vous Français?” said I, wondering if my French would carry me through.
He shook his head. As a matter of fact English,pidgin-English, is the language of China, when another tongue is wanted, and my new friend's English was not at all bad—what there was of it. Though why I should go to their country and expect these people to understand me I'm sure I do not know.
“Your luggage is here,” said he very slowly, emphasising every word by a tap.
“Thank Heaven,” I sighed, “take me to it,” but he paid no heed.
“You”—and he tapped on solemnly—“must—send—your—husband.”
This was a puzzler. “My husband,” I said meekly, “is dead.”
It looked like a deadlock. It was apparently impossible to deliver up her luggage to a woman whose husband was dead. Everybody on the platform, including the idlers, made some suggestion to relieve the strain, and feeling that it might help matters, I said he had been dead a very long time, I was a lonely orphan and I had no brothers. They probably discussed the likelihood of my having any other responsible male belongings and dismissed it, and the man, who knew English, returned to the charge.
“Where—do—you—stay?” and he tapped his way through the sentence.
“At Dr Lewis's.” I felt like doing it singsong fashion myself.
“You—must—tell—Lu Tai Fu—to—come.”
“But,” I remonstrated, “Dr Lewis is busy, and he does not know the luggage.”
There was another long confabulation, then a brilliant idea flashed like a meteor across the crowd."You—must—go—back—and—write—a— letter,” and with a decisive tap my linguist friend stood back, and the whole crowd looked at me as much as to say that settled it most satisfactorily.
I argued the matter. I wanted to see the luggage.
“The—luggage—is—here”—tapped my friend, reproachfully, as if regretting I should be so foolish—“you—must—go—back—write—one— piecey—letter.”
“I'll write it here,” said I, and after about a quarter of an hour taken up in tapping, I was conducted round to the back of the station, an elderly inkpot and a very, very elderly pen with a point like a very rusty pin were produced, but there was no paper. Everyone looked about, under the benches, up at the ceiling, and at last one really resourceful person produced a luggage label of a violent yellow hue, and on the back of that, with some difficulty, for as well as the bad pen, there was a suspicion of gum on the paper, I wrote a letter to “Dear Sir” requesting that responsible individual to hand over my luggage to my servant, I signed my name with as big a flourish as the size of the label would allow, and then I stood back and awaited developments.
Everybody in the room looked at that valuable document. They tried it sideways, they tried it upside down, but no light came. At last the linguist remarked with his usual tap:
“No—can—read.”
Well, I could read English, so with greatempressementand as if I were conferring a great favour, I read that erudite document aloud to the admiring crowd, even to my own name, and such was the magic of the written word, that in about twominutes the lost luggage appeared, and was handed over to my waiting coolie! Only when I was gone doubt fell once more upon the company. Could a woman, a masterless woman, be trusted? they questioned. And the stationmaster sent word to Lu Tai Fu that he must have his card to show that it was all right!
If a woman counted for so little in a town where the foreigner was well known, could I expect much in out-of-the-way parts. I didn't expect much, luckily. The people came and looked at me, and they were invariably courteous and polite, with an old-world courtesy that must have come down to them through the ages, but they did not envy, I felt it very strongly—at bottom they were contemptuous. As I have seen the lower classes in an Australian mining town, as I myself have looked upon a stranger in an outlandish dress in the streets of London, so these country people looked upon me. It was just as well to make the most of a show, because their lives were uneventful, that was all.
It began to get on my nerves before I had done, this contemptuous curiosity. I don't know that I was exactly afraid, but I grew to understand why missionaries perish when the people have all apparently been well-disposed. These people would not have robbed me themselves, but had I met any of the robbers I had been threatened with in Peking, I am sure not one of them would have raised even a finger to help me, they would not even have protested. I was outside their lives.
And at last, at Malanyu, the hills that at first had loomed purple on the horizon, fairly overshadowed us, and I had arrived at the first stage of myjourney, the Tungling, or Eastern Tombs. We did forty miles that day over the roughest road I had gone yet, and thankful was I when we rumbled through the gates of the dirty, crowded, little town.
We put up at the smallest and filthiest inn I had yet met. Chinese towns, even the smallest country hamlet, are always suggestive of slums, and Malanyu was worse than usual, but I slept the sleep of the utterly weary, and next morning at sunrise I had breakfast and went to see the tombs. I went in state, in my own cart with an extra mule on in front, I seated under the tilt a little back, and my servant and the head “cartee man” on the shafts; and then I discovered that if a loaded cart is an abomination before the Lord, a light cart is something unspeakable. But we had seen the wall that went round the tombs the night Before, just the other side of the town, so I consoled myself with the reflection that my sufferings would not be for long.
When the Imperial Manchus sought a last resting-place for themselves they had the whole of China to choose from, and they took with Oriental disregard for humbler people; but—saving grace—they chose wisely though they chose cruelly. They have taken for their own a place just where the mountains begin, a place that must be miles in extent. It is of rich alluvial soil swept down by the rains from the hills, and all China, with her teeming population, cannot afford to waste one inch of soil. The tiniest bit of arable land, as I had been seeing for the last three days, is put to some use, it is tilled and planted and carefully tended, though it bear only a single fruit-tree, only a handful of grain, but here we entered a park, waste land covering many miles, wasted witha royal disregard for the people's needs. It lay in a great bay of the hills, sterile, stony, rugged hills with no trace of green upon them, hills that stand up a perfect background to a most perfect place of tombs. I had thought the resting-place of the Mings wonderful, but surely there is no such place for the honoured dead as that the Manchus have set up at the Eastern Tombs.
Immediately we entered the gateway, the cart jolting wickedly along a hardly defined track, I found myself in a forest of firs and pines that grew denser as we advanced. Here and there was a poplar or other deciduous tree, green with the greenness of May time, but the touch of lighter colour only emphasised the sombreness of the pines and firs that, with their dark foliage, deepened the solemnity of the scene. Through their branches peeped the deep blue sky, and every now and again they opened out a little, and beyond I could see the bare hills, brown, and orange, and purple, but always beautiful, with the shadows chasing each other over them, and losing themselves in their folds. Spacious, grand, silent, truly an ideal place for the burial of Emperors and their consorts is hidden here in the heart of mysterious, matter-of-fact China, and once again I was shown, as I was being shown every day, another side of China from the toiling thousands I saw in the great city and on the country roads.
Dotted about in this great park, with long vistas in between are the tombs. They are enclosed in walls, walls of the pinkish red that encloses all imperial grounds, generally there is a caretaker, and they look for all the world like comfortable houses, picturesque and artistic, nestling secluded and awayfrom the rush and roar of cities, homes where a man may take his well-earned rest. The filthy inn at which I stayed, the reeking little town of Malanyu, though it is at the very gates, is as far-removed from all contact with the tombs as are the slums of Notting Dale from the mansions in Park Lane, or the sordid, mean streets of Paddington from the home of the King in Buckingham Palace. The birds, the innumerable, much-loved birds of China sang in the trees their welcome to the glorious May morning, and the only thing out of keeping was my groaning, jolting, complaining Peking cart and the shouts of the “cartee man” assuring the mules, so I have been told, that the morals of their female relatives were certainly not above suspicion.
Here and there, among the trees, rose up marble pillars tall and stately, carved with dragons and winged at the top, such as one sees in representations of Babylon and Nineveh, there was a marble bridge, magnificent, with the grass growing up between the great paving-stones that here, as everywhere in China, seem to mark the small value that has been put on human flesh and blood, for by human hands have they been placed here, and the uprights are crowned by the symbolic cloud form, caught in the marble. This bridge crosses no stream. It is evidently just a manifestation of power, the power that crushes, and beyond it is an avenue of marble animals. There they stand on the green sward, the green sward stolen from the hungry, curving away towards the p'ia lou stand, as they have stood for many a long year, horses, elephants, fabulous beasts that might have come out of the Book of Revelations, guarding the entranceto the place of rest. They are not nearly so magnificent as the avenue at the Ming Tombs, they are only quaintly Chinese, it is the winged pillars, the silence, the sombre pine and fir-trees, and the everlasting hills behind that give them dignity.
And now Tuan became very important. I began to feel that he had arranged the whole for my benefit, and was keeping the best piece back to crown it all. We came to a piece of wild country and I was requested to get out of the cart. Getting out of the cart where there was no place to step was always a business. I was stiff from the jolting, felt disinclined to be very acrobatic, and Tuan always felt it his bounden duty to stretch out his arms to catch me, or break my fall. He was so small, though he was round and fat, that he always complicated matters by making me feel that if I did fall I should certainly materially damage him, but it was no good protesting, it was the correct thing for him to help his Missie out of her cart, and he was prepared to perish in the attempt. However, here was a soft cushion of fragrant pine needles, so I scrambled down without any of the qualms from which I usually suffered. We had come to a halt for a moment by the steep side of a little wooded hill where a narrow footpath wound round it. Just such a modest little path between steep rising ground one might see in the Surrey Hills. It invites to a secluded glen, but no cart could possibly go along it, it is necessary to walk. I turned the corner of the hill and lo! there was a paved way, a newly paved way, such as I have seldom seen in China. The faint morning breeze stirred among the pine needles, making a low, mysterious whispering, and out against the background stood, a splash of brilliant, glowing colour, the many roofs of golden-brown tiles that cover the mausoleum of the great woman who once ruled over China, the last who made a stand, a futile stand, against foreign aggression, and now a foreigner and a woman, unarmed and alone, might come safely and stand beside her tomb.
0267
0268
Perhaps that was the best way to view it, at any rate inside I could not go, for the key I discovered was at Malanyu, and it would have taken me at least half a day to go back and get it. Besides I don't think I wanted to go inside. I would not for the world have spoilt the memory that remains in my mind by any tawdry detail such as I had seen at the younger Empress's funeral. It was just a little spoilt as it was by my boy, who came along mysteriously and pointed with a secret finger at the custodian of the tomb, who had not the keys.
“Suppose Missie makee litteecumshaw. Suppose my payee one dollar.”
And I expect the man did get perhaps sixty cents, because Tuan was bent on impressing on these people the fact that his Missie was a very important woman indeed.
It was worth it, it was well worth it.
They say that the old in China is passing away. “Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings.” Will they sweep away these tombs and give this land to the people? I hope not, I think not, I pray not. The present in China is inextricably mixed up with the past. “Oh Judah keep thy solemn feast, perform thy vows.” Sometimes it is surely well that the beautiful should be kept for a nation, even at great cost.
Numerous walled towns—The dirt of them—T'ung Chou—Romance of the evening light—My own little walled city—The gateways—Hospitable landlady—Bald heads—My landlady's room—A return present—“The ringleaders have been executed”—Summary justice—To the rescue of the missionaries at Hsi An Fu—The Elder Brother Society-Primitive method of attack and defence—The sack of I Chun.
Oh that first walled city! It was the first of many walled cities, many of them so small that it did not take us more than a quarter of an hour to cross from gate to gate; but to enter one and all was like opening a door into the past, into the life our forbears lived before the country I was born and brought up in was ever thought of. When I was a little girl, I cherished a desire to marry a German baron, a German baron of the Middle Ages, who lived in a castle, and I could not help thinking, as the influenza left me and I regained my powers of thought, that here were the towns of my German baron's time—dirt and all. In my childhood I had never thought of the dirt, or perhaps I had not minded. One thing is certain, in the clean land of my childhood I never realised what the dirt that comes from a packed population, from seething humanity, can be like. The Chinese live in these crowded towns for the sake of security—of security in this twentieth century—for even still, China seems to be much in the condition of Europe of the Middle Ages, safety cannot be absolutely counted upon inside the gates of a town, but at least it is a little safer than the open country.
We passed through T'ung Chou when the soft tender evening shadows were falling upon battlements and walls built by a nation that, though it is most practical, is also one of the most poetical on earth; we passed through Chi Chou when the shadows were long in the early morning, and in the sunlight was the hope of the new-born day. Through the gate was coming a train of Peking carts, of laden donkeys, of great grain carts with seven mules, all bound for the capital in the south.
I remember these two perhaps because they were the first of many walled towns, but Tsung Hua Chou will always remain in my memory as my own little walled city, the one that I explored carefully all by myself, and, when I think of a walled town, my thoughts always fly back to that little town, three-quarters of a mile square, at the foot of the hills that mark the limit of the great plain of China proper.
It was Tuan's suggestion we should stay there. I would have lingered at the tombs, but he was emphatic.
“Missie want make picture. More better we stop Tsung Hua Chou. Fine picture Tsung Hua Chou.”
There weren't fine pictures at Tsung Hua Chou. He had struck up a great friendship with the “cartee man,” and, perhaps, either he or the “cartee man” had a favourite gaming-house, or a favouritesinging girl in the town. At any rate we went, and I, for some hardly explainable reason, am glad we did.
The road from the tombs was simply appalling. The hills frowned down on us, close on either side, high and steep and rugged, but the rough valley bottom, up which we went, was the wildest I was to see for a long time. To say I was tossed and jolted, is to but mildly express the condition of affairs. I sat on a cushion, I packed my bedding round me, and with both my hands I held on to the side of the cart, and if for one moment I relaxed the rigidity of my aching arms, my head or some other portion of my aching anatomy, was brought into contact with the woodwork of the cart, just in the place I had reckoned the woodwork could not possibly have reached me. There were little streams and bridges across them, which I particularly dreaded, for the bridges were always roughly paved, but it was nobody's business to see that the road and the pavement met neatly, and the jolt the cart gave, both getting on and getting off, nearly shook the soul out of my body. I thought of walking, for our progress was very slow, but in addition to the going being bad, the mules went just a little faster than I did, three and a half miles an hour to my three, and I felt there was nothing for it but to resign myself and make the best of a bad job. Not for worlds would I have lingered an hour longer on that road than I was absolutely obliged. And yet, bad as it was, it was the best road I had till I got back to Peking again. There may be worse roads than those of China, and there may be worse ways of getting over them than in aPeking cart, but I do trust I never come across them.
We entered the gates of the city as the evening shadows were growing long, and as usual, I was carried back to the days of the Crusaders—or farther still to Babylon—as we rumbled under the arched gateway, but inside it was like every other town I have seen, dirty, sordid, crowded, with uneven pavements that there was no getting away from. Within the curtain wall, that guarded the gate, there were the usual little stalls for the sale of cakes, big, round, flat cakes and little scone-like cakes, studded with sesame seed, or a bright pink sweetmeat; there were the sellers of pottery ware, basins and pots of all sorts, and the people stared at the foreign woman, the wealthy foreign woman who ran to two carts. It is an unheard-of thing in China for a Chinese woman to travel alone, though sometimes the foreign missionary women do, but they would invariably be accompanied by a Chinese woman, and one woman would not be likely to have two carts. One thing was certain however, my outfit was all that it should have been, bar the lack of a male protector. It bespoke me a woman of wealth and position in the eyes of the country folk, and the people of the little towns through which I passed. It is possible that a mule litter might have enhanced my dignity; but after all, two Peking carts was very much like having a first-class compartment all to myself.
There were no foreigners, that I could hear of, in Tsung Hua Chou. The missionaries had fled during the Boxer trouble, and never come back, so that I was more of a show than usual, thoughindeed, in all the towns I passed through I was a show, and the people stared, and chattered, and crowded round the carts, and evidently closely questioned the carters.
They tell me Chinese carters are often rascals, but I grew to like mine very much before we parted company.
They were stolid men in blue, with dirty rags wrapped round their heads to keep off the dust, and I have no reason to suppose that they affected water any more than the rest of the population, whereby I perceive, my affections are not so much guided by a desire for cleanliness as I had once supposed. They both had the hands of artists, artists with very dirty nails, so it may be a feeling of brotherhood had something to do with my feelings, for I am hoping you who read will count me an artist in a small way. What romance they wove about me, for the benefit of the questioning people, I don't know, but the result of their communications was that the crowd pressed closer, and stared harder, and they were evil-smelling, and had never, never in all their lives been washed. I ceased to wonder that I ached all over with the jolting and rumbling of the cart, I only wondered if something worse had not befallen me, and how it happened that these people, who crowded round, staring as if never in their lives had they seen a foreign woman before, did not fall victims to some horrible pestilence.
For once inside Tsung Hua Chou I saw no beauty in it, for all the romantic walls outside. The evil-smelling streets we rumbled through to the inn were wickedly narrow, and down the centre hung notices in Chinese characters on long strips ofpaper white and red, and pigs, and children, and creaking wheelbarrows, and men with loads, blocked the way. But we jolted over the step into the courtyard of the inn at last, quite a big courtyard, and quite a busy inn. This was an inn where they apparently ran a restaurant, for as I climbed stiffly out of my cart a servant, carrying a tray of little basins containing the soups and stews the Chinese eat, was so absorbed in gazing at me he ran into the “cartee man,” and a catastrophe occurred which was the occasion of much bad language.
0276
The courtyard was crowded. There were blue-tilted Peking carts, there were mules, there were donkeys, there were men of all sorts; but there was only one wretched little room for me. It was very dirty too, and I was very tired. What was to be done?
“Plenty Chinese gentlemen sleep here,” declared Tuan, and I could quite believe it. At the door of every lattice-windowed room that looked out on to that busy courtyard, stood one, or perhaps two Chinese of the better class—long petticoats, shaven head, queue and all—each held in his hand a long, silver-mounted pipe from which he took languid whiffs, and he looked under his eyelids, which is the polite way, at the foreign woman. The foreign woman was very dirty, very tired, and very uncomfortable, and the room looked very hopeless. The “cartee men” declared that this was the best inn in the town, and anyhow I was disinclined to go out and look for other quarters. Then there came tottering forward an old woman with tiny feet, one eye and a yellow flower stuck in the knot at the back of her bald head. China is the country of baldwomen. The men, I presume, would not mind it very much, as for so long they have shaven off at least half their hair, but the women certainly must, for if they can they dress their dark hair very elaborately. And yet have I seen many women, like this innkeeper's wife, with a head so bald that but a few strands of hair cover its nakedness, yet those few poor hairs are gathered together into an arrangement of black silk shaped something like a horn, and beside it is placed a flower, a rose, a pink oleander blossom, or a bright yellow flower for which I have no name. That flower gives a finish to a sleek and well-dressed head, when the owner has plenty of hair, but when she has only the heavy horn of silk, half a dozen hairs, and the rest of her bald pate covered with a black varnish, it is a poor travesty. When a girl marries, immediately after her husband has lifted her veil and she is left to the women of his family they pluck out the front hairs on her forehead, so as to give a square effect, and the hair is drawn very tightly back and gathered generally into this horn. I suspect this heavy horn is responsible for the baldness, though an American of my acquaintance declares it is the plucking out of the hairs on the forehead. “The rest of the hair,” says he, “kinder gets discouraged.”
This innkeeper's wife was very kindly. She said I should not sleep in that room, I should have her room, and she would go to her mother's. The mother was a surprise to me. I hope when I am as old as she looked I shall have a mother to go to.
Now I do not as a rule embrace my landlady. In England I couldn't even imagine myself feeling particularly kindly towards a dirty little woman cladin a shirt and trousers of exceedingly dirty blue cotton, but the intention was so evidently kind and hospitable, I knew not a word of her tongue, and was by no means sure the valued Tuan would translate my words of thanks properly, so I could but take both her very dirty little hands in mine, clasp them warmly, and try and look my thanks.
Then I inspected her room. It was approached through an entrance where lime was stored, it was rather dark, and it was of good size, though on one side was stacked a supply of stores for the restaurant. Chinese macaroni, that looks as if it were first cousin to sheet gelatine, stale eggs and other nondescript eatables. There was a k'ang, of course, quite a family k'ang, and there was a large mirror on one wall. I had forgotten my camp mirror, so I looked in it eagerly, and the reflection left me chastened. I hadn't expected the journey to improve my looks, but I did hope it had not swelled up one cheek, and bunged up the other eye. I felt I did not want to stay in the room with that mirror, but there were other things worse than the mirror in it. The beautiful lattice-work window had apparently never been opened since the first cover of white tissue paper had been put on it, and the smell of human occupancy there defies my poor powers of description. The dirty little place I had at first disdained, had at least a door opening on to the comparatively fresh air of the courtyard. I told Tuan to explain that while I was delighted to see her room, and admired everything very much in it, nothing would induce me to deprive her of its comforts. She certainly was friendly. As I looked in the chastening mirror, I, like a true woman, I suppose, put upa few stray locks that the jolting cart had shaken out of place, and she promptly wanted to do my hair herself with a selection from an array of elderly combs with which she probably dressed her own scanty locks. That was too much. I had to decline, I trust she thought it was my modesty, and then she offered me some of the macaroni. I tried to say I had nothing to give in return and then Tuan remarked, “As friend, as friend.” So as a friend, from that little maimed one-eyed old woman up in the hills of China, I took a handful of macaroni and had nothing to give in return. I hope she feels as friendly towards me as I shall always do towards her.
It is not always that the difficulty of giving a return present is on the foreign side, sometimes it is the Chinese who feel it. I remember a traveller for a business house telling me how on one occasion he had gone to a village and entertained the elders at dinner, giving them brandy which they loved, and liqueurs which seemed to the unsophisticated village fathers ambrosia fit for the gods. The next day, when he was about to take his departure, a small procession approached him and one of them bore on a tray a little Chinese handleless cup covered with another. They said he could speak Chinese, so there was no need for an interpreter, that he had given them a very good time, they were very grateful, and they wished to make him a present by which he might remember them sometimes. But their village was poor and small. It contained nothing worth his acceptance, and after much consultation, they had come to the conclusion that the best way would be to present him with the money,so that he might buy something for himself when he came to Peking or some other large town. Thereupon the cup was presented, the cover lifted off, and in the bottom lay a ten cent piece, worth about twopence halfpenny. Probably it seemed quite an adequate present to men who count their incomes by cash of which a thousand go to the dollar.
I don't think my landlady minded much my declining the hospitality of her room. Possibly she only wished me to see its glories, and presently she brought to the little room I had at first so despised, and now looked upon, if not as a haven of rest, at least as one of fresh air, a couple of nice hard wood stools, and a beautifully carved k'ang table thick with grease.
“Say must make Missie comfortable,” said Tuan with the usual suggestion he had done it himself.
And those stools were covered, much to my surprise, with red woollen tapestry, and the pattern was one that I had seen used many a time in a little town on the Staffordshire moors, where their business is to dye and print. And here was one of the results of their labours, a “Wardle rag,” as we used to call them, up among the hills of Northern China.
I was too tired to do anything but go to bed that night as soon as I had had my dinner. I had it, as usual, on the k'ang table, the dirt shrouded by my humble tablecloth, and curious eyes watched me, even as I watched the trays of full basins and the trays of empty ones that were for ever coming and going across the courtyard.
Next morning my friendly landlady brought to see me two other small-footed women, both smokinglong pipes, women who said, through Tuan, their ages were forty and sixty respectively, and who examined, with interest, me and my belongings. They felt my boots so much, good, substantial, leather-built by Peter Yapp, that at last I judged they would like to see what was underneath, and took off a boot and stocking for their inspection, and the way they felt my foot up and down as if it were something they had never before met in their lives, amused me very much, At least at first it amused me, and then it saddened me. Though they held out their own poor maimed feet, they did not return the compliment much as I desired it. They took me across the courtyard into another room where, behind lattice-work windows, that had not been opened for ages, were two more women sitting on the k'ang, and two little shaven-headed children. These were younger women, tall and stout, with feet so tiny, they called my attention to them, that it did not seem to me possible any woman could support herself upon them. My boy was not allowed in, so of course I could not talk to them, could only smile and drink tea.
These two younger women, who were evidently of superior rank, had their hair most elaborately dressed and wore most gorgeous raiment. One was clad in purple satin with a little black about it, and the other, a mere girl of eighteen, but married, for her hair was no longer in a queue, and her forehead was squared, wore a coat of pale blue silk brocade and grass-green trousers of the same material. Their faces were impassive, as are the faces of Chinese women of the better class, but they smiled, evidently liked their tortured feet to be noticed, gaveme tea from the teapot on the k'ang table, and then presently all four, with the gaily dressed babies, tottered out into the courtyard, the older women leading the toddling children, and helping the younger, and, with the aid of settles, they climbed into two Peking carts, my elderly friends taking their places on the outside, whereby I judged they were servants or household slaves.
“Chinese wives,” said Tuan, but whether they were the wives of one man, or of two, I had no means of knowing. The costumes of the two younger were certainly not those in which I would choose to travel on a Chinese road in a Peking cart, but the Chinese have a proverb: “Abroad wear the new, at home it does not matter,” so they probably thought my humble mole-coloured cottoncrêpe, equally out of place.
And when they were gone I set out to explore the town.
It was only a small place, built square, with two main roads running north, and south, and east, and west, and cutting each other at right angles in the heart of it. They were abominably paved. No vehicle but a springless Peking cart would have dreamt of making its way across that pavement, but then probably no vehicle save a cart or a wheelbarrow in all the years of the city's life had ever been thought of there. The remaining streets were but evil-smelling alley-ways, narrow in comparison with the main ways which, anywhere else, I should have deemed hopelessly inadequate, thronged as they were with people and encroached upon by the shops that stood close on either side. They had no glass fronts, of course, these shops, but otherwise,they were not so very unlike the shops one sees in the poorer quarters of the great towns in England. But there was evidently no Town Council to regulate the use to which the streets should be put. The dyer hung his long strips of blue cloth half across the roadway, careless of the convenience of the passer-by, the man who sold cloth had out little tables or benches piled with white and blue calico—I have seen tradesmen do the same in King's Road, Chelsea—the butcher had his very disagreeable wares fully displayed half across the roadway, the gentleman who was making mud bricks for the repair of his house, made them where it was handiest in the street close to the house, and the man who sold cooked provisions, with his little portable kitchen and table, set himself down right in the fairway and tempted all-comers with little basins of soup, fat, pale-looking steamed scones, hard-boiled eggs or meat turnovers.
This place, hidden behind romantic grey walls, at which I had wondered in the evening light, was in the morning just like any other city, Peking with the glory and beauty gone out of it, and the people who thronged those streets were just the poorer classes of Peking, only it seemed there were more naked children and more small-footed women with elaborately dressed hair tottering along, balancing themselves with their arms. I met a crowd accompanying the gay scarlet poles, flags, musical instruments and the red sedan chair of a wedding. The poor little bride, shut up in the scarlet chair, was going to her husband's house and leaving her father's for ever. It is to be hoped she would find favour in the sight of her husband andher husband's women-folk. It was more important probably, that she should please the latter.
The bridal party made a great noise, but then all in that town was noise, dirt, crowding, and evil smells. The only peaceful place in it was the courtyard of the little temple close against the city wall. Outside it stand two hideous figures with hands flung out in threatening attitude, and inside were more figures, all painted in the gayest colours. What they meant I have not lore enough to know, but they were very hideous, the very lowest form of art.
0286
There was the recording angel with a black face and the open book—after all, the recording angel must often wear a black face—and there was the eternal symbol that has appealed through all ages to all people, and must appeal one would think above all, to this nation that longs so ardently for offspring, the mother with the child upon her knee. But they were all ugly to my Western eyes, and the only thing that charmed me was the silence, the cleanliness, and the quiet of the courtyard, the only place in all the busy little city that was at peace.
When I engaged Tuan I had thought he was to do all the waiting upon me I needed, but it seems I made a mistake. The farther I got from Peking the greater his importance became, and here he could not so much as carry for me the lightest wrap. His business appeared to be to engage other people to do the work. There was one dilapidated wretch to carry the camera, another the box with the plates, and yet a third bore the black cloth I would put over my head to focus my pictures properly. It was not a bit of good protesting, two minutes after I got ridof one lot of followers, another took their place, and as everyone had to be paid, apparently, I often thought, for the pleasure of looking at me, I resigned myself to my fate.
Accompanied by all the idlers and children in the town I climbed the ramp on to the walls, which are in perfect order, three miles round and on the top from fifteen feet to twenty broad. That ramp must have been always steep, the last thing a Chinese ever thinks about is comfort, steep almost as the walls themselves, and everywhere the stones are gone, making it a work of difficulty to climb to the top. Tuan helped me in approved Chinese fashion, putting his hand underneath my elbow, and once I was there the town was metamorphosed, it was again the romantic city I had seen from the plain in the evening light. Now the early morning sunlight, with all the promise of the day in it, fell upon graceful curved Chinese roofs and innumerable trees, dainty with the delicate vivid verdure that comes in the spring as a reward to a country where the winter has been long, bitter, and iron-bound.
The walls of most Chinese cities are built square, with right angles at the four corners, but in at least two that I have been in, T'ung Chou and Pao Ting Fu, one corner is built out in a bow. I rather admired the effect at first, till I found it was a mark of deepest disgrace. There had been a parricide committed in the town. When such a terrible thing occurs a corner of the city wall must be pulled down and built out; a second one, another corner is pulled down and built out, and a third likewise; but the fourth time such a crime is committed in theluckless town the walls must be razed to the ground. But such a disgrace has never occurred in any town in the annals of Chinese history, those age-long annals that go back farther than any other nation's, for if a town should be so unlucky as to have harboured four such criminals within its walls they generally managed, by the payment of a sum of money, to get a city that had some of its corners still intact to take the disgrace upon itself.
I strongly suspect too, that it is only when the offender is in high places that his crime is thus commemorated, for I have only heard of these two cases, and yet as short a while ago as 1912 there was a terrible murder in Pao Ting Fu that shocked the town. It appeared there was an idle son, who instead of working for his family, spent all his time attending to his cage bird, taking it out for walks, encouraging it to sing, hunting the graves outside the town for insects for it. His poor old mother sighed over his uselessness.
“If it were not for the bird!” said she.
The young blood in China, it seems, goes to the dogs over a cage bird, a lark or a thrush, as the young man in modern Europe comes to grief over horse-racing, so we see that human nature is the same all the world over. This Chinese mother brooded over her boy's wasted life, and one day when he was out she opened the cage door and the bird flew away.
When he came in he asked for the bird and she said nothing, only with her large, sharp knife went on shredding up the vegetables that she was putting into a large cauldron of boiling water for supper. He asked again for the bird. Still she took nonotice, and he seized her knife and slit her up into small pieces and put her into the cauldron. He was taken, and tried, and was put to death by slicing into a thousand pieces—yes, even in modern China—but they did not think it necessary to pull down another corner of the city wall. Possibly they felt the disgrace of a bygone age was enough for Pao Ting Fu.
The corners of the walls of Tsung Hua Chou were as they were first built, rectangular, and the watch-towers at those corners and over the four gates from the distance looked imposing, all that they should be, but close at hand I saw that they were tumbling into ruins, the doors were fallen off the hinges, the window-frames were broken, all was desolate and empty.
“Once the soldier she watch here,” said my boy, whose pronouns were always somewhat mixed.
“Why not now?”
“No soldier here now. She go work in gold mine ninety li away. Gold mine belong Plesident.”
Tuan had got as far as the fact that a President had taken the place of the Manchu Emperor, but I wondered very much whether the inhabitants of Tsung Hua Chou had. I meditated on my way back to “Missie's inn” on the limitations of the practical Chinese mind that because it is practical, I suppose, cannot conceive of the liberty, equality, and fraternity that a Republic denotes. The President, to the humble Chinese in the street, has just taken the place of the Emperor, he is the one who rules over them, his soldiers are withdrawn. That there was a war in Mongolia, a rebellion impending in the south, were items of news that had not reachedthe man in the street in Tsung Hua Chou who, feeling that the soldiers must be put to some use, concluded they were working in the President's gold mine ninety li away.