Part 11

Our first object at Ku-Pei-Ko̔u was to get the seal of the Ti-tu affixed as a _visa_ to our passports. All over the provinces of China the central authorities count as nothing in comparison with the local; a small mandarin who would laugh to scorn the seal of the Imperial Foreign Office will bow to the earth before that of his immediate superior. Accordingly, on the evening of our arrival we sent our Shao-To, the apostle, to the Yamên with our cards to beg the Ti-tu to grant us his seal. He came back discomfited, not having been able even to see an official of any rank. The next morning, however, he proposed to return to the charge, and arraying himself in his best, with his head shaven and his tail freshly plaited, he ordered out one of the carts and called upon the skipper to attend him. Here arose a difficulty: our servants all declared that the skipper must abandon his old pea-jacket as unbefitting the dignity of the situation; he as firmly stuck to wearing it, but public opinion was too strong for him, and he was forced to give up his favourite garment and appear in a dirty nankin jacket. In spite of the imposing splendour of this embassy it was fruitless, the authorities declaring that they had received no special instructions from Peking, and that without them they could not grant the seal. This was very provoking; the seal was necessary to us, we had a right to ask for it, and we were determined to have it, the more especially as if we, holding an official position here, had foregone our rights, other travellers would necessarily have had double difficulty in obtaining it in future. Murray determined to go himself and demand to see the Ti-tu. He was shown into a dirty room full of soldiers, and the Chinese tried to foist a wretched white-buttoned mandarin upon him as the Ti-tu. He of course was not to be taken in by this childish piece of chicanery, and as soon as it became evident that he knew what he was about the big doors were thrown open, and he was ushered with due solemnity into the presence of the Ti-tu, who made many apologies for having kept him waiting, and received him with much ceremony. Murray had the satisfaction of being served with tea and sweetmeats by the very impostor who had tried to pass himself off as the great man! About the question of putting on the seal the Ti-tu fenced for a long while. He had no orders. He might get into a scrape. What right had we to ask it? Murray explained the treaty to him, and he admitted our claim. But no sooner were the passports produced than he raised another objection. The seal of the British Legation was in the centre, that of the Imperial Foreign Office on the left, and there was no more room on the left of that again for his seal—what could be done? His rank was too high for his seal to be placed below. “Well,” said Murray, “put your seal on the right of ours, and then we shall be figuratively between the protection of the civil and military authorities of China.” This little bit of nonsense was the very thing to please the Chinese mind, and the seal was set without more delay, Murray undertaking to explain the matter at Peking. “I know you’ll do it,” said the Ti-tu, “for when an Englishman promises a thing he does it.”

I mention this to show you how business is transacted in China. The most important affairs are conducted with the same amount of childishness and trickery as our little passport difficulty with the Ti-tu of Ku-Pei-Ko̔u, who, be it recollected, is an officer of the highest rank.

We spent the afternoon on the Great Wall. The Chinese name for this most marvellous work is Wan-Li-Cha̔ng-Che̔ng—literally the myriad-li-long wall. Calculating the li at a third of a mile, this name would give it a length of nearly 3400 miles, but the English books estimate it at 1250 miles. It was built by the Emperor Shih of the Chi̔n dynasty about 230 years b.c. as a barrier against the northern tribes, or more probably as an evidence of power. He was the same Emperor who burnt the books of the sages, thus rendering himself famous by two works—one of construction, the other of destruction. The wall near Ku-Pei-Ko̔u is for the most part in very good repair, but in other places it is little more than a heap of rubbish; where we saw it, it is built of large blocks of granite, huge bricks and cement, and the centre filled in with rubble and concrete. It is some fifteen feet broad and twenty feet high; at regular intervals are quadrilateral towers about forty feet high, built of granite with embrasures—some of these are quite perfect, others in ruin; wild vines, asparagus, bluebells, low shrubs, and other plants grow in profusion among the débris, and the towers are covered with silver-backed ferns and mosses. For miles and miles as far as our eyes could stretch, up hill and down dale, up precipices almost perpendicular, and over the highest peaks, we traced the course of the wall; when we thought we had fairly lost sight of it our glasses would light on some distant crag carrying it on still farther. How so much material could have been got together in such wild and inaccessible spots is a marvel.

Even without the attraction of the Great Wall, the height on which we stood would have been well worth visiting. Range above range of hills rose all round us; on one side were the wilds of Mongolia, on the other the plains of China. At our feet lay the little town with its absurd fortification and ditches and cannon, and the river flowing past it. The mountain view was only bounded by the limits of our sight.

We lingered long on the wall, looking and wondering at the beauty of the scene. We gathered some ferns and mosses, of which I send you some, and by dint of hardish work, for it was no light weight to carry under a broiling sun, I managed to bring off a trophy in the shape of one of the big bricks. I have got it safe in my room here, after many vicissitudes, for it was often nearly left behind, and some day I hope to take it home.

We left Ku-Pei-Ko̔u the next morning, going our several ways—Saurin and Frater to Mongolia, Murray and I to the Tombs of the Mings, which I must tell you about in another letter.

[Illustration: The symbol of Yang and Yin]

As you interest yourself about Chinese curiosities and antiquities, I will add a few words about the Yang and Yin, to which I alluded in the early part of my letter.

You may have noticed on old porcelain and other ornaments this device. It is the symbol of Yang and Yin, the universal male and female principle of creation to which everything is referred. The celestial principle is male, the terrestrial female; even plants are male and female, without reference, of course, to the sexual system of Linnæus; odd numbers are male, even numbers female. Day and the sun male, night and the moon female. Parts of the body, the lungs, the heart, the liver, etc., each have a sex. Sir John Davis compares with this the Egyptian and Brahmin mythologies (_The Chinese_, vol. ii. p. 67).

LETTER XIV

PEKING, _25th Sept. 1865_.

In my last letter I told you how we went to Ku-Pei-Ko̔u. We turned homewards (that I should talk of Peking as home!) on the 29th of August. I began my backward journey unluckily. My horse had a sore back, which no nostrum in the pharmacopœia of a dirty old Chinese veterinary surgeon could heal in time for me to ride him, so I had to go in a cart. Our first day’s journey was back over the road by which we had arrived as far as Mi-Yün-Hsien, a distance of five-and-thirty miles—no great things, to be sure; but the average pace was three miles an hour; the road was full of deep ruts, and rendered doubly uneven by rocky passages and big stones. The carts have no springs; at every jolt I was banged up against the hard sides, and by the evening my back was as sore as my horse’s. After ten hours of a Chinese cart a man is fit for little else than to be sold at an old rag and bone shop. Misfortunes never come single; when I arrived at Mi-Yün-Hsien, jaded and aching in every bone, the inns refused to take us in; this was of very small account, for persuasion and threats soon brought the people to reason. The only cause they had to give for their reluctance to house us, was that last year some foreigners had stayed there, and instead of paying for their night’s lodging had beaten the landlord when he asked for his money; such are some of the travellers who come to these parts, and who defeat all our efforts to conciliate the people. However, we convinced the host that we neither wished to cheat nor to beat him, and he, when he felt safe on both scores, was willing enough to be civil. But during the altercation, which had attracted a great crowd, my pocket-book was picked out of my pocket, which was a serious loss, for it contained a heap of notes, rough sketches, and plans, that I had made on different excursions, and our passport. We offered a reward for its recovery, and sent to the Chih-hsien, or governor of the town, to ask his help, which he sent in the shape of two officers, who came and knelt before us very humbly, but offered no suggestions for getting back my book, which I shall now certainly never see again.

We had two days’ journey from Mi-Yün-Hsien to Chang-Ping-Chou. As the road lay on one side of the highway, the villages were smaller, poorer, and more insignificant than any we had come to yet. By the richness of their crops, the people here ought to be among the most prosperous, but they are so taxed by the Government, and bled by the mandarins, small and great, that they have no chance. Wherever we went the people were complaining of their hard lot; nor was this mere talk, for since our return to Peking there has been a serious outbreak not far from the part of the country that we had travelled over. The insurrection, if it deserved the name, has been happily quelled, but not before the rioters had done great damage, making themselves masters of two small towns; and it was even said that they had killed the governor of one town, but this was afterwards contradicted. The affair was merely an additional proof of the tyranny of the petty rulers, and the hatred with which the people regard them. “A town priest and a country mandarin” are the types of good luck, says the proverb; for the one is the darling of the women, the other can feather his nest handsomely.

It is very curious in this country to come upon roadside shrines just like those one sees in the “pious Tyrol” and other Roman Catholic countries. Those which are erected in honour of the goddess of mercy, Kwang-Yin, with a babe in her arms, or the Queen of Heaven, Ti̔en-Hou, are the very counterpart of the effigies of the Madonna and Bambino. The majority of these shrines are faced by a low whitewashed blank wall. This often is covered by an allegorical design of great quaintness, in which the dragon plays a prominent part. The dragon is the principle of good, and he is engaged in constant warfare with the serpent or the tiger, who represent the principle of evil. These battles are a common subject for the decoration of the blank walls of shrines. Apropos of the dragon and serpent, the Chinese have a quaint superstition. They believe that thunderstorms are created by the dragon pursuing the tiger or serpent through the air, hurling bolts and fiery darts at him. It is very dangerous to stand at open windows or in an exposed place during a thunderstorm, for the serpent and tiger are very crafty, and have cunning ways of dodging the dragon’s shots, which thus fall on an innocent head. The tiger, who is drawn as a vicious-looking cat, with his back up, lives to a great age; when he has attained his thousandth birthday, he throws off his teeth and puts on a pair of horns. The existence of such fables is not to be wondered at, for there are old women’s tales everywhere; what is delightful here is that some of the educated men really believe in them.

Chang-Ping-Chou was the scene of the great tragedy of 1860, the death of the English prisoners from the effects of the barbarities of their captors. It is a singular fact that the only one of the mandarins connected with those murders who is still alive has been disgraced and banished. The others have died miserably; one was executed in gaol for contumely to the Empress, on the very day on which, expecting his pardon, he had invited his wives and family to go to the prison and fetch him away; another was killed, as it is said, by his own soldiers. The retribution has been complete. The Sikh soldiers who survived the cruelties to which they were subjected, and who gave the account of what had happened, described Chang-Ping-Chou as a walled city as big as Tientsing; but this is a mistake; it is a small walled city, very prettily situated with hills on three sides of it; on the top of one of these is a temple which the Sikhs mistook for a fort, as they easily might. The little town looks prosperous enough, and appeared to be doing a brisk trade in coffins (I never saw so many in any one place in my life) and the water-tight wicker-work buckets, which are to my mind the most ingenious production of North China.

The Shih-san-Ling, or thirteen tombs of the Ming dynasty, are about five miles distant from Chang-Ping-Chou. It was the burial-place of those emperors of the dynasty who reigned after the removal of the seat of the Empire from Nanking to Peking. The first sign that we were approaching something remarkable was a magnificent stone gateway, built of enormous blocks of stone and standing isolated in the midst of the plain. This gateway is the finest specimen of Chinese architecture that I have seen. Some way beyond this is a second gateway of brick, roofed with the imperial tiles, also very handsome, and this leads to a large square granite building, cruciform inside, containing a colossal marble tortoise, from whose back springs a marble tablet of great height, bearing an inscription on both sides, the one relating how the tombs were built by the Ming dynasty, the other how they were restored in the reign of Chien-Lung. This building is surrounded by four triumphal columns. Next follows an avenue of colossal figures in marble,—grim sentries over the approach to the sepulchres. The figures come in the following order:—Two lions sitting, two lions standing; two chi-lings (a fabulous beast which appears once in ten thousand years, and was last seen at the birth of Confucius. Chi-ling is the same as kylin, which we in England misapply to designate the porcelain and bronze lions with curly manes which are imported; these latter are called by the Chinese shih-tszŭ; as you have a pair, I thought this might interest you), two chi-lings sitting; two camels sitting, two camels standing; two elephants sitting, two elephants standing; two scaled beasts with wings and wreathed in flames sitting, two of the same standing; two horses standing, two horses resting; two warriors in full armour, prepared for battle, with breastplates that reminded one of Medusa’s head, and carrying swords and maces; two warriors in repose, their swords sheathed and their hands crossed on their breasts; four councillors in their caps and robes of office; four chamberlains. We passed through this mysterious assemblage, which was very terrifying to our horses, and then had about a mile and a half to go along a ruined stone road, with decayed stone and marble bridges, before we got to the tombs. Each tomb is of itself a palace. The thirteen stand in an amphitheatre of hills among groves of cypresses and persimmon trees. The tombs are about three-quarters of a mile apart. The plain is cultivated now, but evidently it was originally intended that the whole place should be silent, solitary, and secluded. Nothing can be more beautiful than the situation. As I told you once before, in this country the fairest spots are chosen for burying the dead, and you may suppose that the emperors of the magnificent Ming dynasty would not be behind their people in this.

The tomb which is generally visited by strangers, and which I saw, is that of the Emperor Yung-Lo; it is the oldest and _par excellence_ “the Great Tomb.” The Emperor Tae-Tsung, who reigned under the style of Yung-Lo, was the third of his dynasty; he reigned during the first quarter of the fifteenth century. It was he who moved the capital from Nanking to Peking. Of the thirteen emperors of his dynasty who succeeded him, twelve are buried round him; the thirteenth, who, when Peking was taken by the rebels, committed suicide in his harem after killing his wives and children, with the exception of one daughter, is missing.

The Tomb-Palace is, of course, surrounded by a high red wall tiled with yellow, the imperial colours. A broad and handsome entrance gate leads into a large courtyard; on the right is a pavilion containing a marble tortoise carrying a high marble slab with a commemorative inscription. Past this court is a vast entrance hall. Two flights of steps lead up to the hall, and between them is a slant of marble richly carved and ornamented; I believe that this centre path is for the good spirits to walk along. A second courtyard contains two beautiful little yellow shrines, both empty. A triple terrace of marble, with steps and slants as before, precedes the grand hall, a most imposing chamber. It is 81 paces long by 36 broad, and very lofty. The floor is of black marble, the walls a dull yellow; the roof, which is fretted and painted like cloisonné enamel with dragons and other emblems, is supported by thirty-six huge masts of wood, smoothed but unpolished, and all of equal size. They are marvellously handsome, and in this country (where wood is so precious that an empty house is not safe for a night from thieves, who will strip it of roof, doors, and windows) must have cost something prodigious. In the centre of the hall is rather a mean shrine in honour of “our ancestor canonised under the name of Wên.” Every emperor passes through three names. First he has his own name, which, after he ascends the throne, is never used nor borne again, for he then assumes the style of his reign, and at his death is canonised under a third. So this Emperor’s name was Tai-Tsung; he reigned under the style of Yung-Lo, and was finally canonised as Wên. After this grand hall come two more courtyards; in one of these stands a great sacrificial altar of stone and marble. The top block of marble is eight paces long; on this altar are placed the five gifts—an incense-burner, two candlesticks, and two pots of fruits. Inside the altar is a tank of fresh water, which is got at by passing a stick with a piece of linen attached to it as a sponge through a hole in the side. This water is a specific for certain complaints. The last building is a high tower, with a vaulted passage springing off into two directions. I never heard such an echo as this produced; we two, as we walked along, made a noise like that of a regiment. From the top of the tower, which contains a large perpendicular slab of marble painted red, there is a beautiful view over the country, with the thirteen palaces of the dead each in its niche in the hills; it is really a scene of rare and striking beauty. Just behind the tower is an artificial mound covered with trees and verdure; this, I believe, is where the body lies—a few old bones to all this magnificence. There is a Chinese proverb which says, “Better be a living beggar covered with sores than a dead emperor.”

As we were sitting over our dinner at the inn we both agreed that as it was a lovely moonlight night we would go back at any rate as far as the avenue of colossal statues. I never saw anything so weird as the big beasts and warriors looked; they almost seemed to move in the moonlight—one half expected one of them to come down from his pedestal, like the Commendatore in _Don Giovanni_, and punish us for the intrusion. It is impossible to imagine a wilder or more lonely spot; it is really the solitude of the tomb.

The next morning at daybreak we rode into Peking, about 25 miles. I have seen nothing so interesting since I have been in China as the scenes of which I have tried to give you an idea.

LETTER XV

PEKING, _25th October 1865_.

I who so lately wrote to you about blazing sun and scorching heat am now glad to nestle into the chimney-corner and watch the “pictures in the fire.” Outside, the rain is falling fitfully and the wind blowing a hurricane; it moans and howls dismally through the courts and cranky buildings of the Legation, piercing its way into all sorts of odd nooks, and routing out old bells that jangle in a harsh and discordant way from the quaint eaves, as if they were angry at being disturbed in their dusty dens. Doors are creaking and timbers groaning in every direction, and the windows threaten to burst in, but the stout Corean paper holds good, though it gets stretched and flaps unpleasantly like loose sails in a calm, and on the whole I confess I prefer glass. Every now and then, as the storm abates for a while, I hear the tap, tap, tap, of the watchman’s bamboo as he goes his rounds, and can’t help grunting with Lucretian satisfaction as I look at my fire and think of how cold he must be. In short, we are working gradually into winter. In another fortnight the trees will all be bare, and Peking, throwing off the green clothes which it puts on in summer, in order to delude stray visitors into the idea that it is a pretty place, will stand naked, dirty, and ashamed. The last month has been very pleasant—neither too hot nor too cold; and the early morning rides, before wind or dust has arisen, and when the evil smells of the town, which are beaten down by the night dews, have not had time to assert themselves again, put fresh life into us after the great heats. I have got a new horse. The first one which I bought in the spring turned out to be possessed of every vice to which horse-flesh is heir; so I sold him at a loss, after he had bored my life out for four months, and am now well mounted on a first-rate Mongol cob.