Part 13

We had an offer the other day of purchasing a plant that would make a man immortal if he ate it; as we had no desire any of us to undergo the fate of Tithonus at the price of 5000 taels, nearly £2000, we let it slip through our hands. It was brought to us by a drug merchant, who said that he had found it in the mountains of Manchuria, and he produced a Chinese botanical work in support of his statements. The plant was a small black toad-stool; he called it the “tree of life,” and said that it was only found once in a thousand years. We asked him why he did not sell his treasure to the Emperor; he replied that he would do so were it not for the way in which he would be bled by the palace officials. When, however, we asked where the last man who had eaten of the tree of life was to be heard of, he left in high disgust at our unbelief. The Chinese ideas of natural history are always very curious. Some days ago one of the wandering curio-sellers came to me with a beautiful little crystal snuff-bottle of what they call hair crystal, from the black veins like hair which run through it, and he thought it necessary to explain how the hair got into the crystal. “You see,” said he, “as your Excellency knows, we Chinese did not always shave our heads as we do now. In the time of the Ming dynasty our people used to wear their hair long, but when the Tartars usurped the throne our people were all forced to shave their heads. Accordingly they threw their hair which they had cut off into the sea. There the waves and the rays of the sun, combining their influences, acted upon this hair and produced the effect which your Excellency admires. But it was only in rare instances that the influences happened to coincide, and no man could of his own will, and by cutting off his hair, depend on its being turned into hair crystal.”

The Emperor’s journey to bury his father has been made the opportunity of rescinding all the decrees disgracing the Prince of Kung last spring. They are to be blotted out from the records of the Empire, so that future ages may know nothing about them.

LETTER XIX

PEKING, _1st January 1866_.

The arrival of the mail last night brought the old year to a happy termination, but, alas! Saurin is to leave us for a German post. My batch of letters was doubly welcome, it was so long since I had heard from home, and may be such an age before another mail comes up from Chefoo; as for the newspapers, they bring such stale news now that they are hardly worth plodding through. We get the pith of the news by the Russian post and telegraph to Kiachta, so reading the _Times_ is like being gifted in a small way with the power of prophecy, and shows what a very tame affair life would be if we could foresee the future. Our papers are still speculating on Lord Palmerston’s actions next session, and three weeks ago we heard the news of his death.

This morning I was awakened by a procession of all the Chinamen about the Legation, who came to bend the knee before me and wish me joy for the New Year. I hope all their good wishes, with mine into the bargain, may be realised for You.

Although it is a long time since I last wrote to you, I have little enough to say. Sir Rutherford and Lady Alcock have settled down in their new quarters. I think they are rather disappointed, and no wonder; but they seem determined to make the best of everything, and to try and make every one comfortable about them. Sir Rutherford’s first interview with the Prince of Kung passed off very well. I never saw the Prince so gracious. The Chinese Foreign Office, the Tsung-Li Yamên, is almost as bad a place for receiving in as our old building in Downing Street.[9] In order to be met at the great gates, which on grand occasions is _de rigueur_, we have to pass into the reception-room through the back kitchen, where we see all the little dainties which we are to eat being cooked by very dirty natives. The reception-room is a sort of octagonal glass pavilion in the middle of the courtyard, a wretchedly cold place. However, the Chinese are independent of cold rooms, for they don’t take off their furs (the fur of foxes’ legs is the official dress), and they wear boots so thick that they cannot feel the cold stones of the floor. Of course a building so exposed is as hot in summer as it is cold in winter, so in this climate of extremes a visit to the Chinese Foreign Office is never very pleasant.

I should tell you that the Tsung-Li Yamên is really a board of high officials, all of whom hold other functions, which was created after the treaties of 1860 for the conduct of foreign affairs. There is no titular Foreign Minister.

One bright cold morning, about a fortnight ago, three of us witnessed a Chinese execution. The place of execution is at the opening of the vegetable market in the Chinese city. The market is held in a broadish street, into which a number of large thoroughfares, at right angles to it, lead. All these inlets were fenced off, and the street itself filled with soldiery and officials; such a tatterdemalion crowd! with nothing resembling uniformity of dress except the Tartar cap, and that, in many cases, was torn and battered, and tassel-less. The men were as heterogeneous as their clothes. Old and young, strong and decrepit, half blind or whole deaf, none seemed too miserable objects for service. I saw one effective soldier on crutches; hunchbacks and cripples were in plenty. We left our horses in charge of some of these poor devils, and walked through the lines, no one opposing us, but, on the contrary, every one showing us the utmost civility. The whole of the shops in the street were closed, but the flat, low roofs were crowded with spectators; among them not a single woman or child was to be seen.

At one end of the space closed off was a matting shed. Inside this were the condemned prisoners, who were waiting for the Imperial decree for their death to be brought on to the ground. We went in, and I shall not easily forget the scene. There were fifteen criminals, of whom one was a woman, one was a murderer; two, of whom the woman was one, had stolen girls and sold them into the worst of all slavery; the rest were highway robbers. The murderer was to be decapitated, it being a severe punishment to a Chinese not to take his body out of the world as his parents gave it to him. (It is this feeling that makes them so averse to amputation.) The others were all to be strangled. It is very strange to be talking with men who are to die within a few minutes. Some of them were perfectly calm and collected, and came up to talk with us and ask us questions, as if nothing was the matter. One bright, intelligent-looking fellow came up to me and said, “Well, I suppose you’ve come to see the fun.” The word he used was the same that would be employed to signify the fun of a fair. “Do you have this sort of fun in your country?” another said laughingly. “I wish you would take me off with you.” We said we should only be too glad; on which he smiled and said, “Ah! the law won’t let you do that.” One very old man could not forget his Asiatic politeness, even _in articulo mortis_. One of our party had asked a guard for a light for his cigar. The guard either did not hear or did not pay attention; on which the old fellow touched him and said, “What manners are these? don’t you see the gentleman wants a light.” All, however, were not so quiet. The murderer was raving and ranting drunk, howling out every obscene blasphemy that he could think of against the Emperor. The woman had been charitably given some drug, which, though it had made her very sick, had deprived her of consciousness. Nothing could exceed the kindness of the officials, one and all, to the condemned men. They were giving them smokes out of their pipes, tea, and wine; even the wretched murderer, who was struggling and fighting between two soldiers, was only asked to “be quiet, be quiet,” in spite of all provocation. The others were walking about the booth, their hands tied, and a sort of arrow stuck behind their backs, bearing their name and the crime for which they were to suffer, but otherwise uncontrolled. They were all from one part of the country. I told you that the woman had been drugged. This is a constant practice at executions. The most famous drug for this purpose is the blood from under the red crest of the crane, called by the Chinese “Ho ting hung.” This, or a medicine purporting to be such, is sold at an immense price, and is said to be carried by mandarins in one of the beads of their necklaces, in order that if they incur the Emperor’s displeasure, they may have the means of death at hand, for the crane’s crest-blood is a poison as well as an anodyne. We gave all the cigars we had with us to the poor condemned criminals, who were very grateful for them, and I was glad to leave so painful a scene. A little farther down the street another large booth had been erected. Here sat the high officials in a semicircle, with a red-button mandarin from the Board of Punishments at their head. On one side of this booth was a tiny sort of altar on which were displayed the tools of the executioner—the swords and bloody string, and the tourniquets and strings for strangling. In front of the altar a small brick stove had been built, over which was a caldron of boiling water, like a huge barber’s pot, to warm the swords. The executioner’s men were huddled round it toasting their hands. The swords are short broad blades, almost like choppers, with a long wooden handle on which is carved a grotesque head. They have been above two hundred years in use, and are regarded as genii and invested with preternatural powers. They are five in number, and their names are Great Lord, second Lord, third Lord, fourth Lord, and fifth Lord (Ta yeh, êrh yeh, san yeh, ssŭ yeh, and wu yeh). When they are not in use they are kept at the chief executioner’s house, a tower on the wall, where, as my teacher gravely informed me, they are often heard at night to sing gruesome songs of their past feats. When they are wanted their Lordships are “requested” to come out.

The executioners have all sorts of stories and traditions about them. One is supposed to be younger than the others, and of a skittish, frolicsome nature, dallying and toying with the heads, not striking them off at one blow like the others, who are older and more sedate. There were many false alarms that the decree had come and announced the fatal moment. But at last the chief headsman (Kwei-tzŭ-shou) came out, and throwing off his fur coat put on a bloodstained apron of yellow leather. He was a short, thick-set, but not ill-looking man, with that curious, anxious, _waiting_ expression on his face that a man wears with serious work before him. It was horrid to see how completely he was the hero of the occasion, the soldiers round him treating him with the greatest deference, and evidently proud of a word from him. The five swords were carried in line near him. His assistant stripped his outer coat, and then all was ready. So soon as the decree arrived the prisoners were led out one by one to the booth where the mandarins were sitting, and there made to go through the form of acknowledging the justice of their punishment. They were then handed over to the executioner. The headsman and his men had to beat back the other soldiers with sticks in order to clear a space. Nothing could be more indecent and revolting than the behaviour of the latter. All order and discipline were at an end; they were like hounds yelling, snarling, and struggling to tear a fox in pieces rather than men ostensibly employed to keep the peace. The murderer was the first man brought forward. Happily he had raved himself into a state of insensibility, so his pains were over. The decapitation is done with marvellous speed. A string is passed round the prisoner’s neck, close under the chin, and his head is thus held up by the assistant so as to offer resistance to the sword. When a mandarin is executed, the headsman meets him and says, “Ching ta jên kwei ti̔en,” “I pray that your Excellency may fly to heaven”—much as our executioners used to ask the pardon of their victims. The man is made to kneel, in an instant the sword is raised, the executioner gives a shriek supposed to represent the words “I have executed a man” (Sha liao jên), and at one blow the head is severed from the trunk and carried off to be inspected by the mandarins. As the blow falls the people all cry out, “A good sword” (hao Tao),

## partly in praise of the headsman’s skill, but more especially from a

superstitious feeling _um berufen_. The strangling is done with the same merciful quickness. It is far less lengthy than hanging. Two pieces of whip-cord are passed round the neck with a loop. The criminal is placed with his face to the ground, and the two executioners turn the tourniquet as quick as thought. Apparently there is no suffering. As I passed the big booth on my way out—for you may imagine that when I had seen how the matter was conducted I stayed for no more—I heard a loud voice shout out a name. Immediately out of the shed where the rest of the condemned were waiting, I saw a tall man walk out between two others as leisurely and composedly as if he had been going to his dinner. It was one of the young fellows with whom I had spoken so short a time before. The last act of this horror is consummated in the _Pit of the 10,000_ (Wan Jên K’êng) by the wolves and foxes, a pit in the Chinese city where the bodies of executed criminals are thrown. Rich people’s bodies are bought back by their families that they may receive decent burial.

I was glad to see that the execution was conducted far more mercifully than one is led to suppose by certain writers. It is true that this is not the “Ling Chih,” or disgraceful slow death, which is the punishment of parricide[10] and high treason. But an Englishman who has witnessed that assures me that the criminal he saw so executed was put out of his misery at once, and that the mutilation took place _after_ death and not before. I was specially struck by the excessive kindness of the soldiery to the criminals. The only sign of cruel disposition was the eagerness with which they pressed forward to see the death. That was revolting.

Of all the men who died that day not one appeared to be in the slightest degree affected by the solemnity of his position, or to show any apprehension for what was to follow. Where there was any emotion it was simply abject terror of the immediate pain of dying. Beyond that their thoughts did not seem to penetrate.

I must bring this letter of horrors to an end.

LETTER XX

PEKING, _20th January 1866_.

Since I last wrote we have all been leading the lives of vegetables in our own garden; with a skating rink inside the Legation there is no excuse for facing the wind and dust outside. We have the greatest difficulty in keeping up our rink. The wind blows the dust on to the ice in clouds, and the hot sun melts it in, so that nothing but constant flooding will keep the ice going. This has been an unusually dry season even for this driest of climates, so much so that a few days ago a decree appeared in the _Peking Gazette_ directing five princes of the blood to proceed to different temples, and offer up incense, and pray for snow. The Emperor had a cold, or he would have gone himself. The _Peking Gazette_, by the way, is a very curious little publication. It appears daily in the form of a small pamphlet, and is sold for a trifling sum. It is said to have been first published in the time of the Sung dynasty, about seven hundred years before its brother of London was born at Oxford. It contains the movements of the court, Imperial decrees, petitions, memorials and the answers thereto, appointments, promotions, rewards, etc. Some of the announcements are very amusing. I give you one or two specimens. Some months ago, at the storming of a town which was in the hands of the rebels, at the very moment when a mine had been sprung, Kwan-Ti, the god of war, appeared in all his majesty (it don’t seem quite clear who saw him), and by his presence so encouraged the Imperialist troops that they rushed into the breach with an ardour which carried everything before it, and sacked the city. In gratitude for this, at the request of the high officials of Shan Hsi, the Emperor directs the officers of the Han Lin (Imperial college) and of the Nan Shu Fang (private Imperial library) to prepare a tablet to be erected in some temple in Shan Hsi to commemorate the divine interposition. Notice is sent by the authorities of Cheh Kiang to the Board of Ceremonies and Rites that a widow in those parts, being in uncontrollable grief for her husband’s death, and resolved to preserve her fidelity to him, has committed suicide. Posthumous honours are awarded to her for her great chastity. (To commit suicide on the death of her husband is the highest virtue which a Chinese wife can show. The streets of Peking are in many places crossed by wooden triumphal arches called Pai Lo in honour of these chaste matrons. It would seem, however, rather as if this extreme chastity were dying out, for I don’t know one of these arches that is not in the last stage of decay.) A taotai, governor of a city from down south, has come up to Peking on business connected with the sulphur trade. Having finished what he had to do, he reminds the Government that his father was killed some years ago in the rebellion in Shan Hsi, and his body never recovered. He represents that the old gentleman’s bones weigh heavily upon him and make him feel very uncomfortable, and he suggests that the Government might send him on a special mission to Shan Hsi to try and recover these same bones, paying his expenses as a matter of course. The Government, in reply to this, praise his filial piety, enter into his views about the bones with enthusiasm, encourage him by all means to try and find them, but positively decline to open their purse-strings. Posthumous honours, canonisation, or deification, are often recorded in the _Gazette_.

Old Hêng-Chi is the officer of the Tsung-Li Yamên charged with negotiating a new commercial treaty with the Russians relative to the Siberian and Mongolian trade. Whenever he is going to be particularly obstructive he sends po-po (sweetmeats) to the Legation. Now I suppose he is going to play the Russians some _tour pendable_, for he sent a whole feast both to the minister and secretary of Legation. It was very prettily arranged; the decoration of the dishes and piling of the sweetmeats in patterns must have cost the cook a world of trouble. I think I once before gave you an account of a Chinese feast given by the same old gentleman, and I daresay you don’t wish a repetition of the account any more than I do of the feast, though the things are not bad once in a way. The bird’s-nest soup was very good, though it owes its flavour to the condiments with which it is dressed, the nest itself being as tasteless as isinglass, which it much resembles.

My teacher the other day gave me some original views as to the outbreak of cholera which took place a few years ago. Various causes were assigned for it. Some said that the epidemic was caused by the exhalations from the dead bodies of those who were killed in the Ta̔i Pi̔ng rebellion; others, that offence had been given to Wên Shên, the spirit of pestilence, a deity who is represented with a blue face and red hair and beard. He carries in his hand a disk, a spear, a sword, or some warlike weapon. A man who has fallen into misfortune is said to have met Wên Shên. To be “as ugly as the Lord Wên Shên” is what we should translate by “to be as ugly as sin.”

We had rather a good piece of fun the other night. One of our ladies of the _Corps diplomatique_ has started Thursday “at homes,” and all the Europeans in Peking congregate there. Last Thursday some one or other sat down and played a valse, upon which a tarantula bit the only two ladies, and they declared they must and would dance, so Pichon, the French attaché, and I were told off as partners for them. Just as we were spinning round the room, in came three or four Chinese servants with trays of cake and hot wine, which I thought they would have dropped, so stupefied were they at the sight. I don’t think I ever saw astonishment so written on faces before. I can fancy them talking about it afterwards—Ai yah! There was his Excellency Mi (that’s me) and Pi Lao Yeh seizing the two Ku-niangs (young ladies) round the waist in the most indecorous manner, and running round and round the room with them, while O Lao Yeh beat the harp-table. Indeed it was unsurpassable! Strange people these barbarians!