II. FOREIGN LIFE IN PEKING.
Social influence of the Alcock family—Sir Rutherford's relations with his staff—No social relations with natives—Manchu courtesy to English ladies—Community of foreigners sociable yet non-cohesive—Description of city—Foreign residency—Objects of interest—The streets—Mules—Camels—Mongol market—Fur sales—Absence of regulations—Street anecdotes—Summer residences.
By the end of 1865 the foreign life in Peking, official, social, and private, had already settled into the grooves prescribed by local conditions, within which it has, more or less, run ever since.
MANCHU (TARTAR) WOMEN.
Nevertheless, the advent of Sir Rutherford and Lady Alcock, with their daughter, now Lady Pelly, introduced an element into the social atmosphere of Peking which has afforded the happiest reminiscences to those who came under its influence. We have seen that Sir Rutherford Alcock, by force of character, conviction, and sense of duty, naturally assumed the lead among his peers wherever he happened to be placed. A German resident in Peking at the time we are speaking of says, "I remember very well that fine English gentleman, who was conscious of representing the greatest country of the world, and did it well." The official personality of the British Minister could not be more truly depicted than in these simple words; but this natural pre-eminence extended far beyond the official sphere, and made itself felt for the general good in the common relations of life. His dealings with subordinates were marked by thoroughgoing loyalty; his rule was to give his confidence without reserve to those who merited it, to support and defend them in the discharge of their duty. He was accessible, always ready to listen to the opinions even of his juniors, and though exacting as regards work, he never spared himself, but set an example of industry to those who served under him. He possessed that rare faculty of appreciation which enables a man to command services which no money could buy. The survivors of his staff to this day speak of him in affectionate terms as the best of chiefs. In business he was strictly, perhaps even rigidly, formal, and his manner was intolerant of laxity in others. When the official crust was put off like a suit of armour, the genial depths of his nature were reached, but the number of those who enjoyed this experience seems never to have been large. Select, but few, were the friends of his bosom.
The foreign residents in Peking did not number many, and, with the exception of the Legations, were rather widely scattered over a city of vast distances. The original community consisted of about sixty persons, distributed over the four Legations, the customs' staff, and missionary establishments. It was a community of young men "about twenty-four years of age," eminently social, no member being a stranger to the rest, and all living in friendly intercourse. The Legations may almost be said to have sat with open doors, so easy were their interchanges of informal visits. During the time of Sir Rutherford and Lady Alcock their hospitalities rendered the British Legation the chief centre of social interest, while the unaffected kindness which inspired these courtesies endeared its inmates to all their fellow-residents. That, indeed, was the golden age of the British Legation, and, it may be added, of the general social life of the Chinese capital, a period when life-long friendships were formed. The time had not yet come for international rivalries to mar the cordiality of personal intercourse. Indeed in the convivialities of Peking national distinctions were absolutely lost, and so to a great extent were the distinctions of rank. On the racecourse, which was early instituted, as in the billiard-room, picnic excursions, and the like, all were free and all were equal.
MANCHU WOMEN.
When we speak of the "social" life of Peking, it must be understood as referring exclusively to that of the foreign residents among themselves, for between them and the natives there was no such intimacy. But in those early days the high Chinese officials seemed to have been more genial than those of a later epoch. In the winter of 1860-61, for example, Hangki, formerly hoppo of Canton, was in the habit of receiving Mr Adkins familiarly at his private residence,—a practice which was afterwards gradually discontinued. The arrival of the two ladies at the British Legation was the signal for a display of courtesy by the Manchu Ministers, who from time to time sent them seasonable presents of plants, flowers, and other things, thus establishing agreeable personal relations with the Minister. That the advent of ladies to the Legations should have evoked the natural politeness of the high officials need not be a matter for wonder if it be remembered that the Chinese contempt for women is not shared by the Manchus. It is well known that their women are free from most of the trammels which contract the lives of their Chinese sisters. Their unbound feet symbolise liberty of locomotion generally, and they show themselves unveiled and unabashed in public thoroughfares. They have the coquetries common to the sex, among which may be reckoned a passion for floral decoration of the head, and the universal practice of painting the face and lips. This is done in a thoroughgoing manner, and as if the paint were "laid on with a trowel," leaving a sharply defined margin on cheek and neck between the pink and white and the sallow ground on which the colour is overlaid, giving it the appearance of a mask which might be easily removed. Even young children are subjected to the cosmetic treatment; and the very aged do not discard the artificial flowers in the remnant of their hair. As the fairest Chinese have no such natural colour as is thus imitated, it is rather difficult to divine whence they derived the notion of an ideal human skin.
It is not to be wondered at that the first European girls who appeared in Peking should have excited some curiosity. One young lady, probably the first arrival, whose fresh and fair complexion suggested the acme of the cosmetic art, excited intense interest among the Mongol and Manchu ladies. On one occasion she was met in the street by a great princess, who was so struck by her appearance that she stopped her cortège, alighted from her cart, and stood before the English girl and gently rubbed her cheeks to find out, as she naively said, how the colour was put on!
The foreign residents at Peking, happy as their circumstances were, lacked some of the principal elements of a community properly so called. They had, in fact, little in common besides their æsthetic culture and their Christian civilisation, the literature, philosophy, and the social tenets of the West. They had no head, no centre, no neutral meeting-ground even except the racecourse and the open fields, and were thus always either hosts or guests to each other. The assumed identity of their high political interests gave an appearance of solidarity to the diplomatic section; but the fusion of the other elements in the society was far from complete, and, in short, outside of the region of recreation and conviviality the residents could not be said to be animated by any unifying purpose, nor to have any communal existence. Individual isolation prevented the aggregate from attaining collective force.
CHINESE WOMEN.
These sterilising conditions were aggravated by another feature of the situation which had an important bearing on social life. Peking was one of the most inaccessible capitals in the world. The great tourist-stream passed it by. It stirred no human emotion unless it were languid aversion or inarticulate curiosity. The dilettante element which has ventilated Japan so well and kept her in constant touch with cosmopolitan life-currents has been absent in Northern China. Peking with its particular concerns has been thus permitted to lie secluded from the world, neither generating fruitful ideas nor inviting or profiting by their importation from without; nor, in short, making itself intelligible or interesting to mankind other than as an archaic curiosity. China, with its immense wealth and resources, weighed less in the consideration of the nations than the petty kingdom of Greece or the deadly swamps of Africa. Considerations of that kind help to explain the bewilderment with which the action of these neglected forces has been received during the past few years, and the disarray of the organs of European opinion when suddenly called on to deal with the phenomenon of Peking as a daily "headline."
Of the city itself it may be noted that it is magnificently laid out within high and massive walls, the gates and corners surmounted by bastions and imposing towers pierced with three tiers of gun-ports. The main streets are straight and extravagantly wide. Spaciousness is the dominant expression of the whole—the back-yard is a feature of the meanest one-storeyed hovels. It has not occurred to the Pekingese to economise earth-space by vertical architecture ground-ward or sky-ward. Viewed from an elevation, the city has the appearance of a vast park: the tree-foliage seen in perspective seems to cover the whole area, only picked out by yellow and green roofs of imperial and other conspicuous buildings. The palace, a city in itself of 10,000 inhabitants, occupies an immense enclave symmetrically placed in the centre of the whole.
From such a coign of vantage as the high wall affords, Peking presents at once an impressive and a pleasing spectacle. It gives the distance necessary to lend enchantment to the view. The soothing hum of a great population; the sweetness of an atmosphere untainted, if it be summer, or spiced by the aromatic herbs which grow promiscuously between the interstices of the bricks, if it be autumn,—enfolds the scene in that kind of soft drapery which memory throws over common things long past. One lingers, loth to renew a closer acquaintance with the crowd below, which no longer hums but utters wild discordant cries,—with the horrors of the streets, which are of the earth, earthy. The area contained between the rectilinear arteries of the city is dismally laid out on the plan of the rabbit-warren. These wide streets are alternately deep mire and deep dust at the best, but at the worst, receptacles of indescribable abominations. The witty and wise Bishop Favier, when describing these to a friend in France, was asked, How could a population living in such insanitary conditions resist a visitation of cholera. "Cholera!" exclaimed the Father; "it could never enter. It would be asphyxiated at the gate!"[12]
The dust is acrid to nose and eyes, from the dessicated refuse of generations, for the streets are watered by long scoops from standing pools of sewage which overflow in the summer rains and obliterate the roadway, so that animals harnessed between shafts not unfrequently meet with a cruel death by drowning in these fœtid thoroughfares.
CHINESE STREET SCENE DURING RAINY SEASON.
Such hints as these will be sufficient to suggest to the least imaginative that peculiar unattractiveness of the Peking streets which has been a determining factor in the habits of the foreign residents. Life would be intolerable to Western folks if it were not removed from the sights, noises, and odours of the streets; and fortunately the ruling local principle of spaciousness lends itself to the solution without running counter to any native practice or prejudice. The Legations, the customs, and the missionaries are in their various degrees established in "compounds" large enough to accommodate the members of their staffs in separate buildings with ample elbow-room, as in an Indian cantonment, interspaced with trees and sometimes gardens, the whole surrounded by a high wall and capable of defence. These seductive oases in a wilderness of garbage, in a city of great distances, naturally conduce to stay-at-home habits and to segregation, which it requires some energy to overcome.
Nor is Peking life wanting in more mundane compensations. The city itself contains many "objects of interest," which in the earlier years of foreign intercourse were open to the curious. The well-known "Lama temple," reputed to contain 2000 inmates, which has for many years been dangerous to enter, was in those days a much-frequented resort, where the stranger was welcome to go over the establishment and listen to the Buddhist litanies: a certain bass voice, or perhaps a succession of bass voices, in the choir, indeed, attained celebrity among foreigners. In the refectory of that monastery one was obliged, out of respect, to eat, or feign to eat, the unmitigated fat of the sheep's tail, fished from out the broth, not with a hook, as was the custom in the Jewish Church, but by the deft fingers of the chief lama. Now, on the contrary, the foreigner who enters the gate is hustled, robbed, and stoned. This great change in the attitude of the lamas has never been satisfactorily explained, but it is presumed that the manners and customs of some of the visitors to the temple may have had something to do with it. There have been visitors who, with the keen acquisitiveness of the world-tourist, have slipped small "josses" into their pockets out of what, perhaps, appeared to them the superfluous number of molten images ranged round the shelves of the great Buddha's sanctuary.
The Temple of Heaven, too, that grand altar to the Living God, standing in an immense park enclosed by a lofty wall, was then, and for many years remained, open to all comers. This was perhaps due less to any intentional liberality of the authorities than to the negligence of the gatekeepers and the Board of Works. For a long time access was gained over a broken part of the outer wall left unrepaired. At one period English residents played cricket within the vast enclosure; at another Billingsgate and brickbats were the ordinary salutations which greeted the would-be visitor—the change being probably due to the slow awakening of the officials. So with many other places within and without the city, for in some cases where direct request was made for extension of the accommodation, the effect of drawing official attention to the subject was to restrict the privileges which had actually been enjoyed.
Notwithstanding the occasional rudeness of which Dr Rennie has given us so faithful a picture, the most unartistic of men could hardly fail to take pleasure in the daily traffic of the streets, provided only his nerves, visual and olfactory, were not too delicate. The true lord of the roads is apt from his commonplaceness to be overlooked by those who owe him most—that universal conveyancer, the sagacious, tireless mule. He does not belong to the "five great families"—the fox, weasel, hedgehog, snake, and rat—which the Chinese hold in mystic awe because they have learned the secret of immortality; but if utility to man were a criterion of merit, they would surely fall down and worship this indispensable hybrid. Hot or cold, wet or dry, the mule never fails to respond to the severest call upon his strength and courage.
With the approach of winter an antediluvian rival is introduced upon the scene, in the shape of the well-known two-humped camel, which is then shaggy, dignified, and in really grand form. Intolerant of heat, but impervious to cold, the camels, after passing the summer on the grass-lands of the Mongolian plateau, are brought down in droves to the great fair held on a large open space outside the Northern Wall. The coming of the camels with their bronzed and heavily booted riders is like a whiff of the free air of the desert. The Pekingese use this patient but surly beast of burden chiefly for carrying coal from the mines in the Western Hills to the city; but immense numbers are employed in transporting tea from the navigable limit of the Peiho to Siberia and Russia, not entering Peking city at all.
A roomy encampment between the British and Russian Legations is allotted to the Mongols, and serves as a market-place where the products of the desert are exchanged for the utensils and gewgaws of civilisation. The staple of the Mongol trade is frozen meat—mutton, venison, furred and feathered game; and without refrigerator or other appliance the carcasses remain fresh in their skins till the end of the three winter months. These simple-minded herdsmen, chaffering with shrewd Chinese hucksters, or sitting, where they seem to have been born, between the high humps of their slow-moving beasts, form picturesque groups in the imperial city, the more interesting that their appearance is pathetically suggestive of an order which is passing away. The Grand Khan, dispensing favours to his loyal tributaries, has come ominously near to being a mere tradition. These very sheepskin-coated camel-drivers are the only buffer remaining between the receding empire and the advancing tide of foreign encroachment from the north.
Other evidences of that imperial grandeur which lent some justification to the title "Middle Kingdom" were still occasionally to be met with. Though Siam, and even Burma, had fallen indefinitely into arrears, dust-begrimed embassies from Korea or Nepaul, with their trains of pack-mules bearing tribute and merchandise (duty free for the benefit of the officials), might still be seen defiling through the massive gates of the city, preserving to our day a living picture of the Asiatic mission of the antique type. For what were they but interesting survivals, shadows of departed greatness?
Peking is not a commercial city, but essentially an imperial camp. Trade proper is confined to an outer or Chinese city, which is but a walled-in suburb sparsely built over. Through traffic, for obvious fiscal reasons, shuns the capital; but there is sufficient local commerce, of which gold and silver smelting forms a not unimportant part, to support many bankers and merchants who are domiciled in the outer city. It has been remarked that Chinese trade may be seen at its best in the settlement of Maimaichên, which faces Kiachta on the Russo-Chinese frontier, or in the Straits Settlements or Rangoon, where nothing hinders the merchants from accumulating and displaying their wealth. Even Peking, however, affords some glimpses of the far-reaching enterprise of the Chinese traders.
What a suggestive display, for instance, is the fur-market, also of necessity a "winter exhibition"! Acres and acres of ground are covered with skins of every conceivable species of quadruped, spread out from dawn till near noon. Here are daily laid out for sale under the blue sky (and what a light to make purchases in!) the commonest and the most precious furs from Manchuria, the Amur, and even Kamtschatka, the total value of which must be enormous. Let us learn from the history of the Hudson's Bay Company what organisation of energy, what confidence, what variety of enterprise and skill, are required to bring these costly commodities from such vast distances to this great sale-room, and we shall not make light of the vitality of the Chinese.
The amenities of the street traffic, though not of special importance, call for mention as illustrating certain phases of foreign contact with the Chinese. If we may take Japan for comparison, in nothing is the contrast between the two systems more apparent than in municipal administration. The antithesis may be expressed in one word,—in Japan, excessive regulation; in China, absence of regulation. Whether there be any rule of the road in China is of little interest, seeing that, like other rules, it might be disregarded and there would be no one to enforce it. The traffic adjusts itself with little friction. China employs no police,—things arrange themselves by their own interaction, as the pebbles do on the sea-shore; and for most of the purposes of life the people are their own law-makers and their own executive. The Chinese system of government is to govern as little as possible—to let the country rule itself. So when a strange element demanded accommodation in the busy streets and congested gateways of Peking, without rules or supervision, it had to find its level among the rest by friction and concussion. It would have been an interesting process to watch in its initial stages. Amid a good deal of clamour and language of a racy description applied to man and beast and their respective ancestors, there is rarely a serious road quarrel among the Chinese. One excellent custom of polite society tends to restrict the area of disputes on the highway, leaving collisions to be fought out by grooms, carters, chair-bearers, or boatmen, as the case may be, while the masters maintain an imperturbable reserve.
Mr Colborne Baber, who had a way of his own of solving the minor problems of Chinese intercourse, was once in a cart, sitting well back and unobserved, in a narrow street that admitted neither of turning nor of passing another vehicle, when a cart was met about half way. The drivers began to vociferate, each calling on the other to give way. The opposition carter claimed the precedence on the ground that his vehicle carried women, and it looked as if he would gain his point when Baber himself, becoming impatient, thrust out his head and called out that in his cart there was a foreign devil, and without further discussion the rival jehu backed out.
Those who ride do not recognise each other on the road, even though they be friends; for if they did so, etiquette would require both to stop and dismount and go through formal salutations on foot. Foreigners, ignoring this rule, and their servants not unwilling to profit by the prestige of their masters in accosting bystanders from the saddle, are sometimes grievously misdirected when not lectured on their bad manners. The natives on their part are seldom averse from presuming on the foreigner's ignorance of what is due to him. Between the one and the other, or as a result of the mere chapter of accidents, collisions were inevitable in the streets. How were they to be dealt with in the absence of constituted authority? If aggression towards a foreigner on the part of a great man's servants were submitted to, there would be no end to it, they being 500 to 1. On the other hand, insolence promptly resented and vigorously punished never failed to elicit the approval not only of the spectators, but even of the great man himself, who perhaps had secret grievances of his own against his lackeys, which he was not sorry to see partially paid off by proxy. In all cases the sympathy of the Chinese goes with the side that successfully asserts itself. Of this hundreds of examples could be given—perhaps not one on the converse side.
A writer in the 'Whitehall Review' some years ago, among interesting reminiscences of the 'Sixties, relates some incidents to show the primitive means by which equilibrium was established between natives and foreigners in the Peking streets. Place aux dames. The experience of the first foreign female who had been seen is thus amusingly told. Mr Bruce's housekeeper, an old family retainer who had followed the fortunes of her master all over the world,
saw no particular reasons for not acting in Peking as she had done in Cairo or Constantinople, and the first morning after her arrival sallied forth, basket on arm, to do her marketing for the day. When I add that she knew not a word of Chinese, that none of the natives spoke English, that she was about five feet high and ten feet round the crinoline, and was the first female European ever seen by the Pekingese, her enterprise will be judged to have been braver than she knew. However, nothing daunted, she entered a butcher's shop, closely pressed upon by an inquisitive and delighted crowd. Before she could even look at a joint or chop she was hemmed in, and one waggish native, bolder than the rest, gave her a substantial dig in the crinoline, shouting in Chinese, "Let's see if she's solid." But the laugh was not for long on his side. Seizing a chopper from the block, Mrs A. made a mighty blow at his head, which he happily evaded. In less than a second the shop was clear, the terrified natives tumbling over each other in their haste to get away. A European who came upon the scene at the moment beheld the startling sight of some 500 Chinese rushing up the principal street pursued by an infuriated old woman armed with a chopper. With some difficulty she was persuaded to abandon the chase and resume her basket, which she had dropped in her excitement. But it is on record that for a good two years thereafter Mrs A. was allowed to shop in peace, and became a "Black Douglas" to troublesome Chinese children in the vicinity of the Legation.
In later years she talked in what she called "broken China."
Another "adjustment to environment" is thus described:—
A curious little industry sprang up in the environs of the city, consequent on the horsey proclivities of the Europeans. This was getting run over, which was generally accomplished by rushing in front of the horses and throwing the hands up. One of two things always happened. Either the horse shied and the rider came off, to the huge delight of the Chinese mob, or the gesticulating party was knocked down. In this latter event, cautioned as we all were to give no offence, if possible, to the natives, a dollar was generally handed as salve to the artful victim, whose screams and yells that he had been killed never failed to draw a large and sympathising crowd of friends, who regarded the "foreign devil" with most unfriendly looks. In one village at last it became intolerable, and we decided if any further attempt was made we would run down the culprits intentionally. As usual, on our next visit three or four young gamins essayed the usual dodge. Being fully prepared for it, nobody was unseated, and we turned our horses back at full gallop, three or four Chinese being hurled into the hedge by our horses. We did not stop to offer dollars, but were never afterwards stopped.
Following the same train of reflection, he gives examples of the drastic manner in which the Russians asserted their prerogatives on the road, which we do not quote, as they were probably exceptional cases.
The never-failing courtesy of the Manchus rises superior to such unpleasant encounters. An example of this was related to the writer by a member of the British Legation. In riding through a narrow place, narrowed probably by the cesspool occupying more than its fair share of the street, he met the cortège of a grandee at a spot where it seemed impossible to pass, and it looked as if the solitary horseman must turn back. As he thought of doing so he observed the occupant of the sedan call a halt and direct his bearers to make room for the stranger. Observing closely the features of him who showed so much consideration for a foreigner, the Englishman was pleased, some time afterwards, to recognise in him Prince Ch'ing, who succeeded Prince Kung as President of the Tsungli-Yamên in 1884.
The lives of the foreign residents were by no means confined within the four walls of the city. The environs without fences or trespass notices make charming excursion-grounds for riding-parties. For longer expeditions there are the never-failing attractions of the Ming Tombs, the Great Wall, the passes into Mongolia, and various other distant points. The city is beautifully situated in the centre of a mountain crescent, whose nearest point is thirteen miles distant. The first object of quest when the Legations had been established was a sanatorium or summer retreat—for the thermometer reaches 100 Fahr. in June—and the Western Hills were explored. Some of the most beautiful spots there are occupied by Buddhist temples or monasteries, whose builders have shown as nice a taste in the selection of their sites as their brethren the monks of the West have always done. These religious houses, laid out with a view to the accommodation of pilgrims and strangers, are regularly used by Chinese grandees as health-resorts or shelters from political storms. The Russian mission, while it was alone in Peking, had set the example twenty years before of resorting to the hill temples in the dog-days. Arrangements with the priests for the occupation of certain portions of one of the temples were soon made by Mr Parkes, who was on a visit to the capital, and ever since 1861 official Peking, with one notable exception, has on the approach of summer migrated bodily from the oppressive atmosphere of the great city to the exhilarating air of the Western Hills. The social life of the city was reproduced at the temples, but in a less conventional form, every one residing there being considered on a holiday. The country round offered many temptations to excursions, and amateurs of geology, botany, and natural history were never at a loss for something to interest them in their rambles among the hills. Residence so far from town brought the foreigners into friendly contact also with their rustic neighbours, whose innate good qualities, moderation, contentment, and kindliness were displayed in a very favourable light.
But the sojourn at the hills also brought the foreigner into occasional contact with Chinese of high rank, who welcomed such opportunities of showing civility to the strangers. At other times disagreeable collisions with the retainers of a great personage were experienced. So popular were the temples of the Western Hills as a summer resort that they were always full, and consequently disputes about accommodation were liable to occur, especially when some grasping priest would let the same premises to two different occupants, leaving them, or rather their servants, to fight for the possession.