LETTER XII
Peking, 22nd August 1865.
Since I last wrote to you we have been leading the most monotonous of lives, and no news from home has come to cheer us. We have had staying with us one of the few stray visitors that chance drives up here—a Mr. R——, an officer in the commissariat, and a very pleasant companion he was; he came fresh from Japan, and full of stories about Yokohama and Yedo, but out here we should prefer to hear about London. There really is little temptation to travellers to come here now, for, thanks to the misbehaviour of certain of our countrymen, the Chinese have shut up the principal lions of the town, and the temples of Heaven, and of Confucius, are not shown, even to members of the Legations. I for one have not been able to visit them. The great Lama Temple is still to be seen, and to any one who has not seen a Chinese temple, is a great show; but they are all very like one another, the main difference being merely a question of size. It is very provoking to be kept out of really interesting sights by the brutality of travelling bullies who will force their way into places where they have no right to go.
All we can do now for our visitors is to show them the panorama of the two cities from the walls, the top of which forms a ride or walk right round Peking, and where the wonderful observatory of the old Jesuit fathers, with its beautiful bronze instruments, still stands, and to take them through the streets and over the curio shops—braving offence given to eyes and nostrils. The curio shops especially make up an amusing day, and I am always glad of an excuse to go there. There is a bazaar, too, just inside the Chinese city, a sort of Lowther Arcade on a small scale, where toys, scents, sham jewellery, cheap embroidery, and other rubbish are sold, and which is quite worth seeing. This is greatly patronised by the Mongols, who never weary of admiring the showy trash exposed for sale. The Mongols are to the Pekingese what the Auvergnats are to the gamins de Paris, or a bumpkin come up to London for the cattle-show to the cabbies and ’busmen. They are the perpetual butts of jokes, sells, and cheatery, and are done at every opportunity. The bazaar leads on to the Beggar’s Bridge, with its mass of rotting humanity, a place that it makes one shudder to think of, and once past that we are well in the Chinese city. The amount of traffic is always very great, and it is no easy matter to thread one’s way through the crowd of mules, carts, horses, and footpads, and the worst of it is that one is continually hustled up against some unhappy leper, whose only clothing is dirt and sores. The neatness and nicety of the shops are a great contrast to the filth and squalor of the streets themselves. Inside everything is as clean as water can make it; outside is a dunghill, where the beggars are disputing with the dogs and pigs the right to water-melon rinds, rotten vegetables, and dead carrion. The street hawkers are a great feature; of course they all have their peculiar cries as in Europe; but in addition to this each trade has its own announcement in the shape of some instrument—one trade carries a thing like a huge Jew’s harp, another has a tiny gong, a third a drum, a fourth beats two pieces of bamboo together, and so forth. All these make a terrible clatter, and the noise is increased by the beggars, who take up a position opposite some shop—a cook-house for choice—and there make themselves odious to eyes, ears, and nostrils until its owner can stand it no longer and buys them off with a copper cash or piece of refuse food. Among Chinese street characters the improvisatore is one of the foremost. He is as loud and fluent as his Italian compeer, and infinitely more energetic. He generally accompanies himself on the bones, but often has a little boy to beat a drum for him. He works himself into a regular frenzy, and jumps about like one possessed of a devil; he dances and gesticulates and raves until the sweat runs down his face; but nothing tires him, and he never halts nor pauses in his chant. These men are too nimble of speech and too slang for most foreigners to catch a word; but I suppose they are generally witty and entertaining, for they command immense audiences of gaping Chinamen, and their sallies are received with great delight. Like the Italians, when they have worked up their audience to a proper pitch of interest they stop, and refuse to go on with the story without more coppers. At the approach of the foreign barbarian some little witticism is launched à notre adresse. You may judge whether it is very complimentary; however, as “it amuses them and don’t hurt us,” that don’t much signify. Perhaps the hawkers whose wares are the most curious to Europeans are the men who carry about live crickets and cicadas for sale, either in tiny wooden cages or tied to bamboo rods. The Chinese buy them to any amount as pets, and some make the crickets fight like quails and game-cocks.
We are very often accosted by the more respectable class. The first salutation is always, “Have you had your dinner, sir?” which is the Chinese, “How d’ye do?” and then the conversation runs as follows:—
“Your honourable name?”
“My name is Mi. What is your honourable name?”
“My shabby name is Hwang. What are the years of your age?”
“I am twenty-eight” (great astonishment, for I pass usually for forty-five).
“How long have you been inside the walls?” (at Peking).
“About four months.”
“Do you belong to the great Ying, or the great Fa?” (English or French).
Then follow a string of the most absurd questions about England. One man asked one day whether it was true that in Europe there were men with holes through their chests and backs, whom their servants carried about by passing a bamboo pole through the hole and so hoisting them on to their shoulders. Such is the Chinese education, that one of their scholars, deeply read in ethics and Confucian books, would be capable of asking questions to the full as ridiculous as the above, which, indeed, was put by an educated man.
After the din, bustle, and dirt of the streets, it is very refreshing to go into one of the shops, where there is always the civillest welcome, even though one may buy nothing. In almost all cases the master of the house gives us delicious tea, sugarless and milkless of course, but of the most exquisite flavour. The infusion is made in a small covered bowl; I have hardly ever seen a teapot. The outer shop is for the most part only, as it were, an advertisement, and contains nothing but trash: one of the finest shops here exhibits to the street a front such as a Cheap Jack at a fair might show; but go inside, and cross a little courtyard into the inner sanctum, and you will be dazzled by the beauty of the ornaments and trinkets for sale. There is a certain black étagère made of ebony, carved to represent very light bamboo stems supporting irregular niches, filled with carved lapis-lazuli, jade, cornelians, agates, and other rare stones, that I should like to carry off bodily. Every piece in the collection is a chef-d’œuvre. The prices are, of course, outrageous, but they come down; indeed, it is curious that a people so proverbially cunning in trade should act as they do. Supposing that they ask thirty dollars for a thing, we offer fifteen, which, at first, will be indignantly rejected; but after perhaps three months of bargaining the man will come down to our price, thus keeping himself for three months out of the interest of his money. There is some beautiful porcelain, but very dear. I have never seen any of the rose-backed plates or cups that are so much prized at home; and two or three of the dealers, whom I have asked about them, had never heard of such things. There is plenty of bad cloisonné enamel about; but the fine specimens came from Yuen-Ming-Yuen, and the Chinese were obliged to sell them off as fast as they could for fear of the law. (I take it the natives had a great hand in the looting.) I only know of two really magnificent pieces, for which the owner asks £1000! He would probably take £300, and they would be a great bargain at the price. They are two colossal covered bowls, without flaw or fault, and would look splendid at Windsor or some very great house. I have written to a friend to tell him of them.
The best chance of picking up here and there a pretty thing is in the minor shops, from which the bigger ones are recruited. There is a street called the Liu-li-chang, which swarms with old book shops (a sort of Paternoster Row) and curiosity shops, some of which are hardly more than stalls, where sometimes one may find a piece of fine porcelain, or other work of art, for an old song.
I start after to-morrow morning for Ku-Pei-Ko̔u, to see the Great Wall, and I shall return by way of the tombs of the emperors of the Ming dynasty; so at any rate I shall not have to sing the eternal refrain, “Peking is very dirty.” I shall be about eight days gone. The trip was originally to have been undertaken with the Russian Minister, but he is detained by business, so I go with Murray, and we accompany Saurin as far as Ku-Pei-Ko̔u, whence he will travel into Mongolia, and Murray and I shall come back.
One more word about the Beggar’s Bridge: often one of the poor creatures will die at his post, and I have seen the corpse lie there for two or three days hardly covered over by a piece of rotten matting. His troubles and miseries are over. The beggars are, I am told, a sort of guild with a recognised head, to whom it is not an infrequent custom to pay a slight annual tribute, by which means their importunities, such as taking up a position outside a man’s door or shop, and refusing to “move on,” may be avoided, and their piteous cry, “Ko̔ Lien! Ko̔ Lien!” (Have mercy! have mercy!) no longer heard. Begging throughout Asia is a fine art.