LETTER XIII
Peking, 5th September 1865.
I returned on Saturday from my trip to the Great Wall; I must try and give you some account of it.
We started on the 25th August, as I told you before. Saurin and Frater, one of the student interpreters, were going to make a journey in Mongolia, and Murray and I accompanied them to the frontier.
Each party had three servants—a man to look after clothes, bedding, and things in general, a cook, and a groom; but besides these our people took with them their servant, a queer little oddity of a Chinaman, very dirty, in an old English sailor’s pea-jacket, much too big for him, which earned him the name of the “Skipper.” I never saw such a merry, willing little creature; he was always at work and always laughing, as if everything he did were a capital joke, and the very fact of his being in the world at all something so ridiculous that he really couldn’t get over it.
I need tell you little of our first day’s journey, as far as regards scenery. I had never seen that part of the plain which lies north-east of Peking, but it is exactly like the rest, which I have often described to you. We breakfasted at a place called Sun-Ho, about thirteen miles hence; soon after that the country became prettier. We passed some cosy villages with fine old willows; from these one is called Ku-Lin-Shu, the “Old Willow Trees,” and here we stopped to rest during the great heat of the day at the tea-shop. As usual, all the people were very civil and talkative. One elderly man, whose name was Ma, a Mohammedan, and evidently the village politician, was very communicative; he was a great Tory, and laudator temporis acti, abusing the present dynasty, and sighing over the “good old days” of the Mings. I gave him a cigar, which he took with great delight, and jumped up on to a little low wall, where he sat perched with his hams on his heels like an old bird, and went on with his denunciation of the Tartars. “Ugh!” said he, “they have not got a good officer among all their mandarins. They brought us into the war with foreign powers, and then when they saw the big men and the big horses, and heard the poum-poum-poum of the cannon, what did they do? Why, they ran away and left us to pay for it all.”
We slept at a place called Niu-Lan-Shan, near which there are some marshes with herons and wild-fowl. A Chinese inn is very unlike our notions of an inn. It is generally built round the four sides of a courtyard; the guests’ house is at the bottom, facing north and south. East and west are stalls for mules, horses, and donkeys; the remaining side is occupied by the people of the house. The inn-yard is very animated—carts, pigs, horses, mules, dogs, flocks of pigeons, and poultry are crowded into it, besides poor travellers, Chinese and Mongol. Then there are generally a travelling barber plying his trade in one corner, a pedlar haggling for a few cash in another, and all the idle vagabonds who seem to comprise the greater part of the population of every place in Northern China, and who come in to loaf about and make remarks about the foreigners. There is no great variety or originality in these. There is always a fugleman, who makes a remark, and then the crowd take it up in chorus. The following is really a fair specimen of the sort of thing they say about us:—
Fugleman—“Those boots! They are made of scented cow’s leather” (Russia leather).
Chorus—“Those boots! They are made of scented cow’s leather.”
Fugleman—“Those boots! He that wears them need not fear water.”
Chorus (admiringly)—“Those boots! He that wears them,” etc.
Fugleman (to one of us)—“Those boots! How much did they cost?”
Englishman—“They cost fourteen taels.”
Fugleman—“Those boots! They cost fourteen taels, and he speaks the mandarin language.”
Chorus-“They cost fourteen taels, and he speaks the mandarin language”—and so it goes on ad infinitum. If we are in a good humour we give the fugleman a cigar, which he puffs at vigorously, and swears “it is both strong and fragrant”; but it makes him cough violently, and he passes it on to the next in the crowd, until the whole of them retire, coughing and declaring that it is “both strong and fragrant,” into a corner, from which every now and then we hear “those boots” all over again.
The rooms of the inn are very bare indeed; the only furniture is a table with two chairs, and the only vaisselle provided is a teapot and bowls, all guests being expected to bring their own bedding, food, and comforts. On each door is pasted a print of a god in staring colours. The lintels and posts of the inner doors are covered with characters printed on red paper, which are generally moral reflections from the works of Confucius, such as, “All happiness comes from Heaven,” “To become wealthy you must have the principle of right.” On the wall is generally hung a picture. I saw one of a sage with a forehead like a misshapen pear, lecturing before two warriors upon the Yang and Yin (the universal principle of nature); another of a yellow elephant in spectacles, his body, legs, and trunk covered with characters, with two gentlemen in blue eating their dinner comfortably under his stomach, while a third was offering a stalk of millet to a lady in pink, who modestly turned her head aside as she accepted the present; this was a sort of Chinese farmer’s Moore’s almanack, indicating the propitious times for sowing, reaping, etc. Besides the centre picture, the walls are often covered with drawings by poor travelling artists, who earn a night’s lodging by the skill of their pencil. Some of their productions, when they don’t attempt figures or beasts, are very clever. I have seen in the most out-of-the-way inns sketches of bamboo, grasses, flowers, and birds, that were dashed off in a way that would have done credit to well-known names. If the traveller be a poor scholar, as such are always proud of their caligraphy, he will, instead of a drawing, contribute quotations from the philosophers or poets, or a few verses in praise of the landlord and his honesty, and declaring how his (the poor scholar’s) heart had laughed during the period of their intercourse. Every room has in it a ka̔ng; this is a large stove about 2½ feet high, covered with a mat or piece of felt, taking up all one side of the room, and serving as a bed. In winter the Chinese, like the Russians, bake themselves every time they go to sleep.
There came on a fearful thunderstorm in the night, with a deluge of rain, which gave us some uneasiness, as we had several rivers ahead of us which we feared might become unfordable, as indeed turned out to be the case. However, the only inconvenience we suffered was in loss of time, for when we arrived next morning at the first river we found huge ferry-boats, worked by strapping Chinamen stark naked; it took us nearly two hours to get our carts, mules, and horses across. We amused ourselves the while in watching a swine-herd’s vain endeavours to make his flock swim the stream, the opposition being led by a stubborn little curly-tail, with a majority in his favour. The consumption of pork at Peking must be something fabulous. The streets swarm with pigs, and yet from every direction we saw large herds being driven into the town. The Chinese who can afford it eat pork at nearly every meal. We found an encampment of Mongols on the river-bank. They were on their way homeward from Peking, where they had been selling horses. They seemed very good-humoured, honest people, simple and primitive to a degree, as amused as children with our watches, clothes, saddles, and other belongings.
It is very strange, the farther one gets from the capital, to see an improvement in everything. The fields are better cultivated, the houses are better built, and the villages far cleaner than the town. Fifteen miles out of Peking all the indecencies and filthiness which are its characteristics disappear entirely; a man would be stoned if he were to venture upon outraging decency as the Pekingese do; the poor peasants are more polite and less inquisitive about us, although foreigners so rarely appear among them, which makes one think that the inquisitiveness is sometimes only studied impertinence. We saw several farmhouses with pretty gardens and neat out-houses, which might have stood in an English shire, so free were they from all stamp of China. The people seemed well-to-do, and the farmers positively rich. We met a lady going out to spend the day with her gossip, dressed as smart as a new pin, and carrying her baby in her arms. She was riding a donkey, which, as soon as one of our vicious little Mongol ponies set eyes on, he made a dash at the ass and upset him and the lady and the baby, happily on to a bank, for had she fallen in the muddy lane there would have been an end to all her finery. As it was, she was let off for a good fright. “Ai ya! what manners are these! what manners are these!” she cried indignantly as she struggled on to her tiny goat’s feet. We, of course, made all the apologies possible, and she bestrode her ass and rode off pacified—more or less.
The principal place that we passed on this day (August 26) was Mi-Yün-Hsien, a walled city. We did not enter the city, but skirted the walls. Outside the gate there stands a guard-house, and near this there is a tall blasted tree. It has neither leaf nor sprout, but from its whitened branches there hang small wooden cages, and in each cage is a human head, at which the carrion-birds are pecking. A ghastly fruit!
At a little place called Shi-ling I saw the prettiest woman I have ever met in China. She was a widow, and really looked quite lovely in her white dress and fillet, which she wore as weeds. She had a clear olive complexion, abundance of black hair, dark eyes, and regular features. Women’s dress in this country show nothing of the figure; but we all agreed that she must have had a good figure; alas! her feet had been tortured and deformed. This is commonly supposed to be the difference between pure Chinese women and Tartars. As a matter of fact, I am assured that it is a question of family custom, some Tartar families adopting it, while some Chinese families do not. The poor serving wench who has her feet deformed must be sadly hampered in her work.
We slept at Mu-Chia-Yu. The next morning (August 27) we started in good time, for we wished to reach Ku-Pei-Ko̔u early that day. Although the ride of the day before had been very pretty, increasing in beauty as we drew near to the mountains, I was hardly prepared for such glorious scenery as we passed through on this day. The road lay over and between hillocks and rocks covered with ferns, mosses, and wild-flowers, and before us were the mountains with blue distances and fantastic outlines for a landscape-painter to revel in. Over the tops of the highest hills the Great Wall of China traced a zigzag course, like a distant chain. Rich crops of millet and Indian corn, with undergrowths of beans or buckwheat, bordered with the castor-oil plant, stood in the valleys and in the plain. The cottages of the different villages had an air of comfort and tidiness rare in China; almost every one had a little flower-garden fenced in by a hedge of millet stalks, trailed over with gourds, convolvulus, and vines. In some places the people were gathering in the smaller sort of millet; they were cutting the ears separately with a small knife, as a gardener would gather a dish of fruit or vegetables.
The only instance of hostility towards a foreigner on the part of the people I have met with hitherto happened on this day. Frater and I were riding about 200 yards ahead of the party when, just as we arrived at a crossroad, and were doubting which way to take, up came a party of about a dozen Chinamen with a cart. We, according to good manners, “borrowed the light of their intelligence,” and asked our way, which they pointed out, paying us at the same time the compliment of asking whether we had eaten our dinner. I think I told you that the common salutation is, “Have you had your dinner?” The literal translation of the phrase is, “Have you eaten rice.”[8] Rice has passed into the generic term for all meals. Early rice is breakfast, late rice is dinner. The rice is prepared is the equivalent of Mr. Bailey Junior’s “the wittles is up.” In short, amenity and deportment could be pushed no further. To our surprise a few moments after Saurin and Murray rode up looking hot and angry, and asking us whether we had had any difficulty with these same men. It appeared that, as Saurin was riding past the cart, the man inside, in the most unprovoked way, struck him in the chest with his brass pipe. Murray was riding just behind him and saw the blow struck, and from their account of what took place I doubt whether the man will ever insult a foreigner again. His friends all took part against him, but interceded for him, crying, “Be calm, be calm; he has had enough.” At any rate he got a good whipping.
The sun was scorching hot, and it was a great relief to come upon a pretty village-green, at one end of which stood a small tea-shop, shaded by a covering of millet-straw and by a broad-spreading tree: our horses needed a rest as much as ourselves; they had been driven nearly mad by the flies and by one venomous little insect in particular, which must have been the original gadfly that persecuted Io. It has a long sheath in its tail, out of which it shoots a sting into the horses’ flanks, apparently out of pure mischief, for it never seems to suck them, and it follows a horse or mule for miles. If one attacked our horses, the only way to get rid of it was to dismount and kill it. So sharp is its sting that every time it touched our beasts they jumped up as if they had been shot. We were all glad of a friendly shelter.
We found a party of Chinamen playing dominoes. They were playing the game more as we do cards than dominoes, but I could not make out the principle of it. The landlord was a very jolly, burly fellow, the picture of a host with whom everything prospered, although he must have been poor enough, for instead of tea he was drinking an infusion of dried leaves of jujube that is common on the hills. In some places where there is no tea to be had the people drink a sort of barley water, and very good it is. At these tea-shops guests are expected to bring their own tea-leaves. The house supplies only the pot and the boiling water.
Almost every man and woman (I am not exaggerating) that we met in this part of the valley had goitres, not so bad as those one meets in the Swiss valleys, but far more numerous. In one village we saw eight fullgrown men and women only—out of the eight seven had goitres.
Overlooking the village-green I mentioned above is a fort commanding the plain; and on one side of the fort the road has been cut through the solid rock and arched over with strong masonry, so as to form a gate, which bears the legend, “The Gate of the Southern Heavens.” Through this gate there is a most gorgeous view of the different ranges, the Great Wall, and the approach to Ku-Pei-Ko̔u.
Ku-Pei-Ko̔u is in its way one of the most strikingly beautiful places that I have ever seen. The valley by which it is reached, with rocks, ferns, mosses, gardens, and a little rivulet sparkling in the sunlight, is a gem. The town itself stands in a little nest among the hills which surround it; on one side of it runs a river, on the farther bank of which, in a grove of trees, is the yamên or official residence of the Ti-tu (the general officer commanding the district). There is not a point in the whole place from which there is not something attractive to rest one’s eyes on. The streets are clean, the houses well built, and the shops seem to do a prosperous business. At one end of the town is the frontier gate of China; it is strongly guarded, and ingress or egress without passport is forbidden. Besides the walls of the city, as a guard against Mongol tribes, on the river side are two little ditches that a man might easily hop over, and two little pieces of cannon which look more dangerous to friend than to foe. We walked outside the gate to stand beyond the confines of China proper. The guard were extremely civil, the sentry politely inviting us into the guard-room to drink tea! The Chinese attach a great deal of importance to Ku-Pei-Ko̔u as a border fortress. They keep up a garrison of two thousand men, of whom ten per cent are Tartars and the rest Chinese.
The inn here is the largest I have been in yet. The enormous traffic which passes through the town keeps its business brisk. The landlord was a Tientsing man, and a man of letters, having taken the degree equivalent to our B.A. Degrees in China are conferred by competitive examination, only a certain number of candidates being elected each time. The examinations are held at Peking, and people come from all parts of the empire to compete. Some time back an old gentleman aged 100 presented himself from the south for examination. He received the degree of B.A. by Imperial favour, and with it a present of 2 lbs. of gin-seng, which is a powerful aphrodisiac and tonic. It is from the successful candidates that the offices of the empire are filled, and in former days it was the highest ambition of a Chinaman to pass the schools in order to qualify himself for office. Now, however, a race has sprung up of men who are indifferent to public honours, and prefer their private advantage. Of these was our host. Why, he argued, should he go through all the petty annoyances and humiliations which inferior mandarins suffer at the hands of their superiors for the possible chance of rising to distinction, when he could enjoy certain comfort in trade? Many people deny the existence of this feeling among the lettered class, but it exists nevertheless. Office, both civil and military, can also be obtained by purchase.
As I was sitting smoking and reading an old number of a magazine outside my room, the landlord came up and began asking me many questions about what I was reading, and why we read from left to right instead of in columns from right to left. About half an hour after I heard him in the inn-yard delivering a lecture to an admiring audience of grooms, muleteers, and riffraff, upon the English language, the point of which was that we wrote exactly as the Manchus do, who write in columns from left to right! Seeing me come he borrowed my book and proceeded to give practical illustrations of what he had said, holding it upside down. This exhibition of learning was received with awe by the gaping crowd. He was a great character, this same landlord, a confirmed opium smoker, and being a man of letters, which is something more thought of here than being of good birth is in Europe, he had an immense number of friends and acquaintances of good standing of whom he was very proud. He took me into his own little house, which he had papered completely with the crimson visiting-cards of his intimates.
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.
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).