LETTER XXVIII
Ta-chio-Ssŭ, 4th August 1866.
When I returned from Mongolia three weeks ago I found that all the world, that is to say, the three or four diplomatists who compose our world, had very wisely taken itself off to the country. So early as last February I had secured this “Temple of Great Repose,” and I lost no time in coming out here. It is too far from Peking to be very convenient; but it is well worth the extra ride, and the advantage of being fifteen miles from the other temples inhabited by Europeans is incalculable; one is not subject to perpetual interruptions by people who, being bored themselves, come in and inflict their boredom upon others. It is a great undertaking moving out to the hills. We are obliged to take absolutely our whole ménage, and almost all our furniture with us. I think you would have laughed at my procession; there were fourteen carts full of every kind of movable—our whole poultry-yard clucking and cackling out of coops and baskets, and a cow with her calf. This must seem strange to you, who would certainly not dream of taking your hens, ducks, and cows with you from town to the country: it is only another instance of the universal topsy-turviness of things in China, again demonstrated by the fact that the farther one gets from town the dearer everything becomes, there being no market and no competition, so that the owner of a leg of mutton can just charge what he pleases for it, knowing that you must either buy at his price or go without it altogether. It is a beautiful ride out here, past Hai Tien, a little village with a smart inn at which the Pekingese may be seen by scores, naked to the waist, and enjoying an outing, after their fashion, with chopsticks and rice, tea and infinitesimal pipes, past Yuen Ming Yuen and Wan Shao Shan, or rather its ruins, past flourishing cornfields and picturesque hamlets, past temples and shrines innumerable, along stony roads which the rains have turned into canals so deep that the carters are obliged to cast lots for which shall strip his very dirty body and go in to see whether the carts can pass or not. It was quite dark before I reached the temple, after eight hours’ ride under the hottest sun I ever remember to have felt. Indeed I had a sad proof of its strength the next day, for my brown pony, Hop-o’-my-thumb, who had carried me so well over so many hundred miles, died of sunstroke after a few hours’ illness. Poor little beast! He was a great pet, and as fond of me as a dog. When I went down to his stable shortly before he died he put his head on my shoulder and looked so piteously in my face. The Chinese veterinary surgeon (they are rather clever at that) declares that he was struck by the sun the day before while he was being led. He was the strongest, stoutest little beast you ever saw, never sick nor sorry, and used to trot into Peking after a 700-mile journey as if he had just been out for a morning’s exercise. He is the third horse that I have lost from one cause or another since last September. Bad luck, is it not?
This is certainly the prettiest temple and the most charming summer residence that I have seen near Peking. The temple stands in a nest of trees—cedars, pines, firs, and poplars—a perpetual fountain runs through all its courts, and there seems always to be a cool breeze blowing. While our friends are complaining of being roasted and baked in their temples, we here are revelling in fresh air. Here is a translation of an account of Ta Chio Ssŭ by a Chinese gentleman:—
“Seventy li (23 miles) from the walls of Peking there stood in the time of the Liao a temple called Ling Chuan Ssŭ, ‘The temple of the Spiritual Fountain.’ In the reign of the Emperor Hsuan Tê of the Ming dynasty it was restored, and the name changed to Ta Chio Ssŭ, ‘The temple of Great Repose.’ There are four shrines: the first is to the Prince of heaven; the second to Ju Lai Fo, the Buddha who reigns in the western heaven; the third to the Yo Shih Fo, the Buddha who presides over medicine; and the fourth and last shrine has an upper story, and in it is the Pu-sa (god of the second class) of Great Compassion. Behind the shrines is a pond with a fountain. In this is a dragon’s head carved in stone, out of the mouth of which the spring issues. In front of the pond is a pagoda, on the left and right hands of which are old fir-trees, one on each side, about which an old tradition says that they never can overtop the pagoda, hence the spot is called ‘Sung ta chi,’ or ‘The firs and pagoda level.’ Besides this, outside the shrine of the Prince of heaven, on either side there is a stone called the dragon stone and the tiger stone, from their resemblance to those animals. In front of these there is a stone bridge with a pond of water on each side, and in the ponds there are a fountain and lotus flowers and gold fish. By the side of the ponds is a dragon’s claw tree, in the shape of lions playing, whence it is called the Lion Tree. The temple is built on the west, facing the east; on its south side is an imperial residence called Ssŭ Yi Tang, ‘The Hall of the Four Proprieties.’ In the hall stands an imperial throne. In the garden are four trees—peonies and two Yu Lan Hwa trees, magnolias. Behind this hall is the ‘Pavilion of the Reposing Clouds,’ ‘Chi Yün Hsuan,’ in front of which are bright bamboos and dark green firs interlaced like a forest, a capital refuge from the heat in midsummer, with plenty to see.”
My friend Liu, who wrote the description which I have translated above, has left out one of the greatest charms of the place. Just behind the “Pavilion of the Reposing Clouds,” in which we live, is a most beautiful rock work, all covered with tufts of feathery grass, mosses, and ferns, and lycopods: down this and into an artificial basin, which is screened from the sun by a network of fir branches, comes tumbling a deliciously cool fountain scented with pine needles, which gives us a famous shower-bath twice a day—a real luxury. Close by my fountain is a little summer-house, in which the Emperor Chien Lung was transacting business one day with his ministers, and feeling inspired by the influence of the place got through his work greatly to his satisfaction, so he called the summer-house “The Pavilion of the Understanding of Important Matters.” I wonder whether I have given you an idea of what a very pretty place this is? It is almost enough to tempt a man to turn Buddhist priest, and abstracting himself from the unrealities of this life, pass his hour on earth in reflecting upon the beauties of the hopelessly unattainable Nirvana (I don’t suppose you know what that is—so much the better. It will be like that “blessed word Mesopotamia” to the old woman at church). The only pity is that mosquitoes and sand-flies sound such a lively recall to the reality of the disagreeable.
The monastery is richly endowed with lands, so much so as to be independent of the assistance from Government, to which, as an imperial temple, it would be entitled. The place looks richer than most of the temples about here. There is no magnificence, but it has a comfortable, well-to-do appearance, the grounds and buildings being properly kept up. All over the gardens there are notices to “relations and friends” who may visit the temple to abstain from damaging buildings and trees, plucking flowers or cutting down the bamboos, a notice the spirit of which, as it says, “all respectable persons will observe of their own accord, and those who do not will be fined.” First and last, monks and laymen, there are some fifty persons employed about the temple. The abbot himself finds it dull, so he remains at Peking enjoying himself. His second in command is a charming monk, very clean in his person and especially natty about his boots. He is very intelligent, too, and comes and sits with me by the hour talking Buddhism. This is an extremely religious temple—prayers, liturgies, drum and gong beating, seem to be going on very constantly. But except on the 1st and 15th of every moon and other holidays the novices are put on active service, the monks enjoying an unbroken idleness; they are apparently cursed with an unquenchable thirst, but as a fountain of perennial tea flows for them they are not to be pitied. I suppose you would ask the name of my friend with the neat boots; this would be an arch mistake and violation of good-breeding on your part. When a man shaves his tail and turns monk he cuts himself off from the whole world, including his family, whose name even he no longer bears. To remind him of this would be quite ill-bred, but as it is inconvenient that a monk—who, however much he may renounce the vanities of this life, must occasionally be brought in contact with that extremely unreal idea, the world—should have no designation at all, he adopts two words or characters as his appellation, which on no account must you call his name. You ask him what is his “honourable above and below”; this refers to the two characters, one of which is written above the other. My friend’s “honourable above and below” is Fo Kwo. As a Buddhist monk must not be asked his name, so a Taoist monk must not be asked his age, although it is one of the complimentary routine questions in China.
The neighbourhood round about here is as charming as the place itself. The fields are richly cultivated; there is plenty of hedge-row timber, and the villages are very picturesque and well shaded. The hills are beautifully shaped, and take fine colours of an evening. The one thing wanting is water, which is missing all over this part of China. Nothing can be prettier than the cottages of the villagers with their long, low eaves; each has its little garden hedged in by a fence of tall millet, over which are trained gourds and other creepers. There is generally, too, a millet-straw shed with a vine creeping about it, and under this the labourers sit of an evening and drink their tea, a picture of contentment. The temples, both Taoist and Buddhist, are numerous. Yesterday I scrambled up to a very pretty one on the top of a great eminence so steep that it is called by the Chinese the “Wall Mountain.” I found a most charming little monastery built in tiers, I should have said terraces had it not been so tiny, which reminded me of the tiers of the Rhenish vineyards. Their reverences the monks had all gone off to Peking on a lark, but I was hospitably entertained with tea by two lay attendants, for whose benefit I in return emptied my cigar-case. What a queer existence these people lead perched up on the top of a high hill! They are so stay-at-home that they hardly seem to care even to go down on to the plain. And as to going to Peking, none but the better-to-do monks dream of such dissipation. You may imagine what a state of crass ignorance they live in. For faces expressing brutal stupidity there is nothing to equal the Chinese monks, except the Thibetan llamas, between whom and drivelling idiotcy there is no missing link. My friend here, Fo Kwo, is a brilliant exception. Monks and laymen alike—all our neighbours—vie with one another in civility to us. They all stop one to have a chat, and as for tea, I might drown myself in a butt of it if I had a mind. The women, however—and in one village there are some very pretty ones—are as farouches as wild deer. As I ride in at one end of a village I see them scuttling off into their houses, with their babies on their backs, as fast as their poor deformed feet will let them. If by chance I overtake them, they scowl at me as if I really were the devil they call me. During the whole time I have been in China, I do not think that I have three times been addressed by Chinese women; the rare exceptions have always been wrinkled old hags—of course I do not count beggars. Ces dames don’t love us. They are always the first to get up the cry of “Kwei tzŭ” (devils) against us, and I almost think that they verily believe that there is something uncanny about us, or at any rate that there is no villainy of which we are not capable. However, I think that last year I told you some of their beliefs with respect to us.
Farquhar joined me on the 20th July, bringing with him Dr. Pogojeff from the Russian summer quarters at Pa Ta Chu—a group of temples nearer Peking, where most of the Legations spend the hot season. They are delighted with the beauty of this place. Farquhar, who is a very clever artist, has made some lovely sketches. July the 25th was the fifteenth day of the Chinese moon, a high day with our Buddhist friends. On ordinary days the novices do the drum and gong beating, and intone the prayers (which indeed never seem to cease), but on the 1st and 15th of each moon the higher priests—whose everyday duties seem to be confined to smoking infinite and infinitesimal pipes of tobacco, and sipping cup after cup of amber tea—buckle to the work themselves, leaving their ease and dignity to don their black and yellow robes, and perform service with the rest.
One day out walking we were accosted by a man who told us that he was out for a holiday, and insisted on taking us with him to a village where there was “Jo nao” (fun) going on. We could not resist, so we went with him, and in a by-lane of the said village, on one of the threshing-floors, we found a small raised stage. After we had waited some time, during which the whole village had time to turn out for a good stare at us, a man made his appearance with a very small drum, three pairs of castanets, and three gongs. He was followed by three ladies—one old and two young, and all hideous—and then the performance began with an instrumental overture by the whole strength of the company, a rattling and jangling which lasted five minutes, and sent us off with our fingers in our ears. We gave the poor people a dollar and were glad to escape; but the villagers were highly delighted, for were not these real actors come all the way from Peking, and, therefore, of course eminent? Mario and Grisi, starring in the provinces, never gave more pleasure to a country audience.
Frightfully hot weather. Do you remember the old quatrain written with a diamond on a pane of glass in the old Foreign Office in Downing Street:—
Je suis copiste,
Affreux métier,
Joyeux ou triste,
Toujours copier!
Copying despatches with the thermometer at 100° in the shade, with a basin of water and a towel at one’s side for very necessary hand-wiping, and a pad of blotting-paper over the blank part of one’s paper, is indeed an affreux métier.
I find that Englishmen who can’t speak the language are a little capricious as to exchanging courtesies which the Chinese press upon them. Sometimes it amuses them immensely to stop and talk twaddle with the natives through an interpreter, while at others, especially if there is just a touch of headache in the case, the Chinamen get short answers. To-day as we were walking we passed a group of peasants, one of whom as usual called out civilly, “Hsie yi hsie pa?” (Won’t you sit down a bit?)
F.—“What the devil’s he saying?”
Chinaman (thinking to be intelligible by being still louder)—“Hsie yi hsie pa!”
F.—“Don’t make that damned noise!”
I.—“He’s only asking you to sit down.”
F. (savagely)—“Well, he needn’t make such a confounded row about it!”
Chinaman (to his friends)—“The gentleman is not very quiet,” as if he were speaking of a restive horse.
Friends (assenting)—“Ah! these foreigners! they are indeed terrible people. Unsurpassable! unsurpassable!”
The poor villagers would have been too civil to utter their opinion if they had thought they were understood, but I had held my tongue to hear what they would say.
On the 16th of August we had a delightful addition to our family party in the shape of my old friend Dick Conolly, who has come out as second secretary—the cheeriest of companions.[17]
Next day he and I rode over to see a very famous temple, Hei Lung Tan, a shrine dedicated to the Black Dragon, which was built in the Ming dynasty and repaired in Ka̔ng Hsi’s reign. It is an imposing edifice built in three tiers with roofs of the imperial yellow tiles. Here the Black Dragon Prince rests in great dignity. He is surrounded by six satellites—a monster who presides over the thunder, a woman who rules the lightning, a clerk with pen and book who writes down orders for the rainfall, and three others whose functions are not so clear. Of human attendants there was visible but one priest, very dirty and saturated with garlic. The Black Dragon being, like all dragons in this country, a water deity or spirit, there is of course a pond in which he may disport himself. If his priest would only do the same!
The country people are really very civil and kind. The other day we were wandering through a village nestled away among the hills, when several of the peasants came out and brought us delicious pears. One old gentleman, a personage evidently, was just preparing a great sacrifice outside his house to ward off the devil. He had erected an altar on which were placed various fruits and grapes, and in front of it was a great paper boat with dolls in it. This was to be burnt, and with the letting off of many crackers would complete the sacrifice. This, it appears, being the 15th day of the 7th moon, is the feast of departed spirits—a sort of All Souls’ Day. It is the anniversary on which the pious Chinaman worships and burns incense at the tombs of his ancestors—the custom over which the Dominicans and Franciscans on the one side, and the Jesuits on the other, started their great feud in the days of the Emperor Ka̔ng Hsi.[18] There are also on this day great ceremonies in honour of the tutelary saints of towns, some deceased minister or warrior appointed by the Emperor as guardian over each town or part of a town. Great honour is paid to one of these patron saints, and men will flock to his shrine to dedicate themselves to his service, so that a man, for instance, who is a groom in this life, will go and offer himself to be the saint’s groom in the next world. The effigy of this “Lord of the Walls,” as he is called, is paraded through the town where he is supposed to search out evil-doers. There is also a Prince of departed spirits whose shrine is largely attended on this day. A stage is raised and priests are engaged to read prayers and distribute food for the spirits, that those who have died a violent death may be released from Purgatory. At midnight huge paper images, placed in a boat in order that the spirits may pass the river Nai-ho, a sort of Styx, are solemnly burnt, and the feast is over. The feast is called Yu Lang Hai, “The assembly of the Bowl and Flower.” My teacher explains this, saying that on board the boat there is a Buddhist god called Ti Tsang Wang, who gives the ghosts of the departed a bowl and flower as a token of release from their sins, so that they may cross the river which is a gulf between them and Paradise.