I
Pekin, Wednesday May 1.
I returned yesterday from my visit to the tombs of the emperors after three days and a half of journeying in the haze created by the "yellow wind," beneath a heavy sun constantly obscured by the dust. I am back once more in Pekin, with our chief general, in my old rooms in the Palace of the North. Yesterday the thermometer registered 40° in the shade, to-day only 8° (a difference of 32° in twenty-four hours). An icy wind drives the rain-drops that are mingled with a few white flakes, and the neighboring mountains behind the Summer Palace are quite covered with snow. Yet there are people in France who complain of our springs!
Now that my expedition is over, I ought at once to go back to Taku and the squadron, but the general wants me to stay for a great fête he is to give to the staff officers of the allied armies, and so I have telegraphed to the admiral, asking for three days more.
Copyright, 1901, by J. C. Hemment
The Lake and Southern View of Summer Palace
In the evening I walk on the esplanade of the Rotunda Palace in company with Colonel Marchand. The weather is bad, stormy, and cold, and the twilight comes on too early on account of the rapidly moving clouds. As the wind parts them one gets glimpses of the mountains behind the Summer Palace, snowy white against a background of dark clouds.
Confusion reigns about us, but it is the confusion of a fête instead of that incidental to battle and death, as I had known it here last autumn. Zouaves and African chasseurs are running about, carrying ladders, draperies, and armfuls of branches and flowers. The old cedars in the vicinity of the beautiful pagoda shining with enamel, lacquer, and gold, are disguised until they look like fruit-trees; upon their almost sacred branches are thousands of yellow balls that look like big oranges. Chains supporting garlands of Chinese lanterns go from one to the other.
It is Colonel Marchand who has planned it all. "Do you think it will be pretty? Do you think it will be a little unusual? You see, I want to do it better than the others."
The others were the Germans, the Americans, and all the rest of the Allies who have given these fêtes before the French. So my new friend has been in the most feverish state of activity for five or six days, in attempting to do something that has never been done before, working far into the night with his men, who share his enthusiasm, putting into this play-work the same passionate effort he put into conducting his little army across Africa. From time to time, though, his smile betrays that he is finding amusement in all this, and will not take its possible failure tragically, if wind and snow come to upset the fairyland of his dreams.
No, but this cold is annoying all the same! What shall we do, since it is to take place in the open air on the terraces of the palace, if the north wind should blow? What of the illuminations, of the awnings? And the women, won't they freeze in their evening gowns? For there are women even here in the heart of the Yellow City.
Suddenly a gust of wind breaks down a whole string of lanterns with pearl pendants, which are already hung from the branches of the old cedars, and upsets a row of the flower-pots, which have been brought up here by the hundreds to give life to these old gardens.
Thursday, May 2.
Messengers have been sent to the four corners of Pekin, announcing that this evening's fête has been postponed until Saturday, in the hope that the bad weather will be over by that time. So I have had to send a despatch, asking the admiral for a prolongation of my freedom. I came away for three days and have remained almost a month, and am wearing shirts and waistcoats borrowed here and there from my various army friends.
This morning I have the honor of breakfasting with our neighbor in the Yellow City, Marshal von Waldersee.
Covers are laid for the marshal and his staff in a large room finished in marquetry and carvings, in a part of the palace untouched by the flames. They are all correctly attired in irreproachable military garb in the midst of this fantastically Chinese setting.
It is the first time in my life that I have sat down at a table with German officers, and I had not anticipated the pang of anguish with which I arrived among them as a guest. Oh, the memories of thirty years ago, and the special aspects which that terrible year had for me!
That long winter of 1870 was passed in a wretched little boat on the coast of Prussia. How well I remember my watch on the cold decks,—child that I was, almost,—and the silhouette of a certain King William that so often appeared on the horizon in pursuit of us, at the sight of which we always fled, its balls whizzing behind us over the icy waters. Then the despair of feeling that our small part there had been so useless and unavailing! We knew nothing about it until long afterward; news came seldom, and when it did come it was in little sealed papers that we opened tremblingly. Over each fresh disaster, over each new story of German cruelty, what rage filled our hearts,—childlike in the excess of their violence,—what vows we made among ourselves never to forget! All this came to me pell-mell, or rather a rapid synthesis of it all, on the very threshold of this breakfast-room, even before I had crossed the sill, from the mere sight of the pointed helmets that hung along the wall, and I felt like going away.
But I did not, and the feeling disappeared in the dark backward and abysm of time. Their welcome, their handshakes, and their smiles of good fellowship made me forget it in a second, for the moment at least. At any rate, it seems that there is not between them and us that racial antipathy which is less easily overcome than the sharp rancor of war.
During breakfast this Chinese palace of theirs, accustomed to the sound of gongs and flutes, echoes to the strains of "Lohengrin" or the "Rheingold," played in the distance by their military band. The white-haired marshal was good enough to give me a seat near him, and, like all of our people who have had the honor to come under his influence, I felt the charm of his exquisite distinction of manner, of his kindness and goodness.
Friday, May 3.
More and more people are coming back to Pekin, until it is almost as crowded as of yore. The people are very much occupied with funerals. Last summer the Chinese here were killing one another; now they are burying one another. Every family has kept its dead in the house for months, according to their custom, in thick cedar coffins, which somewhat modify the odor of decay; they bring the dead their daily meals as well as presents; they burn red wax candles for them; they give them music; they play the flute and the gong in the continual fear of not paying them enough honor and of incurring their vengeance and their ill will. The time has come now to take them to their graves, with processions a kilometre long, with more flutes and gongs, innumerable lanterns and gilded emblems, which they hire at high prices; they ruin themselves for monuments and offerings; they scarcely sleep for fear of seeing their dead return. I do not remember who it was who described China as "a country where a few hundred millions of living Chinese are dominated and terrorized by a few thousand millions of dead ones." Tombs everywhere and of every form; one sees nothing else on the plains of Pekin. As for all the thickets of cedar, pine, and arbor-vitæ, they are nothing but funeral parks, walled in by double or triple walls, a single park often being consecrated to one person, thus cutting the living off from an enormous amount of space.
A defunct Lama, whom I visited to-day, occupies on his own account a space two or three kilometres square. The old trees in his park, scarcely leafed out as yet, give little shade from the sun, which is already dangerously hot. In the centre of it is a marble mausoleum,—a pyramidal structure with small figures and masses of white carvings which taper skyward, terminating in gilt tips. Scattered about under the cedars are crumbling old temples, built long ago to the memory of this holy man, enclosing in their obscurity a whole population of gilded idols that are turning to dust. Just outside, the cindery soil where no one ever walks, is strewn with the resinous cones from the trees, and with the black feathers of the crows, who inhabit this silent place by the hundreds. As in the imperial woods, April has brought out a few violet gillyflowers and a quantity of very small iris of the same color.
All the woods which are used for burial places—and the country is encumbered with them—resemble this one, and contain the same old temples, the same idols, and the same crows.
The plains of Petchili are an immense necropolis, where the living tremble lest they offend one of the innumerable dead.
Pekin is not only being repeopled, but rebuilt; hastily though, out of small blackened bricks from the ruins, so that the new streets will probably never display the luxurious façades, the lacy, gilded woodwork of former times.
The great eastern artery that crosses the Tartar City is, of all the streets of old Pekin, the nearest to what it used to be; life here is becoming intense, the people swarm. For the length of a league this avenue, which is fifty metres wide,—of magnificent proportions, although now very much injured,—is invaded by thousands of platforms, sheds, tents, or in some cases simply umbrellas stuck in the ground, where the people who serve horrible drinks and food dispense their wares, always in delicate China very much decorated; there are charlatans, acupuncturers, Punch-and-Judy shows, musicians, and story-tellers. The crowd is divided into an infinite number of currents by all these small shops and theatres, like the waters of a river filled with islands, so that there is a constant eddy of human heads black with dust and filth. Rough, hoarse vociferations, in a quality of voice unfamiliar to our ears, are heard on all sides, to an accompaniment of grating violins, noisy gongs and bells. The caravans of enormous Mongolian camels, which all winter encumber the streets in endless processions, have disappeared in the solitudes of the North, together with their flat-faced drivers, who wish to escape the torrid heat; but their place in the central part of the street, reserved for animals and vehicles, is taken by numerous small horses and tiny carriages, and the cracking of whips is heard on all sides.
On the ground in front of the houses, spread out upon the mud and filth, the extravagant rag-fair that began last autumn is still going on; the remains of so much pillage and burning are left that it seems as though there was no end to them,—magnificently embroidered clothing spotted with blood, Buddhas, grotesque figures, jewels, dead men's wigs, cracked vases, or precious fragments of jade.
Behind all these ridiculous things, behind all this dusty display, the greater number of the houses, in contrast with the poverty-stricken appearance of the crowds, seem astonishingly rich in carvings and decorations,—a mass of openwork and fine gilding from top to bottom. Indefatigable artists, with the Chinese patience and skill which confound us, have carved crowds of little figures, monsters, and birds in the midst of flowers, and trees on which you can count the leaves.
Last summer, while the Boxers were burning so continually, these astonishing façades, representing an incalculable amount of human labor, were consumed by the hundreds; they made Pekin a veritable museum of carving and gold, the like of which men of to-day will never again have the time to construct.
Saturday, May 4.
The fête given by our general to the staff officers of the Allies is really coming off to-night. But before this we are to have a celebration among ourselves: the inauguration of a new boulevard in our quarter, from the Marble Bridge to the Yellow Gate,—a long boulevard whose construction was entrusted to Colonel Marchand, and which is to bear the name of our general. Never since the far-distant epoch when her network of paved avenues was laid out has Pekin seen such a thing,—a straight, level roadway, without ruts or humps, where carriages may drive rapidly between two rows of young trees.
There is a great crowd to assist at this inauguration. On both sides of the new, freshly gravelled, and still empty avenue—barred off by sentinels and ropes from one end to the other—all our soldiers are lined up, with a sprinkling of German soldiers too, for they are quite neighborly with ours, and a few Chinese, both men and women, in festive array. Quaint, charming babies, with cat-like eyes that slant upward toward the temple, occupy the first row, directly behind the rope; our soldiers are carrying some of them so that they may see better, and one big Zouave is walking up and down with two Chinese children, three or four years old, one on each shoulder. There are people on the roofs, too,—many of the convalescents are standing about on the tiled roof of our hospital, and some African chasseurs, seeking a choice place, have climbed the Gothic tower of the church, which, with the big tricolored flag floating in the breeze, dominates the entire scene.
There are French flags over all the Chinese doors, and they are arranged in groups, like trophies, with lanterns and garlands on all the poles. It is like a sort of foreign exotic Fourteenth of July; if it were in France the decorations would be commonplace; but here, in Pekin, they are touching and fine, especially when the military band arrives, and the "Marseillaise" bursts forth.
The inauguration consists simply of a sort of charge, executed on the fresh gravel by all the French officers, from the Yellow Gate to the other extremity of the boulevard, where the general awaits them on a balcony trimmed with garlands of green, and smilingly offers them champagne. Then the frail barriers are removed, the crowd disperses gaily, the children with the cat-like eyes trudge off over the well-rolled avenue, and all is over.
When we have all returned to France, and Pekin is again in the hands of the Chinese, I fear that this Avenue du Général-Vayron—though they now appear to appreciate it—will not last two winters.