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.