Peking is not a commercial city, but essentially an imperial camp. Trade proper is confined to an outer or Chinese city, which is but a walled-in suburb sparsely built over. Through traffic, for obvious fiscal reasons, shuns the capital; but there is sufficient local commerce, of which gold and silver smelting forms a not unimportant part, to support many bankers and merchants who are domiciled in the outer city. It has been remarked that Chinese trade may be seen at its best in the settlement of Maimaichên, which faces Kiachta on the Russo-Chinese frontier, or in the Straits Settlements or Rangoon, where nothing hinders the merchants from accumulating and displaying their wealth. Even Peking, however, affords some glimpses of the far-reaching enterprise of the Chinese traders.
What a suggestive display, for instance, is the fur-market, also of necessity a "winter exhibition"! Acres and acres of ground are covered with skins of every conceivable species of quadruped, spread out from dawn till near noon. Here are daily laid out for sale under the blue sky (and what a light to make purchases in!) the commonest and the most precious furs from Manchuria, the Amur, and even Kamtschatka, the total value of which must be enormous. Let us learn from the history of the Hudson's Bay Company what organisation of energy, what confidence, what variety of enterprise and skill, are required to bring these costly commodities from such vast distances to this great sale-room, and we shall not make light of the vitality of the Chinese.
The amenities of the street traffic, though not of special importance, call for mention as illustrating certain phases of foreign contact with the Chinese. If we may take Japan for comparison, in nothing is the contrast between the two systems more apparent than in municipal administration. The antithesis may be expressed in one word,—in Japan, excessive regulation; in China, absence of regulation. Whether there be any rule of the road in China is of little interest, seeing that, like other rules, it might be disregarded and there would be no one to enforce it. The traffic adjusts itself with little friction. China employs no police,—things arrange themselves by their own interaction, as the pebbles do on the sea-shore; and for most of the purposes of life the people are their own law-makers and their own executive. The Chinese system of government is to govern as little as possible—to let the country rule itself. So when a strange element demanded accommodation in the busy streets and congested gateways of Peking, without rules or supervision, it had to find its level among the rest by friction and concussion. It would have been an interesting process to watch in its initial stages. Amid a good deal of clamour and language of a racy description applied to man and beast and their respective ancestors, there is rarely a serious road quarrel among the Chinese. One excellent custom of polite society tends to restrict the area of disputes on the highway, leaving collisions to be fought out by grooms, carters, chair-bearers, or boatmen, as the case may be, while the masters maintain an imperturbable reserve.
Mr Colborne Baber, who had a way of his own of solving the minor problems of Chinese intercourse, was once in a cart, sitting well back and unobserved, in a narrow street that admitted neither of turning nor of passing another vehicle, when a cart was met about half way. The drivers began to vociferate, each calling on the other to give way. The opposition carter claimed the precedence on the ground that his vehicle carried women, and it looked as if he would gain his point when Baber himself, becoming impatient, thrust out his head and called out that in his cart there was a foreign devil, and without further discussion the rival jehu backed out.
Those who ride do not recognise each other on the road, even though they be friends; for if they did so, etiquette would require both to stop and dismount and go through formal salutations on foot. Foreigners, ignoring this rule, and their servants not unwilling to profit by the prestige of their masters in accosting bystanders from the saddle, are sometimes grievously misdirected when not lectured on their bad manners. The natives on their part are seldom averse from presuming on the foreigner's ignorance of what is due to him. Between the one and the other, or as a result of the mere chapter of accidents, collisions were inevitable in the streets. How were they to be dealt with in the absence of constituted authority? If aggression towards a foreigner on the part of a great man's servants were submitted to, there would be no end to it, they being 500 to 1. On the other hand, insolence promptly resented and vigorously punished never failed to elicit the approval not only of the spectators, but even of the great man himself, who perhaps had secret grievances of his own against his lackeys, which he was not sorry to see partially paid off by proxy. In all cases the sympathy of the Chinese goes with the side that successfully asserts itself. Of this hundreds of examples could be given—perhaps not one on the converse side.
A writer in the 'Whitehall Review' some years ago, among interesting reminiscences of the 'Sixties, relates some incidents to show the primitive means by which equilibrium was established between natives and foreigners in the Peking streets. Place aux dames. The experience of the first foreign female who had been seen is thus amusingly told. Mr Bruce's housekeeper, an old family retainer who had followed the fortunes of her master all over the world,
saw no particular reasons for not acting in Peking as she had done in Cairo or Constantinople, and the first morning after her arrival sallied forth, basket on arm, to do her marketing for the day. When I add that she knew not a word of Chinese, that none of the natives spoke English, that she was about five feet high and ten feet round the crinoline, and was the first female European ever seen by the Pekingese, her enterprise will be judged to have been braver than she knew. However, nothing daunted, she entered a butcher's shop, closely pressed upon by an inquisitive and delighted crowd. Before she could even look at a joint or chop she was hemmed in, and one waggish native, bolder than the rest, gave her a substantial dig in the crinoline, shouting in Chinese, "Let's see if she's solid." But the laugh was not for long on his side. Seizing a chopper from the block, Mrs A. made a mighty blow at his head, which he happily evaded. In less than a second the shop was clear, the terrified natives tumbling over each other in their haste to get away. A European who came upon the scene at the moment beheld the startling sight of some 500 Chinese rushing up the principal street pursued by an infuriated old woman armed with a chopper. With some difficulty she was persuaded to abandon the chase and resume her basket, which she had dropped in her excitement. But it is on record that for a good two years thereafter Mrs A. was allowed to shop in peace, and became a "Black Douglas" to troublesome Chinese children in the vicinity of the Legation.
In later years she talked in what she called "broken China."
Another "adjustment to environment" is thus described:—
A curious little industry sprang up in the environs of the city, consequent on the horsey proclivities of the Europeans. This was getting run over, which was generally accomplished by rushing in front of the horses and throwing the hands up. One of two things always happened. Either the horse shied and the rider came off, to the huge delight of the Chinese mob, or the gesticulating party was knocked down. In this latter event, cautioned as we all were to give no offence, if possible, to the natives, a dollar was generally handed as salve to the artful victim, whose screams and yells that he had been killed never failed to draw a large and sympathising crowd of friends, who regarded the "foreign devil" with most unfriendly looks. In one village at last it became intolerable, and we decided if any further attempt was made we would run down the culprits intentionally. As usual, on our next visit three or four young gamins essayed the usual dodge. Being fully prepared for it, nobody was unseated, and we turned our horses back at full gallop, three or four Chinese being hurled into the hedge by our horses. We did not stop to offer dollars, but were never afterwards stopped.