Newfoundland to Cochin China / By the Golden Wave, New Nippon, and the Forbidden City

by Ethel Gwendoline Vincent

We are making our way towards the Tower which leans against the City Wall, belonging to the observatory.

We pass into a shady courtyard to gaze upon the very instruments whereat Marco Polo wondered in his famous travels. There are two planispheres, an Astrolabe of great size, cast in bronze, and supported on twisted dragons of exquisite workmanship, and which are probably the best specimens of bronze work in Eastern Asia. Ascending up some damp stone steps, we find ourselves on the top of the Tower, and inside a finely wrought iron railing, where there is a gigantic Globe of the Heavens, with the planets yet marked in relief on the surface. Also a quadrant, sextant, and sundial; while the large Azimuth instrument in the corner was a present to the Emperor Kanghai from Louis XIV.

And these instruments are as perfect as they were when placed here 300 years ago. Indeed, some of these are still used by the Astronomical Board for their observations. It brings home to us the fact that we must never ignore for a moment, whilst living in China, that in the earliest centuries she was far ahead in civilization of any country in the world. But while the West has gone rapidly onward, overtaking and outstripping the East, China, self-contained and shut off from contact with all other nations, has remained stationary, so that much we see around us dates from that era. The Chinese are under the impression that there is no nation equal to theirs. They suppose themselves the centre of civilization for the last 2000 years, and claim that China knew the art of printing, invented gunpowder, and was learned in astronomy, long before us. They consider that China is the middle of the Universe, as is shown by the name, which, in their language, signifies "The Middle Kingdom." They look upon themselves as superior to us, as we think ourselves to them, calling us Barbarians, and considering all European nations as such. As a nation they never travel, and are down-trodden by the conservatism of the Mandarins, who, risen from the people, wish to retain their superiority by keeping the lower classes under.

The real interest of Peking lies in its intense age. The city is 4000 years old. Conquered by the Mongols, or the "Golden Horde," who, in their turn were overthrown by the Tartars, Peking of the present day is built, like Rome, upon the ruins of many cities. The description of the famous Venetian traveller is as true to-day as it was when written in the thirteenth century. It is in this wondrously preserved life of the middle ages that the curiosity remains; it is because we see the streets under their primitive conditions of dirt, before ideas of sanitation were dreamt of, because we can look on the carts that were in use at a period corresponding with our conquest by the Norman—on the wheelbarrows with the single wheel, which creaks as loudly now as it did then, on the wells with their Eastern earthenware jars, and the water drawn as in the pictures of Isaac and Rebecca—on those great Walls, then necessary for protection from the wild hordes that scoured the plains, and where the gates are still closed, in accordance with the ancient custom, at sundown. It is all the same. We might have fallen into a Rip Van Winkle sleep at Tientsin, and awoke in the streets of the Celestial Capital in the middle of the dark ages.

There is one thing which impresses itself indelibly on the mind, and is called to remembrance with the first mention of Peking. It is the dirt! the dirt! the dirt!

It is impossible to conceive of such awful filth, and, unless you have seen it, I defy anyone to have the faintest idea of the sights and smells of this city of the Flowery Land. The condition of the streets is the same as it was B.C. If they were described faithfully and in detail, common decencies would be violated, even as they are but too openly. Let it suffice to say that they reek with refuse, garbage, and decaying matter of every description; that the houses throw out into dry pits, dug anywhere in the road, their pig's wash and offal, and that the putrefaction and decay fills the air with noisome smells that overpower you at every turn. Filth and refuse you soon grow hardened to in Peking, but occasionally some particularly nauseous sight, such as a dead dog in a far advanced stage of decomposition, or a cat with the entrails protruding, unnerves you again.

Wherever there is water you may be sure that it is a stagnant pool of liquid filth, covered with green slime, and containing untold horrors if stirred up. Also, if you pass down even the comparatively clean Legation Street, in the wake of the watering-cart, the stench from the stirred-up dust is unbearable. Men are seen going along with baskets on their backs, carefully collecting with a bamboo pronged fork every morsel of manure, for this is the only kind that the Chinese use, chemical fertilizers being unknown. Fortunately, too, there are hundreds of pariah dogs, many evil-looking beasts, who, with their sharp noses, are busy turning over the most unsavoury heaps, or lie asleep gorged in the middle of the narrow roads. Also the pigs, great coarse-haired masses of fat (the Chinese pig is a peculiarly revolting species) wallowing in the foul slush. Enough! In every place and corner are revolting sights, unfit for a civilized community.

Then there is the dust. It adds to the unpleasantness of going about. Such dust as it is, all-pervading, all-penetrating, leaving a pungent smell in your clothes, so that I soon found out that it is necessary to keep a special costume to face it. Once outside the Compound, you find yourself in the jostle and crowd, the shouts and disorder of the streets, and as a cart or horseman passes, a cloud is raised that obscures everything for the moment; and so it is that, for half the time you are out you see nothing for the dust, and for the other half only through a dim veil of the same. At sundown the state of affairs is made worse by the succession of mules, purposely loosened to roll over and over.

Lastly there is the incredible state of the roads, with their deep holes in the very middle of the busiest thoroughfares, with huge stones lying across, or a steep embankment, round which you must diverge. There is this excuse, that the soil, owing to its light and porous nature, aided by the extreme dryness of many months of the year, easily shifts with the wind. If the dust is intolerable, what must it be in winter, when it is turned into a quagmire of black mud or sludge? It is no uncommon thing for a mule to be drowned in the streets. He falls into this soft morass and, unable to get a footing, perishes within sight of the bystanders.

There is yet another and a more unpleasant drawback to be met with, in going about the streets of Peking. The Chinese, but particularly the Tartar and Manchu part of the population, dislike Europeans, and openly insult us as we pass along, jeering and laughing in a most offensive manner, and obviously making the rudest observations. Even the little children come out and call us foul names, of which Barbarian and Foreign or Red-Haired Devils are the mildest terms—language which they must have become familiar with by hearing it used by their parents. There are several places where Europeans are almost invariably stoned, and public feeling has been intensified by these late unfortunate riots on the Yangtze.