As the old capital of Manchuria and the abode of the Prince ancestors of the family which was placed on the Chinese throne in 1644, it has special privileges, among which are “Ministres de Parade,” nominally holding the same rank as the actual ministers in Peking. Near it are the superb tombs of the ancestors of the present Emperor, on which grand avenues of trees converge, bordered by colossal stone animals after the fashion of those at the Ming tombs near Peking. Formerly the Manchu Emperors made pilgrimages to these tombs and the sacred city of their dynasty, but since the second decade of this century the Chinese Emperor’s portrait only has been sent at intervals in solemn procession, the Peking road being in the meantime closed to ordinary traffic.
The Governor-General of Manchuria resides in Mukden, as well as the military Governor, who is assisted by a civil administrator and by the Presidents of five Boards. The great offices of State are filled in duplicate by Chinese and Manchus, and criminals of the two races are tried in separate courts.
The favorable reception given to Christianity is one of the features of Mukden. The fine pagoda of the Christian Church is en évidence everywhere. The Scotch U.P. missionaries, who have been established there for twenty-five years, are on friendly terms with the people, and specially with many of the mandarins and high officials, who show them tokens of regard publicly and privately on all occasions. Dr. Christie, the medical missionary, is the trusted friend as well as the medical adviser of many of the leading officials and their wives, who, with every circumstance of ceremonial pomp, have presented complimentary tablets to the hospital, and altogether the relations between the Chinese and the missionaries are unique. I attribute these special relations with the upper classes partly to the fact that Dr. Ross, the senior missionary, and Dr. Christie, and those who have joined them subsequently, have studied Chinese custom and etiquette very closely, and are careful to conform to both as far as is possible, while they are not only keen-sighted for the good that is in the Chinese, but bring the best out of them.
Thus Christianity, divested of the nonchalant or contemptuous insularity by which it is often rendered repulsive, has made considerable progress not only in the capital but in the province, and until the roads became unsafe there was scarcely a day during my long visit in which there were not deputations from distant villages asking for Christian workers, representing numerous bands of rural worshippers, who, having received some knowledge of Christianity from converts, colporteurs, or catechists, had renounced many idolatrous practices, and desired further instruction. Of the “professing Christians,” Dr. Ross said that it was only a very small percentage who had heard the Gospel from Europeans! Four thousand were already baptized, and nearly as many again were “inquirers” with a view to baptism. It was most curious to see men coming daily from remote regions asking for some one to go and instruct them in the “Jesus doctrine,” for “they had learned as much as they could without a teacher.” In many parts of Manchuria there are now Christian communities carrying on their own worship and discipline, and it is noteworthy that very many of the converts are members of those Secret Societies whose strongest bond of union is the search after righteousness.
The Mission Hospital is one of the largest and best equipped in the Far East, and besides doing a great medical and surgical work, is a medical school in which students pass through a four years’ curriculum. There also Dr. Christie gives illustrated popular scientific lectures in the winter, which are attended among others by a number of sons of mandarins. Donations, both of money and food, are contributed to this hospital both by officials and merchants; and General Tso, a most charitable man and beloved by the poor, only the night before he started for Korea, sent a bag of tickets for ice, so that the hospital might not suffer for the lack of it during his absence. Only a few months before he presented it with a handsome tablet and subscription.[30]
Even in so civilized a city as Mukden, with its schools and literary examinations, its thousands of literary aspirants to official position, its streets full of a busy and splendid officialism, its enormous trade, its banks and yamens, its 20,000 Mussulmans, with their many mosques, and hatred of the pig, and the slow interpenetration of enlightened Western ideas, Chinese superstitions of the usual order, well-known by every reader, prevail.
The system of medicine, though it contains the knowledge and use of some valuable native drugs among the sixty which are exported, is in many respects extremely barbarous. The doctors have no operative surgery and cannot even tie an artery! They use cupping, the cautery, and acupuncture hot or cold, with long coarse uncleanly needles, with which they pierce the liver, joints, and stomach for pains, sprains, and rheumatism. They close all abscesses, wounds, and ulcers with a black impervious plaster. Witch doctors are resorted to in cases of hysteria or mental derangement. Vaccination is now to some extent adopted with calf or transferred lymph, the puncture being made in the nostrils. In order to ascertain whether a sick person is likely to live, they plunge long needles into the body, and give up the case as hopeless if blood does not flow. When death is near the friends dress the patient in the best clothes they can afford and remove him from the kang (the usual elevated sleeping place) to the floor, or lay him on ashes. As the spirit departs they cry loudly in the ear. In connection with death, it may be mentioned that some of the most striking shops in Mukden, after the coffin shops, are those in which are manufactured and sold admirable lifesize representations of horses, men, asses, elephants, carts, and all the articles of luxury of this life, which are carried in procession and are burned at the grave, sometimes to the value of $1,000.
Few children under nine years old are buried, and those only among the richest class. When death occurs, the mother, wailing bitterly, wraps the body in matting, and throws it away, i.e. she places it where the dogs can get at it. This ghastly burden must not be carried out of a door or window, but through a new or disused opening, in order that the evil spirit which causes the disease may not enter. The belief is that the Heavenly Dog which eats the sun at the time of an eclipse demands the bodies of children, and that if they are denied to him he will bring certain calamity on the household.
I have mentioned the kang, which is a marked feature of the houses and inns of Manchuria, which for its latitude has the coldest winter in the world, the mercury often reaching 17° F. below zero. The kang is a brick platform covered with matting and heated economically by flues, and is at once sleeping and sitting place. The stalks of the Holcus Sorghum are used for fuel. In winter, when the external temperature may be a little above and much below zero for a month at a time, the Chinaman, unable to heat his whole room, drops his shoes, mounts his kang, sits crosslegged on the warm mat, covers his padded socks with his padded robe, and there takes his meals and receives his friends in comfort. When I was invited to climb the kang I felt myself a persona grata.
The pawnshops of Mukden, with their high outer walls, lofty gateways, two or three well-kept courts, fine buildings, and tall stone columns at the outer gate, with the sign of the business upon them, their scrupulous cleanliness, and their armies of polite, intelligent clerks, are as respectable as banks with us. They demand for every sum borrowed movable property to double its amount. If the pledge be not redeemed within two years, it falls to the pawnbroker. Government fixes the interest. The proprietor takes the same position as a capitalist owning a bank in the West, and a samshu distiller takes an equal place in local esteem.