[30] On the occasion to which the Memorialist refers, the lawful heir to the Throne committed suicide. The allusion would be readily understood (if not appreciated) by the Empress Dowager, whose irregular choice of Kuang-Hsü and violation of the dynastic laws had certainly led to the death of A-lu-te. Looked at from the Chinese scholar’s point of view, the innuendo was in the nature of a direct accusation.
[31] The writer refers to the united action of the Manchu Princes and nobles who assisted in the establishment of law and order, and the expulsion of the Chinese rebels and Pretenders, during the troublous time of the first Regency (1644) and the minority of the infant Emperor, Shun-Chih.
[32] The burial place was close to, but necessarily outside, the large enclosed park which contains the Imperial mausolea.
[33] Burial clothes should all be new and clean—by cutting away the soles, his boots would look less shabby.
[34] I.e. by causing the Empresses to have his corpse mutilated.
[35] About £10.
[36] The point whence, according to legend, the Yellow Emperor ascended to heaven and where his clothes were buried.
[37] A quotation from Tseng Tzu, one of the most noted disciples of Confucius.
[38] A sort of Chinese Mr. Malaprop, known to history as one who invariably spoke at the wrong time.
[39] It is curious to note how frequently the Imperial tombs have been the scene of such unseemly wrangles, wherein grievances and passions, long pent up within the Palace precincts, find utterance. A case of this kind occurred in 1909, on the occasion of the burial of Tzŭ Hsi, when the surviving consorts of T’ung-Chih and Kuang-Hsü, having quarrelled with the new Empress Dowager (Lung Yü) on a similar question of precedence, refused to return to the City and remained in dudgeon at the tombs until a special mission, under an Imperial Duke, was sent humbly to beg them to come back, to the no small scandal of the orthodox.