China under the Empress Dowager

by J. O. P. Bland; Sir E. Backhouse

Tseng. Yes. At present peace prevails, but we must be prepared for all possible emergencies. I propose to build forts at several places on the Yangtsze.

Tzŭ Hsi. It would be a fine thing if we could secure ourselves properly against invasion. These missionary complications are perpetually creating trouble for us.

Tseng. That is true. Of late the missionaries have created trouble everywhere. The native converts are given to oppressing those who will not embrace Christianity (literally “eat the religion”) and the missionaries always screen the converts, while the Consuls protect the missionaries. Next year, when the time comes for revising the French Treaty, we must take particular pains to reconsider carefully the whole question of religious propaganda.

In November Tseng had his farewell audience, and Tzŭ Hsi never saw him again. A month later he took over the seals of office at his old post, one of his first acts being to try the assassin of his predecessor, who was condemned to death by the slicing process. In the following summer he went for a cruise of inspection and visited various places of interest, noting with satisfaction the complete restoration of law and order in the districts which had been for so long the scene of the Taipings’ devastations. On one occasion, seeing the gaily decked “flower-boats” and listening to the sounds of their revelries, he joyfully exclaimed: “I am glad to have lived to see my province as it was before the rebellion.” In December he moved into the Viceregal residence which he had known as the Palace of the Taiping “Heavenly King.” But he was not long to administer that high office, for in the early part of 1872 he had a first stroke of paralysis. A few days later, going in his chair to meet a high official arriving from Peking, and reciting, as was his wont, favourite passages from the classics, he suddenly made a sign to his attendants, but speech failed him and he could only mumble. In his diary that same evening, he wrote:—“This illness of mine prevents me from attending to my work. In the 26th and 27th years of Tao-Kuang (1846-7) I found that efforts at poetical composition brought on attacks of eczema and insomnia. Now it is different. I feel all dazed and confused. Spots float before my eyes and my liver is disordered. Alas, that I can neither obtain a speedy release, like the morning dew which swiftly passes away, nor hope for the restoration of energies to enable me to perform my duty. What sadder fate than thus to linger on, useless, in the world!” On the next day he wrote:—“My strength is rapidly failing, and I must leave behind me many unsettled questions and business half completed. The dead leaves of disappointed hopes fill all the landscape, and I see no prospect of settling my affairs. Thirty years have passed since I took my degree, and I have attained to the highest rank; yet have I learned nothing, and my character still lacks true solidity. What shame should be mine at having reached thus uselessly old age!” Next day, while reading a despatch, he had another stroke. Rallying, he told his eldest son, Tseng Chi-tsê, to see to it that his funeral ceremonies were conducted after the old usages, and that neither Buddhist nor Taoist priests be permitted to chant their liturgies over his corpse. On the following morning, though very weak, he insisted on perusing one of the essays which had been successful at the provincial examination. In the evening he was taken out into his garden and was returning thence with his son when the last seizure occurred. They carried him into the great Hall of audience, where he sat upright, as if presiding at a meeting of Council, and thus passed away, well stricken in age, though only sixty-two by the calendar. “Every man in Nanking,” says the writer of this narrative, “felt as if he had lost a parent; it was rumoured that a shooting star had fallen in the city at the very moment of his death. The news was received by the Throne with profound grief. All Court functions were suspended for three days.”

The Empress Dowager issued a Decree praising her faithful servant in unmeasured terms of gratitude and esteem, describing him as the “very backbone of the Throne,” reciting his glorious achievements and ordering the erection of Temples in his honour in all the provinces that had been the scene of his campaign against the Taipings, in order “to prove our sincere affection for this good and loyal man.”

VI
TZŬ HSI AND THE EUNUCHS

One of the facts upon which modern Chinese historians, Censors, Imperial Tutors and Guardians of the Heir Apparent have repeatedly laid stress, is that the Ming Dynasty became effeminate, then degenerate, and was eventually lost, because of the demoralising influence of the eunuch system on the Court and its official entourage. Upon this text, moral exhortations in the best classical manner have been addressed to the Throne for centuries, regardless of the consideration that most of the writers owed their positions, and hoped to owe further advancement, to the eunuchs, who had the sovereign’s ear. These Memorials were usually only a part of the hoary fabric of pious platitudes and shadowy shibboleths which loom so large in the stock in trade of China’s bureaucracy (in which matter China stands not alone), and the Empress Dowager, under whose rule the evil grew and assumed monstrous proportions, was ever wont to play her part in this elaborate farce, by solemnly approving the views of the bold critics and by professing the greatest indignation at the misdeeds of her eunuch myrmidons and retainers.

There have been, of course, sincere and eloquent critics of this pernicious system and its attendant evils; in fact, scarcely a reformer worthy of the name during the past fifty years has failed to place the abolition of eunuchs in the front rank of the measures necessary to bring China into line with the civilised Powers. There is no doubt that one of the first causes of the coup d’état in 1898 arose from the hatred of the Chief Eunuch, Li Lien-ying, for the Emperor Kuang-Hsü (who years before had ventured to have him beaten), and his not unnatural apprehension that the Emperor intended to follow up his reforms of the Peking Administration by devoting his attention to the Palace and to the abolition of eunuchs. As to the Boxer rising, it has been clearly proved that this notorious and powerful Chamberlain used all the weight of his great influence with his Imperial mistress on behalf of the anti-foreign movement, and that, if justice had been done (that is to say had he not been protected by the Russian Legation), his should have been one of the very first names on the Peace Protocol “Black List.” The part which Li Lien-ying played in these two national crises of recent years is mentioned here chiefly to emphasise the fact that the platitudinous utterances of the orthodox express, as usual, a very real and widespread grievance, and that the falsetto notes of the Censorate are answered by a deep undertone of dissatisfaction and disgust throughout the provinces. It is for this reason that, especially during the past five years, progressive and patriotic Chinese officials (e.g. men like the Viceroy Yüan Shih-k’ai and T’ang Shao-yi, who realise how greatly the persistence of this barbarous medievalism lowers China in the eyes of the world), as well as the unanimous voice of the vernacular Press, have urged that the Court should now dispense with eunuchs, a measure which the Regent is said to favour, but which—such is the power wielded by these “fawning sycophants”—would undoubtedly be difficult and possibly dangerous. As early as 1906, The Times correspondent at Peking was discussing the possibility of their early removal as one of the many reforms which then shone so brightly on the horizon. In the Chinese conservative’s opinion, however, which still weighs heavily in China, there are centuries of precedents and arguments to be adduced in favour of a system which has obtained continuously since long before the beginning of the Christian era, which coincides with the Chinese accepted ideas of polygamy, and recognises the vital importance of legitimacy of succession in relation to the national religion of ancestor worship. On the other hand, it is true that in the golden days of the Sage Emperors at the beginning of the Chou Dynasty, eunuchs had no place in the body politic. Later, during the period of that Dynasty’s decay and the era of the feudal States, Confucius refers with disapproval to their baneful influence, so that the Sage’s authority may be adduced against them and their proceedings.

With the establishment of the present Dynasty at Peking (1644), the Manchus took over, as conquerors, all the existing machinery and personnel of the Chinese Court, eunuchs included, but they lost no time in restricting the latter’s activities and opportunities. At the first audience held by the young Emperor Shun-Chih, the high officials, Manchu and Chinese, united to protest against the recent high-handed proceedings of the Court menials, declaring them to be “fit only to sweep floors, and in no wise entitled to have access to the Monarch.” Regulations were promptly introduced, which remain in force (on paper) to this day, forbidding any eunuch to occupy any official position, or to hold any honorific rank or title higher than a Button of the fourth class. More important still, in view of the far-reaching conspiracy of the Chief Eunuch, Wei Chung (whom the last of the Mings had beheaded), was the law then introduced, which forbade any eunuch to leave the capital on any pretext whatsoever. For the next two hundred years, thanks to the wise rule and excellent traditions handed down by the two famous Emperors K’ang-Hsi and Ch’ien-Lung, the Palace eunuchs were kept generally under very strict discipline; but with the present century, when degeneration had set in strongly under the dissolute monarch Hsien-Feng, and even before the appearance of Yehonala on the scene, their evil influence had again become paramount in the Forbidden City. With Tzŭ Hsi’s accession to power, all the corruption, intrigues and barbarous proceedings, that had characterised the last Mings, were gradually re-established and became permanent features of her Court.