After the salutations to the Emperor and Empress Dowager in Her Majesty’s private Throne-room, Her Majesty went out into the court and took her place in her yellow chair of State, the Emperor following, on foot, as was his custom. The cymbals clashed. The flutes sounded and all the instruments of the Imperial Band played the curious minor air, with its tragic undertone of sound, its rhythm like a Gregorian chant, which is only played at the passing of Their Majesties for some great ceremony or official function, and which I soon called the “Imperial Hymn.” This is the only approach to a National air that I ever heard in China.
Their Majesties went in ceremonious procession to the Great Audience Hall, where the Princes, Nobles, and high Officials privileged to enter Precincts, were to present their homage and congratulations to the Son of Heaven on the happy occasion of his Birthday. Besides these privileged visitors, there were a number of officials whose rank was not high enough to allow them to enter the Great Hall of Ceremonies. These kneel and make the prostrations in the outer courts.
The young Empress and Ladies of the Court did not follow Their Majesties to the Great Hall, but stopped at the Palace of the young Empress, to await there their turn for the official congratulations, which were not to be made until after those of the Princes and Nobles. The young Empress is a charming hostess, and her eunuchs and women handed us tea and cigarettes while we were waiting. She also had her dogs brought in for me to see. Her apartments opened on a sunny court, full of flowering shrubs and fruit trees. Around the other three sides of the court were built the pavilions for the use of her attendants and ladies. We spent half an hour in her pavilion, waiting for the congratulations of the Princes and Nobles to be finished.
The Emperor, for these official congratulations, was seated upon the Dynastic Throne, erect and stiff as an archaic figure; no longer the shy boy, but the Monarch clothed in all his power, and, for to-day, alone upon his great ancestral Throne. He was attended by his Master of Ceremonies, gorgeously attired, who stood in the rigid attitude prescribed for this ceremony.
Each splendidly garbed Prince and Noble knelt and made the prostration prescribed by the Book of Rites, and each presented His Majesty with a jade emblem, called by the Chinese “ruyie,”[3] erroneously supposed to be a scepter by most foreigners; but the “ruyie” is simply an emblem of Good Luck, and may be presented on festive occasions to any one whom the givers wish to honor, and is not an emblem of Imperial authority. The Emperor held each of these “ruyie” in his hands for a few seconds after their presentation, bowed profoundly to the kneeling Prince, and then handed the emblem to an attendant eunuch, who placed it on a Dragon table at the left of the Emperor. When the Princes and Nobles had congratulated His Majesty and left the Throne-room, the young Empress and secondary wife, followed by the Princesses and Ladies, went in to make their official congratulations. The greeting in Her Majesty’s Throne-room in the morning had been but a friendly salutation, without any official signification. The young Empress knelt and made her bow first and presented—as did each of the Ladies—a “ruyie.” She made the same official salutation as did the others, but her “ruyie” was of a much richer style than those presented by the other Ladies.
After the ceremony of formal congratulations was over, Her Majesty, the Emperor, and Empress, followed by the Ladies and attendants, went in state to the Theater, with the same ceremonial and pomp with which they had gone into the Hall of Ceremonies. The Empress Dowager, who was always the most gorgeously attired person at Court, was, on His Majesty’s Birthday, dressed with an extreme simplicity that amounted almost to plainness, and she wore no jewels. This plainness of attire was not an accident, but had been arranged with her usual forethought. She wished the Emperor and Empress to be the central figures of this day’s festivities, and did not wish to vie with the Empress even in her attire.
The Princes and Nobles, who had come to the Palace for the official congratulations, were invited to the theatrical performance. They occupied the boxes that ran at right angles to the Imperial loge, which I have already described as forming the other two sides of the court of the Theater. A huge screen of painted silk, twelve feet high, was stretched from the last of the boxes occupied by the Princes to the stage—allowing the latter to be perfectly seen by the occupants of the boxes, but cutting off their view of the Imperial loge, whence Their Majesties, the Empress, and Ladies viewed the play. These invited guests are thus neither seen by the Imperial party, nor can they see the latter.
When Their Majesties and the Empress were seated in their loge, the principal actors came to the front of the stage, knelt, and “kow-towed” to the Imperial box. Then the play began. There was first a noisy burst of weird music, then the chief actor recited a laudatory, congratulatory poem in honor of the Birthday of the Emperor, wishing His Majesty “ten thousand years” of happiness and all the blessings possible. The poem was intoned like a chant by the actor, dressed in the gorgeous historic costume of an Imperial Herald of the time of Kublai Kahn. This poem was most impressive. One of the verses ran thus:
“The vast merits of His Imperial Majesty’s August Ancestors have been handed down to Him from generation to generation.
“To the wisdom of His whole Dynasty we owe it, that we have lived in happiness,