With the Empress Dowager of China

by Katharine A. Carl

The next morning at seven, a green official chair with its bearers came to take me to the Sea Palace. I was first carried to the Hsien-Liang-Hsu, the “Temple of the loyal and virtuous,” where Li-Hung-Chang formerly had his home in Peking, and a part of which the Yu-Kengs had arranged for their home after their return from their mission at Paris, their own semi-foreign house having been destroyed by the Boxers. At the Hsien-Liang-Hsu I was joined by the Ladies Yu-Keng, and we continued on to the Sea Palace. Our chairs, with their bearers, were preceded and followed by mounted attendants.

The Sea Palace is a comparatively new Palace, most of it having been built within the last fifty years. Our chairs were met at the northern entrance by the same eunuchs who had been set aside for our service at the Summer Palace. They led us to the boats in waiting to carry us across the lake, to the buildings occupied by Her Majesty and the Court. These boats were of the houseboat variety, with an inclosed cabin forming the center, and a platform running all around, on which the rowers walked up and down propelling it. The interior was carpeted, with a cushioned lounge, tea-tables, and chairs. The eunuchs and attendants sat outside on the prow. It takes twenty minutes to row across the lake in one of these boats, but the movement is delightful. When we reached the other side, we landed and went through several courts to that of one of Her Majesty’s private chapels. She, herself, had just been making an offering here, and was coming out, preceded by acolytes swinging incense-burners, the musicians playing the “Imperial Hymn.” When she saw us, Her Majesty called us to her side, asked if I had had a good trip into Peking, and how Mrs. Conger was. She then ordered the eunuchs to show us our apartments. We were led through corridors and courts to a charming pavilion which was to be our resting-place while at the Sea Palace. It had exquisitely and elaborately carved woodwork arches with heavy satin curtains, which divided it into five rooms. After we had rested a few moments here, we returned to the Throne-room. Her Majesty told me she had arranged for me to go out in one of the boats, and that I was to be shown all that I cared to see, or at least as much as I could see in that day. A eunuch standing near her held a number of strips of embroidery in his hand. They were embroidered head-dresses, which are placed upon the heads of the Buddhas during the great ceremonies in the Palace temples. She explained their use to me and then dismissed us, and we went out to the landing-place on the lake.

A number of boats lay at the foot of the steps—among them a charming open barge with blue silken awnings. As I had not been in a boat of this kind before, and as I was told to choose, I selected it for our row; and we started off, followed by several other boats carrying eunuchs and refreshments, with the necessary utensils for serving them. Our head eunuch, one of the six highest in the Palace, who had been appointed to look after me and the “sacred picture,” was very intelligent, an enlightened lover of Chinese art, and a great collector of old Chinese paintings and curios. He had been, in his youth, one of Her Majesty’s favorite players, was said to have great dramatic talent, and, when he was younger, had a fine voice for singing. Memory is among the most esteemed of the intellectual faculties by the Chinese and reaches a high state of cultivation with[ them. ] Many of the eunuchs can repeat whole pages from the classics, and some are accomplished literati. This eunuch had a good speaking voice, and recited poems and told stories in a charming way. As we were rowed along, he stood at the prow and recited verse after verse of classic lore and told stories of the heroic times. He intoned them like a recitative—the rhythm so perfectly observed, the intoning so musical, it was a pleasure to listen to him, though I could not understand.

I lay back among the cushions, as we glided softly along, past beautiful pavilions, with splendid trees overhanging the lake and lovely flowers growing wherever there was a place to plant them. The tall figure of the splendidly attired eunuch, standing in the prow, repeating, with rhythmic cadence, poems and stories, gave one the illusion and charm of the “Arabian Nights,” which I had fed upon in my childhood, and which I seemed to be living through to-day.

We soon came to a tiny islet in the lake, with a sort of open temple built over a black marble tablet which bore an incised inscription. I asked to land and examine it, and San-Gunia, the eldest of Lady Yu-Keng’s daughters, a remarkably clever girl and well posted in Chinese literature, translated the characters. The inscription was a poem, a tribute to the Great Father who had graciously placed there this island, which “by night was bathed in the glory of the Moon and Sun-kissed by day, while the crystal waters of the lake formed a brilliant necklace on its breast.”

Beyond the island I saw a temple. There was no landing-place, and the temple was under repair. The head eunuch, however, seeing how much I wished to go up, had the boat draw near and steps brought, up which we clambered, as best we could.

This was one of the temples so ruthlessly destroyed and unnecessarily desecrated by the Allies during their occupation of Peking. We passed through the vegetable garden of the monks—all shorn of its glory, but where a few vegetables and flowers still grew—and we went on through a beautiful grove of arbor-vitæ, with centuries-old trees, planted in the form of a cross, and came into the court of the temple. Even in its dilapidated state, with the workmen still in it, it was beautiful, and before it was so injured it must have been a splendid example of Chinese temple architecture. The cells of the lama monks were now unoccupied, and there were no officiating priests. Workmen were repairing and regilding the Great Buddha, and most of the effigies of the saints and images of the personified attributes were standing in dejected rows in the corridors awaiting the completion of their niches and chapels. The interior, of splendid proportions, glowed in beautiful somber colors. The carved wood ceilings were in [pendentive] designs, recalling those I had seen in the Alhambra; but the painting, in primary colors, of this elaborately carved ceiling gave it a greater richness of coloring and lent to the interior a warmer, deeper harmony than the white Moorish designs. The chapels behind the high altar were separated from the main temple and from each other by beautifully carved wooden screens, with rich brocaded silk of brilliant green (the color of Buddha), stretched behind the open-work and showing through the interstices of the carving. These chapels are for the Sacred writings and for the vestments of the priests, and are also used for robing- and retiring-rooms for the officiants. They correspond to the sacristies of the Catholic Churches in Europe.

The space behind the altar was of apse-like form, and opened upon a semi-circular marble terrace, thirty feet high, with a balustrade of the conventionalized lotus design so dear to the Chinese architects. From this terrace we had a beautiful view of the Coal Hill, surmounted by the curious Dagoba, so well known in all views of the Imperial City, as well as of the belvedere that marks the spot where the last Emperor of the Mings committed suicide when he was conquered. At the two extremities of the terrace were charming octagonal summer-houses, where the priests could go for rest and contemplation, and, while murmuring their prayers, could feast their eyes upon a charming view. After a few moments on the terrace, enjoying the beautiful view, we passed through the cells of the monks, which were large and comfortable, and, finally, out again into the sun-flecked shade of the marble-paved court, where we sat under low-hanging boughs of a splendid elm, and the eunuchs brought out tables and served us with tea and refreshments.

Then we took the boats and were rowed on further, till we came beneath a steep battlemented wall, surmounted by the rich green of arbor-vitæ trees. I was surprised to learn that this was another temple, for it looked more like an old feudal castle than a peaceful temple to the mild Buddha. We landed at the foot of the beautiful white Marble Bridge that spans the narrow northern portion of the lake, just under the stone wall on which the temple was built. We were carried up the steep, winding incline in our chairs. It was a most picturesque approach, and when we reached the top, with the beautiful temple lying peacefully on these martial heights, we found it well worth the climb.

There was a grove of arbor-vitæ trees leading to this temple. These trees seem to be sacred to the temples and burial-places in China, for all I ever visited in China were either built in a grove of arbor-vitæ, or had some of these evergreens growing near. Did the Greeks get their idea and name of the ever-living tree from the Chinese, who regard the arbor-vitæ as the tree of life and emblem of Immortality? This temple has a great Buddha of white jade, with jeweled stole and cuffs. Its expression of placid contemplation and kindly thought is typically Chinese. When Buddhism was first brought into China from India, the Buddhas had an Indian type; and not until the religion had taken firm hold of the people, was its divinity clothed in a Chinese personality, and a national individuality assumed. The day of our visit, the great jade Buddha was decked in a mantle of Imperial yellow satin, with a richly embroidered Manchu hood, such as I had seen that morning in Her Majesty’s Throne-room, on its head. Tall, lighted candles, fresh offerings of fruit and flowers, and the smoking censer standing on the altar, showed there had been services that morning, and added to the religious atmosphere of the interior. The service had been a continuation of the commemorative celebrations in honor of the Emperor’s Birthday and his sacrifice to his Ancestors.