The congratulations and prostrations were to begin at 2 A.M., the hour of her birth. There were three pairs of huge silver candelabra standing at either side of the Throne to hold the enormous wax candles of Imperial yellow, entwined with golden dragons, which weighed fifty pounds each. They stood five feet high. Lanterns with the ever-present character “Sho” and others inscribed “Wan-Sho-Wu-Chiang” (no limit to Imperial longevity) stood on each step of the long flight leading up to the Palace. The whole terrace below, all the temples and buildings in the grounds, were brilliantly illuminated with splendid lanterns, elaborately ornamented with tassels of red silk, with the characters for longevity emblazoned thereon in vermilion.
With the few changes necessitated by the different season of the year of the Empress Dowager’s Birthday, everything was carried out as for the Emperor’s except on a larger scale, as she was celebrating more years than His Majesty. The Palace was filled to overflowing with the many ladies invited to be present. Some came from the heart of distant Manchuria, the cradle of the Dynasty. The winter Court dress of the ladies, worn for Her Majesty’s Birthday, was of satin, lined and trimmed with fur, with sable collars. Like the summer Court dress, the winter gown was elaborately embroidered in the golden double dragon. The picturesque summer coiffure had also been replaced by winter hats of fur with jewels across the front and an elaborate crown, studded with precious stones. Brilliant bunches of flowers were worn on either side of the coiffure, in winter as in summer.
The celebration of birthday festivities in China is always accompanied by rites and worship of the ancestral tablets, and Her Majesty was obliged to go into Peking several times during the celebration. The ceremonies, themselves, were also very tiring. All this effort to keep up, and to properly carry out her part of the ceremonies, added to her real anxiety, made the forced celebration of her sixty-ninth Birthday far from a happy event to the Empress Dowager of China, who found the Empire she was trying to guide, in so perilous a position—war threatening on its confines, foreign complications of all kinds to deal with, and rebellion within.
CHAPTER XXIV THE WINTER PALACE
The Summer Palace was always the Empress Dowager’s favorite Palace, but after the Boxer rising and the subsequent occupation of Peking by the Allies, when foreign troops were stationed in both the Peking Palaces, and so much damage done them, she would have preferred to have lived the whole year round at the Summer Palace. As it is, she occupies it from eight to nine months of the year, going out to it at the first opportunity in the spring, and leaving it only when it is so cold as to make it impracticable. There is a system of heating it by furnaces beneath the floors, but Her Majesty never used these, and the small Chinese porcelain stoves, sorts of braziers, were quite insufficient for heating the immense halls. This, however, would not have influenced her, as she never minded the cold, but it was very difficult for the officials to take the long trip to the Summer Palace during the winter, and this consideration alone caused her to move into the Winter Palace when the weather became very cold. The members of the Cabinet and the Princes had summer homes in the immediate vicinity of the Palace, but there were thousands of officials who were obliged to come out every day from Peking.
The time had now come for the Court to move in definitively to the Winter Palace, and shortly after the Birthday festivities, Their Majesties took up their residence in the Capital. Before I left the Summer Palace, the young Empress suggested that I should go to the Winter Palace the next day in time to assist in receiving Her Majesty on her arrival there, for, as usual, I left the Summer Palace the day before the Court, and went in to the United States Legation. At every change of residence of the Empress Dowager, the young Empress, Princesses, and Ladies of the Court precede her by a few hours, and stand upon the threshold of her own dwelling Palace to receive her when she arrives. Full Court dress is worn for this reception, and it is, as is everything touching Her Majesty, a ceremony!
The day of the Empress Dowager’s entrance into her loyal City of Peking for the winter, in December, 1903, was a typical Peking winter day; the air was crisp and clear, the atmosphere positively sparkling, and like champagne. One seemed to breathe an elixir. For her “progresses” from one Palace to another the Empress Dowager always had, what they call in England, “Queen’s weather.”
The City of Peking is composed of three walled towns—the Chinese, the Tartar, and the Imperial City. Within the Imperial City lies the Winter Palace, its battlemented, turreted walls surrounded by a moat. After passing through one of the great gates, in the wall surrounding the Imperial City, and crossing the stone bridge that spans “the Grain-bearing Canal,” we soon came in sight of the splendid walls and lofty gates of the Palace inclosure. The red outer walls of the Palace, faded by Time and weather to a charming gray-pink, with their beautiful corner constructions of airy-looking turrets reflected in the still waters of the moat beneath, were most picturesque. We were carried along the raised road beyond the moat until we came to a marble bridge (formerly a portcullis), that leads into the gate of the Palace in front of the Manchu Banner quarters, at the foot of the Coal Hill. Our chairs, by special arrangement, were allowed to enter the inclosure proper, of the Winter Palace; but even after entering the exterior gates, one winds in and out between high walls, through massive gates and heavy wooden doors studded with huge iron nails and ornamental copper balls. Against the high wall on either side of this approach, wooden sheds were built as sleeping-places for the guards and soldiers. Each shed had a front of lattice-work, with paper pasted over the interstices. Within was a cemented platform, which the Northern Chinese use as beds. These have a place underneath for building a fire, for they keep warm at night by sleeping on hot beds and use very little cover.
Just beyond the last of these guard-houses, our official “green chairs” were put down between two high walls, with forbidding gates in front of us. Here we took the red Palace chairs which were awaiting us. We were swiftly carried through still other gates and past a very labyrinth of walls. The courts were all paved in large flagstones of white marble, and surrounded by high walls with heavy doors. We finally reached a charming court, where, standing under the overhanging branches of a beautiful cedar, we found the young Empress and Princesses, in full Court dress, already awaiting the coming of Her Majesty. It was a pretty group that stood there, gowned in their splendid Court costumes, the sunlight glinting upon the jeweled crowns of their fur caps, and giving a touch of nature to the brilliant flowers in their hair. My plain, foreign, tailor-made gown was the only dark spot in this bright group of gorgeously attired ladies.
Presently the cymbals and flutes sounded the weird notes of the “Imperial Hymn.” The great wooden doors of the court were thrown open and the Imperial procession came in sight. Splendidly gowned eunuchs advanced in two lines, walking with rigid bodies and stately step. At a sign from the young Empress, a hush fell upon the chattering group of Princesses and each took her proper place. Then the Imperial chair-bearers crossed the threshold, with Her Majesty sitting erect in one of her “open chairs,” for as soon as she gets into the Palace grounds she leaves the closed palanquin, in which she is obliged to travel abroad and which she very much dislikes on account of its stuffiness. The Ladies, as if moved by one impulse, made the formal bow at her approach, and repeated the usual Imperial salutation “Lao-tzu-tzung-chee-siang,” which I repeated with the others. Her Majesty had her chair stopped in the center of the Court and got out, and I went up to salute her. She shook hands, and said she hoped I would be happy in the Winter Palace, but that it was a dull, depressing sort of a place, with too many walls and gates, after the open brightness, of the Summer Palace. After a few minutes’ conversation she went into the Throne-room, followed by the Empress and Ladies.