Its pinkish red arched walls and gateways seemed quite close, but it was exceedingly difficult to get at, particularly for a tired woman who, when she was not jolting in a Peking cart, had been climbing up more steps than even now she cares to think about. And the temple, save for that roof, was much like every other temple, a place of paved courtyards with the grass and weeds growing up among the stones, and grass and even young pine-trees growing on the tiled roofs. The altars were shabby and decayed, and when I climbed up till I was right under the domed roof—and it was a steep climb—more than once I was tempted to turn back and take it as read, as they do long reports at meetings. I found the round chamber was the roosting-place of many pigeons, all the lacquer was perished, the bronze rusted, and though the attendant opened many doors with many keys, I know that the place is seldom visited, and but for that vivid roof, it must be forgotten.
And yet the people like to look at these things. There was not a crowd following me as there was at the Bright-roofed Temple, but there was still the ragged-looking coolie who was carrying my camera. I suspected him of every filthy disease known in China, and their name must be legion, any that had by chance escaped him I thought might have found asylum with the boy who bore my umbrella. I hoped that rude health and an open-air life would enable me to throw off any germs. These two, who had had to walk where I had ridden, I pitied, so I told Tuan to say they need not climb up as I had used up all my plates and certainly had no use for an umbrella.
“She say 'No matter,'” said Tuan including them both in the feminine, “She like to come,” and I think he liked it as well, for they escorted me with subdued enthusiasm round that domed chamber inspecting what must have been a reproduction of a debased Buddhist hell in miniature. It was covered with dust, faded, and weather-worn, like everything else in the temple, but it afforded the four who were with me great pleasure, and when with relief I saw a figure instead of being bitten by a snake, or eaten by some gruesome beast, or sawn asunder between two planks, merely resting in a tree, Tuan explained with great gusto and evident satisfaction: “Spikes in tree.” He took care I should lose none of the flavour of the tortures. But even the tortures were faded and worn, the dust had settled on them, the air and the sun had perished them, and I could not raise a shudder. Dusty and unclean they spoiled for me the beauty of the golden roof and the dark green mountain pines. I was glad to go down the many steps again, glad to go down to the courtyard where the temple attendant, who might have been a priest, but was dressed in blue cotton and had the shaven head and queue that so many of the Manchus still affect, gave me tea out of his tiny cups, seated on the temple steps. A dirty old man he was, but his tea was perfect, and I made up my mind not to look whether the cups were clean, for his manners matched his tea.
And then I went out on to the broad cleared space in front, and feasted my eyes for the last time on the golden brown tiled roof set amongst the green of the pines, and clear-cut against the vivid blue of the sky.
And yet it is not the beauty only that appeals, there is something more than that, for even as I look at those hills, I remember another temple I visited just outside Peking, a little temple, and I went not by myself but with a party of laughing young people. There was nothing beautiful about this temple, the walls were crumbled almost to dust, the roof was falling in, upon the tiles the grasses were growing, the green kaoliang crept up to the forsaken altars, and the dust-laden wind of Northern China swept in through the broken walls and caressed the forgotten gods who still in their places look out serenely on the world beyond.
I could not but remember Swinburne, “Laugh out again for the gods are dead.” Are they dead? Does anything die in China? In the Ming Dynasty, some time in the fifteenth century, when the Wars of the Roses were raging in England they built this little temple, nearly three hundred years before Ch'ien Lung built the temples in the valley at Jehol, and they installed the gods in all the glory of red lacquer and gold, and when the last gold leaf had been laid on and the last touches had been given to the dainty lacquer they walked out and left it, left it to the soft, insidious decay that comes to things forgotten. For it must be remembered, whether we look at this valley of dead gods or this little temple outside Peking, that when a memorial is put up it is not expected to last for ever, and no provision is made or expected for its upkeep. If it last a year, well and good, so was the man to whom it was put up, valued, and if it last a hundred years—if five hundred years after it was dedicated there still remains one stone standing upon the other, how fragrant the memory of that man must have been. It is five hundred years since this temple was built and still it endures. Behind is the wall of the city, grim and grey, but the gods do not look upon the wall, their faces are turned to the south and the gorgeous sunshine. They still sit in their places, but the little figures that once adorned the chamber are lying about on the ground or leaning up disconsolately against the greater gods, and some of them are broken. On the ground, in the dust, was a colossal head with a face that reminded us that the silken robes of Caesar's wife came from China, for that head was never modelled from any Mongolian, dead or alive. A Roman Emperor might have sat for it. The faces that looked down on it, lying there in the dust, were Eastern there were the narrow eyes, the impassive features, the thin lips, but this, this was European, this man had lived and loved, desired and mourned, and, for there was just a touch of scorn on the lips, when he had drained life to its dregs, or renounced its joys, said with bitterness: “All is vanity.”
And the Chinese peasants came and looked at the aliens having tiffin in the shade, and for them our broken meats were a treat. One was crippled and one was blind and one was covered with the sores of smallpox, so hideous to look upon that the lady amongst us who prided herself upon her good looks turned shuddering away and implored that they be driven off, before we all caught the terrible disease.