“Turn out, turn out Mess, mess,” proclaims the bugle shrilly above. “Clang, clang, clang,” ring the rickshaw bells. A postman in shabby blue, with bands of dirty white, passes on his bicycle and blows his horn, herald of the ways of the West. A brougham comes along with sides all of glass, such as the Chinaman loves. In it is a man in a modern tall hat, a little out-of-date; on the box, are two men in grey silk, orthodox Chinese costume, queue and all, but alas for picturesqueness they have crowned their heads with hideous tourist caps, the mafoo behind on the step, hanging on to the roof by a strap, has on a very ordinary wideawake, his business it is to jump down and lead the horses round a corner—no self-respecting Chinese horse can negotiate a corner without assistance—and the finishing touch is put by the coachman, also in a tourist cap, who clangs a bell with as much fervour as a rickshaw coolie. Before this carriage trot outriders. “Lend light, lend light,” they cry, which is the Eastern way of saying “By your leave, by your leave. My master a great man comes.” After the coach come more riders. It may be a modern carriage in which lie rides, but the important man in China can no more move without his outriders and his following, than could one of the kings or nobles of Nineveh or Babylon.
More laden carts come in from the west, and the policeman, in dusty black and yellow, directs them, though they really need no directing. The average Chinese mind is essentially orderly, and never dreams of questioning rules. Is there not a stone exactly in the middle of the road under the great archway, and does not every man know that those going east must go one way, and those going west the other? What need for direction? An old-fashioned fat Chinese with shaven head and pigtail and sleeveless black satin waistcoat over his long blue coat comes along. He half-smothers a small donkey with a ring of jingling bells round its neck, a coolie follows him in rags, but that does not matter, spring is in the land, and he is nearly hidden by the lilac bloom he carries, another comes along with a basket strapped on his back and a scoop in his hand, he is collecting the droppings of the animals, either for manure or to make argol for fuel, a stream of rickshaws swerve out of the way of a blind man, ragged, bent, old, who with lute in one hand and staff in the other taps his way along.
“Hsien Sheng, before born,” he is addressed by the coolies directing him, for his affliction brings him outward respect from these courteous people.
In the rickshaws are all manner of people: Manchu women with high head-dresses in the form of a cross, highly painted faces and the gayest of long silk coats, shy Chinese women, who from their earliest childhood have been taught that a woman must efface herself. Their hair is decked with flowers, and dressed low on the nape of their necks, their coats are of soberer colours, and their feet are pitifully maimed. “For every small foot,” says a Chinese proverb, “there is a jar full of tears.” The years of agony every one of those women must have lived through, but their faces are impassive, smiling with a surface smile that gives no indication of the feelings behind.
The Chien Men, because it opens only from the Tartar to the Chinese City, is not closed, but eight o'clock sees all the gates in the twenty-three miles of outer wall closed for the night, and very awkward it sometimes is for the foreigner, who is not used to these restrictions, for neither threats nor bribes will open those gates once they are shut.
I remember on one occasion a young fellow, who had lingered too long among the delights of the city, found himself, one pleasant warm summer evening, just outside the Shun Chih Men as the gates of the Chinese City were closing. He wanted to get back to his cottage at the race-course but the guardians of the gate were obdurate. “It was an order and the gates were closed till daylight next morning.” He could not climb the walls, and even if he could, the two ponies he had with him could not. He probably used up all the bad language at his command, if I know anything about him, and he grew more furious when he recollected he had guests coming to dinner. Then he began to think, and remembered that the railway came through the wall. Inspection showed him that there were gates across it, also fast closed, and here he got his second wind, and quite a fresh assortment of bad language, which was checked by the whistle of an approaching train. Then a bright idea occurred to him. Where a train could go, a pony could go, and he stood close to the line in the darkness, instructed his mafoo to keep close beside him, and the moment the train passed, got on to the line and followed in its wake, regardless of the protests of raging gatekeepers. He got through the gate triumphantly, but then, alas, his troubles began, for the railway line had not been built with a view to taking ponies through the wall. There were rocks and barbed wire, there were fences, and there were mud holes, and his guests are wont to relate how as they were sitting down to table under the hospitable guidance of his No. 1 boy, there arrived on the scene a man, mud to the eyes—it was summertime when there is plenty of mud in the country round Peking—and silent, because no profanity of which he was capable could possibly have done justice to his feelings. Such are some of the joys of living in a Babylonish city.
When I had sat an hour in the gate I rose to go, and the rickshaw coolie and I disagreed as to the fare. A rickshaw coolie and I never did agree as to the fare. Gladly would I pay double to avoid a row, but the coolie, taken from the Legation Quarter of Peking where the tourists spoil him, would complain and try to extort more if you offered him a dollar for a ten-cent ride, therefore the thing was not to be avoided. I did not see my way to getting clear, and a crowd began to gather. Then there came along a Chinese, a well-dressed young man.